John Ourand of Sports Business Journal recently talked to Fox Sports CEO and Executive Producer Eric Shanks. They discussed a second season for the USFL and teams playing in home markets in 2023.
“The league will continue to have its league office in Birmingham, where it has played all of its games this season. But the USFL’s eight teams will play out of between two and four markets next season, meaning each market will house multiple teams.
Eventually, the plan is for all the teams to be in their home markets.
“We’re talking to those cities now in terms of how many we’re going to be in locally.”
The USFL plans to keep all eight teams in 2023 but expand in 2024.
“Next year, it will still be eight teams, but they will play in multiple cities, so we’ll get more home markets involved.”
Getting more home markets is an excellent sign for the league as none of the teams except for Birmingham had any home connection. The question is, will they play in hubs or do what the XFL plans and travel to home markets for games.
Shanks also told Ourand that the league plans on keeping the same schedule starting after the Masters and concluding the July 4th weekend.
ThatCommenter
June 27, 2022 at 12:50 pm
This is a lot of important info coming down the pipe- I’m surprised but delighted it’s happening so fast!
Once the hub cities are determined (2 or 4 cities) the league needs to start promoting hotel+game packages in conjunction with travel from home cities.
Help potential fans find travel deals to the hub cities so they go see a game to represent their teams. This would only need to happen for the next year until home cities are secured.
It’s pretty easy to find local hotels and restaurants that will sponsor or host events like a bus of fans coming into town for a USFL game. Then you leverage their ad networks!
TOTALLY PSYCHED FOR 2023 GO MAULERS!!!
Anthony DeLeon Jr.
June 27, 2022 at 2:36 pm
why would you not expand to larger markets like Los Angeles, San Francisco, Dallas, New York, and an whole lot of other places where fans will go to watch their home teams and brag about them?
Cheese
June 29, 2022 at 1:58 pm
I like to see my hometown St. Louis, MO get a USFL team regardless of the XFL STL BattleHawks (or new team name if any). It could be like Houston, TX getting 2 spring football teams.