Versus inks deal with United Football League…Is ESPN worried?

Posted on March 11th, 2009. Written by Emmett Jones.

Let the David, albeit a very large David, and Goliath battle continue.

The Comcast owned sports network, Versus, has inked a deal with the newly formed United Football League.  The league which uses the tag line “Where future stars come to play”, will initially have teams in Las Vegas, New York, Orlando, and San Francisco and will consist mainly of players who were not chosen in the NFL draft.  The inaugural season will kick off on  October 8, 2009.  And where can you go to catch all of the UFL action?  Versus Network, of course!  The network, which I will further dub as “the little network that could”, will be showing all of the games in HD quality.  While the terms of the deal were not disclosed, there is some more information from the San Francisco Business Times,

The United Football League said the Versus network will air live weekly games beginning Oct. 8 until the championship game scheduled Thanksgiving weekend.

Each telecast will be approximately three hours and all games will be available in high definition, Versus said.

The UFL will be run as a single-entity business with the league owning all the teams. Teams will represent Las Vegas, New York, Orlando and San Francisco. There are also plans to play games in Hartford and Los Angeles.

League officials said they are in final negotiations with various stadiums.

Interesting developments.  And for those thinking that this is the XFL all over again, and that some semi-crazed, overly zealous, incredibly wealthy sports owner is backing this league, ala Vince McMahon, let me just tell you right now that you are sadly mistaken.  Did I mention that Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban is involved?  Um…yeah.

All jokes aside though, the bigger news is that this seems to be another, in a small round of salvos shot by Comcast/Versus at the “World-Wide Leader of Sports”, ESPN.  Versus has already acquired, and re-upped with the NHL to have exclusive television rights through the 2010-11 season.  And now, they’ve acquired exclusive television rights to an upstart football league which may not look like much (they even had to cut the number of clubs, due to the current recession), but they already have four reputable coaches in place, Dennis Green, Jim Fassell, Jim Haslett, and Ted Cotrell, and rumor has it that they may be attempting to sway the vote/placement of prison fantasy football league all star, Michael Vick.  This all continues to seemingly be Comcast’s way of slowly working their way into hearts and homes of America.  Although Versus is still missing one of the major sports; right now it seems to be content with the B-list, who’s to say that it won’t be ready to seriously challenge ESPN when the NBA TV rights are available again in 2015?  Or maybe when the NFL’s deals with CBS and FOX expire after the 2011 season?  The point is that it appears that Comcast/Versus is no longer willing to sit back on its laurels and let ESPN monopolize the sports coverage and the sports dollars.  Lets see how long it takes before ESPN is threatened by their movement.

San Francisco Business Times — United Football League inks TV deal

Sports Business Digest — The NHL extends contract with Versus…A good decision?

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