NEW YORK -- Dick Ebersol, chairman of NBC Sports, sounded pumped in a Tuesday conference call with reporters about the XFL, boasting that 70% of the advertising time for the first 10 weeks of the rookie football league's season is sold out -- despite a depressed climate along Madison Avenue.
"The promotional folks from NBC and the World Wrestling Federation have done a sensational job of spreading the word about the league," Ebersol said.
NBC and the WWF co-own the XFL, which plays its first games this weekend.
As a result of the massive campaign, he said, all of the tickets for the Saturday game between the visiting New York/New Jersey Hitmen and home team the Las Vegas Outlaws are sold out. NBC is airing the game in primetime.
Ebersol said the XFL's goal for the opening weekend was to average about 20,000 tickets sold -- a figure already exceeded in San Francisco; Orlando, Fla.; and Birmingham, Ala.
Guaranteed 10 rating
The advertising operation, overseen by Vince McMahon's WWF, is selling commercial time across the weekly national-network XFL telecasts (in addition to NBC on Saturday night, UPN has a Sunday night game and TNN a Sunday afternoon contest). The XFL is reportedly offering a guaranteed 10 rating for a combination of the three. Advertisers on board include Budweiser, the U.S. Army and B.P. Amoco's Castrol.
Ebersol said the XFL has a better chance of surviving than previous pro football leagues like the USFL because "all of our player salaries are set by the league. We don't permit one owner to blow a fortune on one marquee player." Each player pockets $4,500 for each of the 10 regular season games. Players who make the postseason collect a bonus of $10,000 apiece, and the winners of the championship split a $1 million purse.
And financially, NBC is not risking that much, Ebersol said, because its $55 million expenditure for the first two years of the XFL is far less than the $550 million a year it would've had to pony up to get the rights to National Football League Sunday games.
NBC also gets potentially interesting live programming Saturday night, a real plus because of the collapse of Saturday network ratings.
"No one has managed to get a rating on Saturday night since 'Golden Girls,' " Ebersol said.
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