Genius Hour Blog 2:

12 days later I would like to report significant process. The Forbes article was extremely helpful and helped solidify what my requirements will be for the progress. I have completed many of the more rudimentary elements and the business plan has truly helped me develop my idea further.  Including the Company Overview, Market Size and Competitive advantages, so I’ll spend this blog post detailing the specific parts.

Company Overview + Executive Summary

 The purpose of the company overview is to provide a brief history of the company. In this section. In this section I described. This was to iron out the very basics of my project and provide the framework. An important piece of advice I found was to think of your executive summary as an “elevator pitch”. Where it’s as if you were in an elevator with someone and only had a limited amount of time to explain the concept of your business, what would you tell them? Some of the primary points that I had went over were:

• Athletes would not be placed under restrictions the NCAA currently holds, such as limited practice time and the inability to profit off of their own name
• Initial structure would be six teams, with a total of ten games and playoffs consisting of four teams
• It would occur during the spring and summer so as not to directly compete with more established leagues for viewership
• It would be hosted in cities with larger markets that don’t already include an NFL team

Market Size: The market size took a lot of research to compile. As there isn’t one league that closely resembles the one I am planning for. To anticipate the demographics of my market, the NFL has the most accurate demographics available to the public, and a very large sample size. The viewership of the NFL was insane, as expected, 200 million people used some or all of those 287 million TVs to watch football

This was a break down of the NFL’s current demographics, per Nielsen tracking:

 

Some of my takeaways here were:

• More males than females
• Surprising amount of computer use
• I was also surprised by the lack of viewership in the south, which could be because they follow college football more
• Maybe this league could more west-centered, as that seems to be where viewership is lowest

 

I also compiled research on TV deals of established organizations with similarities. The Canadian Football League (CFL)  has a deal worth approximately 150 million dollars over 5 years. The Big East basketball conference has a deal with fox sports 1 of 500 million over 12 years. The ACC ESPN deal is worth approximately 155 million annually for 5 years. However, these numbers are significantly greater than the league I am proposed, considering the structure of our league consists of significantly less games. I will be doing estimates and projections over the next two weeks.

Competitive advantages:

The competitive advantages are what will set this league apart from the NFL, CFL and NCAA. The advantages offered in our league would ever to be particularly enticing to lure players away from the already established NCAA. The most obvious advantage would be that the players would not have to be subjected to the strict rules of the NCAA and that they would receive a salary and be able to profit off of their league. We could also offer an online program for players so they wouldn’t be completely giving up their education, however we expect the majority of players in this league to have NFL futures. This league could offer be on the forefront of safety, as most of the players in the league will just be a few years removed from high school and will still have developing bodies.

These products are all highly acclaimed for their safety and could be instituted throughout the league:

• RidellSpeedFlex, Riddell 360, Riddell Revolution Speed
• SchuttAiR XP Pro VTD, Schutt Vengeance VTD
  
• XenithEPIC, X2, X2E

And the ten game schedule isn’t as rigorous and therefore will put more emphasis on practice and developing skills and will have players at less of a risk for injury.

The league could also offering interesting rule changes to keep fans interested. Such as field goals <20 yards are 2 points and >45 yards are 4 points. Hopefully the NFL could see changes implemented in these leagues and then form a relationship through that, but no changes would be extremely drastic or permanent.

Until Next Time:

After completing the rudimentary descriptions and ironing out the details, the next step will be the finances. This will involve a better understanding of finances and a significant amount of research. This section is described as the marketing plan and will include the products and services to be offered, the pricing, and the promotion and distribution plan.