Remember Arena Football? As a kid, I stumbled upon a rare television broadcast of a game and found myself thrust into a completely different world: here were teams I’d never heard of, from cities I had only seen written on maps, playing a game I had no idea even existed. It was like discovering football all over again.
Because there was no team based in Atlanta, I was free to choose where my allegiance would lie. I chose my favorite team the way any future Marketing student would: I went for the team with the coolest logo.
Last week saw the debut of the new United Football League, a four-team American football league that will play games this October and November. The league’s plans for expansion are optimistic, and I do wish them well. But besides the glaring problem that the UFL season is scheduled against the NFL’s, the biggest problem the UFL faces is branding. Look at these logos:
Atrocious. Ugly. Unspeaking bad. Worst of all, they all look same. There is no differentiation – the color scheme is the same, and they all look as if they were designed by the same person (they probably were).
When you visit the UFL’s official store, getufl.com, you are greeted with this line: “Your town. Your team. Your league.” Nothing about any of these logos is friendly, or inviting, or causes me to claim the team as my own. The worst thing that I can say about them is that they are interchangeable and lacking in passion. And that is the last thing you want to be when your product is a barely-changed version of football that competes directly with the NFL.
The UFL has the right idea by playing up the “Your town. Your team” angle. When you are up against the pageantry and tradition of College Football and the fanatical fans of the NFL, there is really no other angle to play. But the UFL must do more to make sure the fans come in the first place, and a prerequisite is teams that these fans can relate to.
