The Secret to the NFL's Success: Artificial Scarcity

More Ball, Please

I'm an NFL fan. I've been to games in over a half dozen cities, haven't missed a game from my favorite laundry in decades, even when they were hopeless (and they've been hopeless far too often, really). I think I've even seen all of their preseason games, have owned multiple jerseys and other pieces of clothing, have been to the Hall of Fame, and ran my own fantasy league for the better part of a decade. (Live single round auction keeper league, if that helps to establish my nerd cred for you.) I blog about sports for fun, and have picked every game against the spread, badly, for years.

And like every NFL fan, I am spending an extraordinary amount of time, as a fan, not watching football.

Let's take the actual telecasts themselves. By the clock, a regulation game is sixty minutes long, which is spread out over a little more than three hours of actual time. This is where you might want to rail about the incessant commercial breaks, but it's more than that, of course. There are delays for instant replays, timeouts, penalties and halftime. Even if there were, somehow, no commercial breaks in a game, it would not finish in less than two hours, and we know that from, well, watching the occasional high school game. 

But let's go further. According to a number of studies, the actual time that is taken up by game action is somewhere in the range of 11 to 12 minutes. The rest of the time is taken up by huddles and dead air, which is why, if you are like me, you find yourself developing special levels of distaste for various announcing teams. With only 16 guaranteed games a year, that means a little more than three hours of actual game for the year, and even if your club goes to the Super Bowl, it's all of four hours. Compare this to MLB (over 50 hours of game play), the NBA (over 65) or NHL (over 82), and suddenly, the comparative ratings of the different leagues makes a lot more sense. Even if you don't want to go off the actual game time, just comparing the season lengths means that one NFL game is worth 5 NBA or NHL games, or 10 MLB games. Missing an NFL game is, to many fans, inconceivable. Missing an NBA, NHL or MLB game is, well, routine.

Would NFL ratings really go down if there was, say, not just more teams and a longer season, but an entire second league? Probably not, actually. The USFL, the last major rival pro league in the U.S., was shown on ESPN and ABC in the 1980s, and routinely pulled in better ratings than MLB in the spring season. College football does great ratings as well, especially when it's a playoff game. (And sure, Arena Football and the Canadian league also exists and don't rival the ratings, but the rules are different and the teams might not be local. Different world. There's even a women's league that dresses the players in, well, best not discussed.)

If pro football were a true marketplace, rather than an artificial monopoly, there would be more than one league, in more than one season. It would be more like, well, what the rest of the world calls football, with the best teams from lesser leagues moving up, and the worst teams moving down. There wouldn't be eight months a year where fans of the sport watch other sports, all the while more or less wishing they were watching football, or watching meta football events like the draft, scouting combine, or free agent signings. (NFL fans would talk about how there wouldn't be enough quarterbacks to make for watchable games, but that's a red herring. What makes bad QB play difficult to watch is the gulf between the best and the worst, which is why every non-NFL football fan is fine with their game.)

No one I know is clamoring for NFL2, ready for a second fantasy league, or would immediately flip their team allegiance for new laundry in new locations. But if the rules were the same, and franchises were promoted or relegated, they would care very, very quickly... and we'd also end the blackmail game that franchises can play against local governments for stadium concessions. 

It will probably never happen; too many NFL owners are way too happy with the way things are, and the league isn't exactly hurting for money. But I do know this: markets that profit from artificial scarcity do not get to enjoy that scarcity forever. Especially when there's this much money at stake, and television networks that are desperate for live programming that pulls in big ratings.

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Advertisers Need To Know More About Us

Forever In My Feed

Six weeks ago, my eldest was just starting her sophomore year at high school. (She's 15, and don't worry -- this is actually about marketing and advertising.) We live a little less than two miles from her school, and there is no convenient bus or mass transit option. Historically, my wife would provide taxi service, but she's now got a part-time job, so my eldest is scrambling to figure out a way home for a few days every week. Walking and biking are options, and so is just staying at the school late at extra-curricular activities, but that's up to three hours after the final class where she's just hanging out. This will all stop being a problem, perhaps, when she's driving and we can think about getting her a car, but for now, it's a bit of a strain. Her books are heavy, and she's fashionable enough to not want to be sweaty at class on a bike or from taking a half hour hike, maybe alone.

Oh a whim, I started to poke around the Web to see if there might be another transportation option. That's when I saw the hoverboard. You have probably seen them on the news or YouTube. They are kind of like a Segway without a podium, and there's a picture of one at the top of this column. Some go up to 10 mph and can operate for up to an hour, so hey -- maybe an option. It looked small enough to maybe fit in her locker. I read some reviews, went to a few sites to price options.

Then I showed it to her, and got the kind of side eye and shade that only a fashionable 15 year old can throw. Oh well. Transaction averted; not the first time that Dad's Idea got shot down. No worries.

Anyone that has thought about buying something on the Web, and wound up not doing it, knows what happens next. The hoverboard has been in my banner ads ever since, with an ever-changing number of prices and shipping options, from an ever-changing number of vendors.
I could, of course, opt out of these banners by clicking on the AdChoices logos, or maybe clearing my cookies, and so on. I am, of course, not going to do this, because no one in the world ever has done that, because honestly, who has the time? Besides, if the hoverboard was not in my ads, it would just be something else.

Now, some see this kind of thing as proof of Advertiser Malfeasance, or an invasion of privacy, or just one more instance of modern life going to hell in a handbasket. (Have you ever noticed that handbaskets are the only carrying containers for trips to the netherworld? No one's going to hell in a backpack. But I digress.)

I see things a little differently. I see an advertising medium that, far from getting too much information on the lives of individuals, just isn't getting enough. In my case, that the hoverboard is a no sale.

In a few more months, I'll shop for some other stuff as part of my Q4 gift giving. My retargeting banners will reset to whatever new thing comes into my life without a purchase. But offline, I'll still be watching football games... and unless there is Congressional action or some spectacular bit of public relations misery, I will be seeing ads for daily fantasy leagues, auto insurance, mobile phones and services, trucks and fast food.

I don't play daily fantasy leagues, and never will. My wife works for an insurance company, so I'm out of market there, thanks to her employee discount. I got my phone four months ago, and won't replace it for another 18 months at least. I've never bought a truck, and never will. I don't do fast food. There's no way to opt out of any of those ads. (And honestly, I think I'd pay money to not see any more daily fantasy league ads. I also don't think I'd be alone in making that purchase.)

Eventually, online advertising will grow up and consolidate targeting files, because there's money in better targeting, and much of the infrastructure is already in place, especially with advertising being much more tied to purchase. Much later, targeting will also occur offline, and I'll stop seeing all of those lovely ads that are so irrelevant to my life.

There's simply too much money in doing things smarter, and life for consumers will also get better. Smarter will happen, as soon as we move past this incomplete amount of information. And just because we're used to dumb ads in non-digital mediums, that doesn't make them less dumb.

(Oh, and as for what my kid wound up doing, rather than pioneering a new transportation fad? She's now pretty much hanging out at her best friend's house after school, who lives pretty close by. And giving me side eye for new and better things.)

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Never Give A Sucker An Even Panacea

Would I sell to you?

So as the continuing fallout from the Volkswagen engineering fraud continues to hit the news, there's one point that continues to hit home for me.

Honestly, how did so many people get fooled by this in the first place?

I drive a hybrid hatchback, in that I'm something of a hobbit (honestly, I've met middle schoolers that are taller and heavier than me), and clean tech appeals to me in a major way. I recycle, walk, run, bike, turn off lights and so on, and so on. For years, my family lived without a clothes dryer, and just used lines and racks. I'm not as far along as we might be one day -- no solar panels on the roof, and we don't compost -- but I do my part.

It's not as easy as not doing your part. You can, and will, save time by using a dryer, dumping everything in the same trash can, driving everywhere, etc. You might save a few bucks as well, but you'll have to take a little sacrifice, from time to time. You know, like a grown up.

I like my hybrid a lot, but it has tradeoffs, mostly from torque. If I need exceptional giddy up, I'm going to pay for it with poor mileage, and I better turn off the air conditioning and the econo settings to get it done. So I just don't drive the car the way I used to drive other cars, and I drive proactively to not put myself in those situations. I still drive at or faster than the traffic around me, but with much less in the way of sudden acceleration. I used to own a two-door sports car with a stick shift, and in terms of being fun to drive, there's no comparison; that ride was a hoot. I get 18 miles per gallon more with the hybrid, and accept a little less fun in my life for the payoff. I didn't have the means or interest in paying a lot more for a Tesla, or the tech chops to make my own electric supercar. So I compromised with my hybrid.

Volkswagen, with the promised clean diesel (never mind the idea of a fossil fuel having clean slapped in front of it) offered, and its buyers believed, in a fraudulent tradeoff. You could still be green, have the same get up and go, and not have to pay for the bleeding edge Tesla. All of the benefit, none of the pain. Automotive panacea.

Not very surprisingly, it was a lie. Just like, well, just about every panacea ever sold. Drugs, even life-saving ones, have side effects. Patriotism, faith, fitness, all great virtues in moderation, but all can be taken too far, or have unforeseen consequences. Those solar panels might not be made under the best working conditions, or be as reliable or potent as other sources, at leas for a while. Adult life is filled with choosing the lesser of two evils, from going to the doctor or dentist for preventive care to voting to buying insurance. The only people who get to believe in panaceas are kids, and they get away from it soon enough.

So while I have sympathy for the defrauded VW owners, who are suddenly driving cars that are worth a lot less than they were before, and feel like they've been taking advantage of...

Well, that sympathy is not total, because on some level, you had to know better, didn't you?

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