Faith Based Amusement Parks

Few things go as well together as religion and theme park right? Weekend and week-long get away spots are part of the fabric of America. So it makes since that faith-based groups (or groups looking to exploit people's faith) would open their version of a park.

Here are a few of my favorite. I chose to only look at stationary parks. There are faith-based traveling carnivals that do things like setup at Christian rock music festivals. I did not include faith-based park attractions. Having a chapel on campus was once standard in small amusement parks partly because it made hosting weddings easier. I also didn't include faith-based tourist attractions like the Creation Museum with the new Ark Encounter in Petersburg, Kentucky.

Okay here we go, in no particular order:

Holy Land USA
http://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/51714

A park in Waterbury, Connecticut that replicates the Holy Land. What is interesting to me about this park is there have been several attempts to reopen it since it closed in 1984.

Holy Land Experience
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Land_Experience

Have you been watching the Trinity Broadcasting Network and thought that this wonderful programming would be the perfect bases for an amusement park? If so the HLE is for you. Owned and Operated by Trinity Broadcasting Network in Orlando, Florida and intended to be a faith based alternative to those roller coaster heavy parks.

If HLE is your kind of thing that's cool. I just can't imagine being a kid and having my parents tell me “We are going to Orlando on vacation! We are going to an amusement park!” and instead of riding a roller coaster I end up watching a simulation of an execution in an artificial desert.  

Golgotha Fun Park
http://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/3342

Located in tourism rich Cave City, Kentucky, this was a faith-based mini-golf course. The park is closed and gone but I really have to wonder if anyone thought through the fact they were naming the park after an execution site.

Wild West World 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_West_World

A short-lived theme park without a faith-based theme. The park was open for about 2 months but was home of a church for a bit longer than that. It is included on the list because nearly $800,000 of the original investment was provided mainly by a local church.

Heritage USA
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritage_USA

The only park on this trip I've been to. I have actually been there both before and after it closed.

The park was founded by Jim and Tammy Bakker outside of Charlotte, NC in Fort Mill. At its height it claimed to be the country's most popular tourist attraction next to Disney places. The park featured a large water part, state of the art for its time. The park was about 3 miles for Carowinds. Interesting Carowinds did not expand into the water park biz until after Heritage USA closed for good.

The park started its declide when Jim Bakker had his legal trouble and ended up sitting in a jail cell. Jerry Falwell took over Jim Bakker's empire for a while (yes the one that started Liberty University) which led to this happening at the park's big slide:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHVBYR9RPyM

Jerry Falwell was not able to manage Jim Bakker's massive empire and the park when through several ownership structures. There are still groups today trying to bring it back. Mostly the park has sit and decayed. It is now a common spot for urban explorers.

NFL Training Camp Game

The NFL Draft is tonight and the selection of players out of college will see more viewers than nearly every baseball, basketball, soccer, and hockey game in this country this year. The NFL does a great job making themselves the center of the sports world and with multiple national sports networks such as NBC Sports and Fox Sports One (don't for get the big E dogz) the NFL can't produce enough content to package and sell for multi-million dollar deals.

So here's idea for the next broadcasting package: start broadcasting training camp inter-squad scrimmages. College's have been doing this for years. It's call the Spring game. Some of them draw huge crowds, many are nationally televised. Some of them, like the one I recently attended at my favorite school Appalachian State, utilize an Offense vs Defense model where scoring is set up in a Fantasy Football style scoring system like the following:

Offense:
6-touchdown
3-field goal
2-Run of 15+ yards
2-pass of 20+ yards
1-First down
1-PAT

Defense
6-Touchdown
5-Turnover
3-three-and-out
3-Blocked kick
2-Any stopped drive that isn't a three-and-out
2-2-pt conversion after defensive TD
1-PAT after defensive TD

Post the scores on the bottom of the TV screen for viewers, post the estimated numbers of plays left. Advertise it as a way to scout your Fantasy Football team. The NFL could package the scrimmages these national sports-stations desperate for content and would love a piece of the NFL pie. They would be out of the way enough that causal NFL fans can ignore them(maybe they will be on ESPN8) but easy enough to get a hold of that the die-hards could consume hours and hours of more NFL content.

People would watch it. Networks would pay mad money to get the rights. Teams are already doing Scrimmages such as these. This seems like a no brainier.

If you don't think people would watch practices on TV then go back to the golden days of boxing. In the early days of television there were times when stations would broadcast nightly practice of the heavyweight champion preparing for his next big fight. People ate it up! Ali use to travel the country selling out large arena for practices. Yes Were Talking about Practice!

Top 5 Favorite Star Trek Fan Shows

I'm back!

It is the holiday season and probably at some time over the holiday season you are going to curl up of the couch and stream some TV shows. I wanted to draw your attention to some unbelievable online shows that fly under the radar but are totally worth your time. For those Sci Fi fans out there here is my list of the top 5 Star Trek fan shows worth taking the time to see. All of these have production qualities fit for being on TV and all of these you can watch for free on your computer. I've posted the like for their youtube pages but they can be found in other places on the internet and each has its own webpage with additional content.

1- Star Trek Phase II

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5h4ur_aSq8N5yx46vUjnNbsaQ74kcBLV

If you watch one fan film in your entire life make it Star Trek Phase II “World Enough in Time”. The production quality, the fact that the set is identical to the original blue-print, the vast number of people that work on the show that worked on the original, makes this show an unbelievable experience and honestly better than the original Star Trek.

2- Star Trek: Of Gods and Men Movie
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFqAME7dx58

A film containing so many people important to the Star Trek universe you loose count after 3 minutes. This film looks and feels like something Paramount would make. The new Star Trek movies may have borrowed some of the time travel ideas from it too.

3- Star Trek Continues

http://www.youtube.com/user/StarTrekContinues/videos

Great fan film featuring plenty of celebrities. The sets aren't quite as good as Phase II but still pretty impressive.

4- Starship Farragut

http://www.youtube.com/user/NEOfxVideos/videos

Good set design and good stories. Includes a cartoon series similar to the old Star Trek cartoon.

5- Star Trek: Intrepid

http://www.youtube.com/user/StarShipIntrepid/videos

A more Scottish take on Star Trek. The production quality is good and the stories are good.

Honorable Mention: Star Trek Hidden Frontier

http://www.youtube.com/user/HiddenFrontier

Producing over 50 original episodes and includes some unbelievable graphical modeling.The acting at times is not the best, this one really is a fan production, and it uses a lot of green screen.

Classic football video game anyone?

If you have not hear. Due to a recent lawsuit EA sports has stopped development of its next NCAA College football game. You can learn about it here:

http://kotaku.com/a-blindside-hit-takes-down-an-ncaa-football-team-rallyi-1429336606/@tcraggs22

http://kotaku.com/no-college-football-video-game-next-year-says-ea-sport-1404530680

So to all of you wonderful football video game programmers out there now looking for work consider this: Ironman Football! A classic football game similar to this failed attempt at a football game for the PS1:

http://www.playstationmuseum.com/games/CGIMAN/

It today's world of digital download and  indy games game designers going into business for themselves and making their own football game would be pretty cool. A true throwback game would be fun too. It could include classic teams like

Rochester Jeffersons

Bloomfield Rams

Goodyear Silents (yes an all deaf football team)

Even teams like:

Pottstown Firebirds

Chambersburg Cardinals

More than likely no football video game designer will ever see my idea but if you know of any, pass this idea along.

What went wrong with the XFL?

Do you remember the good ole XFL? If not go ahead and read the Wikipedia page:

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XFL

The XFL was yet another failed league for developmental football. It had some good ideas and a good deal of money but failed after 1 season.

The XFL had some good ideas: The creative things on the players backs, the way you could get into the huddle and go into the locker room, it had players being interview on the side lines during games, the extensive amount of pyrotechnics helped make games seem special.  But ultimately the league failed. Here are some of my thoughts on why the XFL was such a failure:

-the XFL advertised wild play and loose rules. The truth is that the rules were different than that of the NFL but nearly all of the rule changes were taken from other professional league like the CFL or the old USFL.  This marketing mistake turned off a massive part of its potential fan base.  The football/sport fan didn’t want to watch it because it seemed too wild and crazy. The wrestling fan gave it a try and then discovered that it really wasn’t wild and crazy like pro wrestling at all.

-The league felt they couldn’t make big enough stars out of their football players to draw crowd. The players in the XFL were typically portrayed as regular Joes trying to keep their dream of playing football alive. With NFL Europe closing up shop and the XFL really playing better than the CFL and arena football the XFL was able to cherry pick the top stars from three of these leagues. Virtually all of the players had been star players in college and a good number of players had NFL connects.  The XFL could have marketed their players. I think people would have come out to see Tommy Maddox. When arena football got on NBC they were able to develop their own stars. Instead of developing star players the XFL placed more attention on how there were pro wrestlers at the games and there were firework (which are cool) and there are cheerleaders (which were NOT family friendly). The league was open about how the cheerleaders, which kept away a lot of families, were bigger stars than the football players.

-The league spent too much time trying to market the league and not market the teams. All of the fields in the XFL looked exactly the same. No field had a team emblem on them. The team color skims seed to run together. People remember the crazy XFL but you have to be a real fan to remember even 3 team names.  The teams all seemed the same and run together. I remember wanting games and not even know which team was the home team. This hurts your ticket sells and the WWF should have known that ticket sells are your bread and butter.

-The league was put in prime time too soon. This is a tough point to make because NBC contributed a lot of money to the league to put it on the air. Without NBC money the league probably never would have had a game. But if the XFL had been this edgy thing on cable that people heard about but a lot of people had not seen (you know like what arena football did) and it spent a few years on cable and after a few season came to NBC it would have been much more successful. Starting out right out of the gate on 3 networks (2 of which were on broadcast TV) with a league were the teams all seemed to blend together and where some of the football was really bad really over saturated the market. You can get away with bad football during the off season on cable. Particularly if it is so bad it is good football like people love to watch the ‘blooper’ reels of the USFL on youtube(USFL bloopers).  Being on 3 networks was a receipt for TERRABLE TV ratings.

Ultimately the XFL’s legacy is it helped a list of players make it to the NFL and it opened the door for the AFL to get on NBC in 2003 (also part of the legacy is that VinnyMac can fail at something). The AFL a football alternative with faster action and higher scoring and all of those things the XFL promised but didn’t deliver on.  

Major trends in Minor League Sports

The success of failure of minor league sports comes down to funding 3 line items:

1

11 -      Cost of players

22 -      Cost of travel

33 -      Cost of venue

Can you develop a marketing plan where as a league or as a team able to balance these 3 line items with revenue form investors, sponsorships, ticket sells, concessions, merchandise, TV revenue (unlikely for minor league sports), est.

Arena Football League (AFL)

The AFL is hands down the most successful minor league system for professional football in the history of the United States. Around since 1987 arena football was a creative idea executed smartly although modestly over an extended period.

The AFL was the brain child of not big investors but of Jim Foster. Jim played college football at the University of Iowa. Following graduation he played for and eventually helped run different minor league football teams. An example of this is the Newton Nite Hawks (extra credit if you have any idea were Newton is) who Jim helped organize an international tour of Europe (video of this tour can be found on youtube and is kind of fun to see).

Jim understood the difficulties of minor league football. A minor league team would be luck to draw 6,000 fans. For that size large stadiums like those used by colleges and the NFL are out of the question. Minor league teams ended up mostly playing in high school football stadiums. The problem with that is high school football stadiums have a negative stigma, your are limited to the kind of promotions you can do, you can’t serve beer or alcohol which is were minor league baseball and hockey makes its money, and high school stadiums are often poorly maintained.

There is also a lot of expense connected to keeping a full roster (36 guys or more) on a football team lucky to draw 6,000 fans.

Jim saw the success indoor soccer was having during the 80s and had a revolutionary idea. He took the game of football and smushed it down to fit in a hockey rink. That way games could be played in indoor arenas around the country. 6,000 fans at a 60,000 seat NFL stadium look pitiful but 6,000 fans at a hockey arena looks like a happin time!  Since games were done in arenas you could sell beer and do crazy promotions and venues were used for big name concerts and other sporting events so there was no stigma.

Instead of playing 11 per side football the league played 8 per side and had an “iron man rule” where 6 players had to play both offense and defense. This reduced the roster size down to only 20 players per team making pay-roll a lot easier to get.

Jim Foster did a good job in the early days securing sponsorships and television deals and eventually big name investors.

In the early days many of the players were former DII college players and the league had a reputation of being a place players go when their careers weren’t going to go anywhere else. Slowly over time the caliber of players grew and there are along list of NFL players that used the AFL as a stepping stone.

So the league did a good job managing both personal expectation and fan expectation and a good job managing their pay-roll.

The main problem Arena Football has had is being accepted as “real” football. In the early days the game was very gimmicky this was okay because the league was trying to get noticed. When the league landed a national TV contract with NBC the game needed to become more mainstream and more like outdoor football. The ball size was too small, the iron-man rule became out-dated, the defense was too restricted, there was no running game, the nets at the end of the end zones seemed silly, the lack of out-of-bounds, the regular flying of players into the crowd, the amount of video game like crazy plays, All of these things kept the game from being accepted by the mainstream football fan and all of these issues could have been addressed easily.

Because of this Arena Football eventually filed for bankruptcy. The league is still around today. They currently have a pretty nice TV deal with CBS Sports and teams in several major markets. The AFL is still the best option for American football players to play professionally without going to Canada.