Earlier this week, Donald made a post in a FFOC thread saying that he felt fantasy football, and the FFOC in particular, can gain country wide publicity and eventually take off similar to the way texas hold’em did a few years ago. The WSOP main event grew exponentially in both participants and prize money once it hit ESPN's air waves. Could the same thing happen to the FFOC? Poker is boring to watch, yet it was able to translate to tv. Why not fantasy football?
I would definitely argue that “yes, it can”. Why can’t you get good ratings by having a weekly show dedicated to the FFOC? In the summer months, you can televise some drafts. During the season, you can interview owners on why they made certain lineup decisions as well as have your weekly start ‘em/ sit ‘em segments. Then on game day, you can show the live scoring with owner reactions while watching the games.
Some say this is too boring to attract viewers. What exactly is poker? It’s a long, boring game of cards, which involved a lot of thinking. How do they get good tv ratings? Who would watch poker besides poker junkies? I’m sure 4 years ago when ESPN talked about televising poker, all these questions came up and look how good that turned out. There are plenty of ways to edit a fantasy football league in order to get the general public interested in watching it on tv each week. After all, this is the era of reality tv and people will watch anything!
Here are my ideas for making a weekly reality show on the FFOC which can be aired on the NFL network or ESPN2 and I guarantee it’s ratings will be just as good as the WSOP or any other sports reality show that clutters the tv networks.
1> Offer a special FFOC league which costs MORE than the normal league. This league will be the feature league for the show. The draft will be televised. Owners will have weekly “confessionals” as to who they are starting and why. They will need to be accessible to be on camera during the games on Sunday/Monday. It would probably help if the league consisted of people who lived within an hour of each other for filming purposes. It might even help to have all the owners watch the games together. It may be better to charge the same price, but take audition tapes/resumes so you get a league of colorful owners who would make for good television
2> Hire a good looking guy and girl to co-host the show. They obviously should know their football, unlike Tony Kornheiser.
3> In Episode 1, have the co-hosts introduce the basics of fantasy football, the FFOC scoring system, and an introduction to the 10 owners in the feature league. This would also be a good time to plug the FFOC and let viewers know where they can sign up for the contest.
4> Episode 2 will be the draft. I would show the first 2 or 3 rounds in full, and have the co-hosts comment on the picks, especially ones that are off the board. You will also need a way for other owners to comment on the selections by other owners as well as comments on who they plan on taking or who they can’t decide on. You would obviously want to keep this as low budget as possible, so I would have the draft done online as all league drafts are. Put each owner in a separate room with a mic and camera on them, outside the range of other owners. Whether you film them at their homes while they draft, or have a location where you can set the owners up at computers in different rooms. With good editing as well as colorful owners, I think you could make a draft exciting tv. Between the co-hosts comments, the owners comments about other picks, and the owner reactions when they get the player they want or when a player they want gets taken right ahead of them….you could get a very entertaining show, even for the viewer who doesn’t play fantasy football.
5> Episodes 3-11 will be dedicated to each week of the FFOC regular season. The first segment will be clips of the owners making out their lineups and any tough decisions they have. The co-hosts can handicap each match-up and predict who will win. Then the middle segment will be dedicated to the games themselves. Show owner reactions when their players score, get stuffed, get hurt…. The last segment will be the aftermath. Owners saying woulda coulda shoulda. Maybe someone will think they have a million dollar team while another owner is upset they drafted so poorly. The first segment could also include the free agent bidding for the week and reaction to the results.
6> After the 9 week regular season, you’ll have the league championship episode. This episode will be similar to the regular season weeks, only you concentrate on the league’s only match up. Allow owners to talk trash. Have each owner and the co-hosts analyze the match-up and make predictions. It would be great to have both owners in the same room watching all the games to get better reaction and let them feed off each other.
7> Once a league champion is declared, you can have 1 or more episodes following the Las Vegas bracket. Since viewers will be connected with this league winner, you can have his/her reaction each week until they are eliminated. You can combine multiple weeks into one episode for the Vegas bracket results
8> Assuming the feature league champ doesn’t make it to Vegas, you can somehow segway from that owner’s run at a million to the final 15 in Vegas. Whether you dedicate an entire show to the final 15 in Vegas or just show highlights and the trophy ceremony as part of the final episode depends on how much you want to hype the FFOC.
Because so many people play fantasy football around the country, I definitely think an FFOC reality show could work. I’m not a producer and don’t deal with ratings, but you would have to think that ESPN2 would get more interest in this than showing the WSOP final episode for the 20th time or drag racing.
The show itself would work. The hardest part would be determining the league to follow. I think you have to take applications for the feature league starting in May. The owners must agree to be televised and available each week to watch the games and get filmed doing so. It would help if the owners lived in the same general area, but I suppose it could work if you had a separate camera crew in each owner’s home, but that would probably be more costly.
Another option would be to have a former NFL great analyze the match-ups each week and offer advice to owners as to who they think should start. Once again, this could add to the cost, but it may also add viewers who want to see Jerry Rice, John Elway, and other former greats.
Stan and Seth…I know you just wanted to make it through the first season and the most important thing is to have the software working as well as possible so the contest is a success. However, the next step would be to pitch this reality show to ESPN and/or the NFL Network as a form of advertising for your contest. With the right owners, I think this could be a good ratings show. It will never turn into American Idol, but I think you’d be able to draw some average Joe’s who never played fantasy football in their life. It could also help the show if one owner was a rookie who has never played. It could make for some funny comments when they pick Brett Favre in the first round or think that Shaun Alexander is still a valuable player.
What do the readers think? Can this be a success? What could be added to my suggestions in order to increase general interest in the show? I guess you could make it a celebrity league? Have them pay their own money to enter. That would be very funny viewing as I’m sure their knowledge isn’t nearly what many roto-geeks have. The more I think about it, the show should definitely be a celebrity league. You can have some former athletes, musicians and actors/actresses with name recognition. Maybe Jerry could round up 9 of his former teammates and his league could be the one featured? I think this is a great idea and someone with connections should run with it.
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