UFL Live - United Football League News and Fan Forum

Although there has been no official deadline announced for the end of the fan vote to get a United Football League team in your city, time must be running short if the league plans to keep its tight schedule to start play in the fall of 2008.

As a reminder you can visit TicketReserve.com and buy ‘reservations’ for season tickets if your city wins a team. If your city isn’t awarded a team, no harm no foul and your money is returned.

Don’t feel like coughing up $50 for a reservation for prime seats? Then take advantage of this promotion for a free vote for your team. Follow the instructions on this post and you’ll get a chance to influence the UFL’s decision on where to locate the first eight teams.

The 13 cities up for consideration are: Austin, Birmingham, Columbus, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Louisville, Memphis, New York, Oklahoma City, Orlando, Raleigh, Sacramento and San Antonio.

Either way, vote now and let your voice be heard.

Tags: ufl, football, united football league, fan vote, fan ballot, ufl 2008, sports

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Just a quick bit of housekeeping. If you happen to live in the Orlando, Florida area and are interested in learning how you can help bring a UFL team to The City Beautiful, please drop me a line. Thanks!

(Note: graphic is for illustrative purposes only and not official)

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Attention UFL overlords (I kid), here’s a lesson from the MLB on how not to treat your paying fans.

Allan Wood (baseball historian, author, and fan) purchased over $280 worth of digital downloads of baseball games from Major League Baseball. Despite wording in the product’s FAQ that promised the service would be available “forever”, last year MLB switched off the functionality of that DRM server, leaving him (and everyone else who spent $3.99 a download) with no way to watch his purchased product.

It’s been over six months since his first complaint to MLB, but Wood’s efforts to get the service working or be issued a refund have been stonewalled. Now the service is back, but with a different DRM system and different games. Buyer beware. They stuck it to Allan Wood and they’ll stick it to you.

For anyone else developing systems that require DRM to view, make sure any new products you install are backwards compatible with any product you’ve sold. Or better yet, do away with DRM and stop trying to monetize digital properties.

Don’t treat your fans like wallets with legs and they’ll continue to support you for years to come. Treat someone like the MLB did Wood and all the other baseball fans and it will get picked up by hundreds of websites, news sites, and blogs (including the most read blog of all BoingBoing.net).

(found on BoingBoing)

Tags: drm, boingboing, mlb, fandom, online video, ufl

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We already know there is a fan powered vote on what cities are most deserving to get a United Football League (UFL). Now I’m hearing that once cities and owners are announced sometime in December, there will be separate contest to come up with team names for each of the eight cities.

I hope I’m not letting the cat out of the bag too early, but I like the fact that the UFL is already heading in the direction of strong fan involvement.

By the way, I’m also hearing that Los Angeles and Las Vegas are the two cities in the lead right now.

(Thanks again to CapedCowboy for some leads)

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Update (11/17/07): You can now vote for free for your city to get a UFL franchise.

Los Angeles; Las Vegas; San Antonio; Oklahoma City; Austin, Texas; Memphis, Tenn.; Orlando, Fla.; Columbus, Ohio; Birmingham, Ala.; Louisville, Ky.; Raleigh, N.C.; and Sacramento, Calif.. If your city is on that list you have a chance of scoring one of the first UFL franchise.

Right now the league is looking at Fan Demand as one of the barometers for which eight cities will be best for the league’s launch. Fans have a chance right now to reserve season tickets. The cities with the largest number of people interested in season tickets are more likely to attract interested owners too. Visit TicketReserve.com to cast your vote by reserving your seats.

You can vote for as little as $10 ($5 vote and $5 fee for TicketReserve). This is supposed to reserve you a season ticket. Reservations for better seats cost more, but it’s not clear if they count more in the poll. Also unclear is the final cost for the season tickets. So obviously the reservation is not exactly a strong obligation, although they attempt a strong message.

I’m not sure I like the $5 fee, but I don’t mind the $5 cost to cast a vote. It will help keep people from attempting to game the results.

Don’t forget that New York, Mexico City, and London are in the running for final cities too. They’re just using different criteria for those cities.

It’s nice to see some action from the United Football League. What do you think of the list?

Tags: ulf, united+football+league, football, franchise, vote, poll

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Cuban bills the UFL as a “different kind” of league, one with teams that would be owned not just by franchise owners, but also by the league itself, and by fans. Another backer of the project is Google executive Tim Armstrong, someone who has experience with IPOs. Essentially, if you wanted, you could buy some shares in your favorite team, and have a vote on team issues similar to the way stockholders of a company can vote on some company issues each calendar year. The number of votes you get of course corresponds to how many shares you own, so unless you put millions of dollars into it, your votes wouldn’t mean much. And if the league did flop like the XFL, you’d lose all of your money. But you could truthfully tell a girl at a bar that you are the part owner of a professional football team, so there is some upside. I will hand it to Cuban, Armstrong, and the others involved in this project- this concept of public ownership is a different approach, though it certainly doesn’t guarantee success.

Note sure about that vote thing, but the end result… success is not outside the realm of possibilities for the UFL. The key, as Jason says, is to build a fan base quickly. The stock offering thing is cool. Open training camps, local auditions, heck even RealityTV it. Blast it all for free on the web except the games, you have to pay to see those. There are a ton of ideas out there that will help grow a broad base of support before even the first snap.

Actually, someone may want to talk with the folks behind the Las Vegas Outlaws of the XFL. That was a very popular team with a wide local fan base. They obviously were doing something right. When I moved to the Vegas area in 2001 outlaw stuff was everywhere. When I left in 2004 you could still see Outlaw merchandise being worn around town despite the league being closed for 2 years. Come to think of it, this may be why Mark Cuban wants the Las Vegas team. (Read)

Technorati Tags: ufl, outlaws, football, united football league, sports, xfl

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