Hambrecht, Google exec to form rival to NFL: report

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Well-known investment banker Bill Hambrecht and Google Inc. executive Tim Armstrong plan to launch a competitor to the National Football League next summer, The New York Times reported on Wednesday.

The league -- to be named the United Football League -- already boasts billionaire Mark Cuban, who owns the National Basketball Association's Dallas team, among its owners, the paper said.

Hambrecht, Google and Cuban were not immediately available for comment.

The plan is for eight teams to begin preseason games in August 2008, according to the paper. The UFL would be the latest in a series of leagues to compete with the NFL since the 1970s, including the World Football League, the United States Football League and most recently the XFL -- all of which failed.

An NFL spokesman declined to comment.

David Carter, executive director of the USC Sports Business Institute, said the effort should not be dismissed, but it will be an uphill battle to establish the new league.

"The NFL is clearly so very powerful that they've done a fantastic job of being able to fend off upstart leagues by ensuring that there are never enough open or underserviced markets available to make a start-up league successful," he said.

"On the surface, if history tells us anything, it can't possibly work," Carter added. "But -- this is going to sound like Yogi Berra -- history was a long time ago and now the landscape has changed. The right people properly capitalized should never be taken for granted."

Success for the UFL may not mean long-term existence as a league, but a place for some of its teams as expansion members in the NFL, Carter said.

Hambrecht, the founder of WR Hambrecht + Co., and Armstrong have each pledged $2 million, the paper said.

The plan is to establish teams in markets where the NFL does not have one, including Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Mexico City, according to the paper. Cuban is considering taking the Las Vegas franchise.

Each owner will put up $30 million for an initial half-interest in a team, with the league owning the other half, the paper said. The UFL will eventually sell shares to the public so that the league, owner and fan each own a third of each team.

Hambrecht told the paper he believes the initial public offering would raise, on average, another $60 million per team, giving each about $90 million in working capital.

He expects any potential owners to be wealthy and able to absorb losses for up to five years, and the new league is open to a smaller television deal with a cable networks such as USA, TNT or Comcast's Versus, according to the paper.

The story said the UFL could easily fall apart, pointing out that one high-profile investor, T. Boone Pickens who had expressed early interest, has already backed out.

But the 79-year old Pickens, known for his savvy bets on oil and other commodities, pulled out for personal reasons and not because he thinks the project is doomed, his spokesman Jay Rosser said.

"He thinks it has market potential," Rosser said. "At the end of the day, however, Boone concluded he just cannot take on any more football games, and that he has a full slate of Oklahoma State University (OSU) games to attend." Pickens earned a geology degree from OSU.

(Additional reporting by Michael Flaherty and Sinead Carew in New York, and Svea Herbst-Bayliss in Boston)