First and Very Long for Bill Hambrecht

The longtime, Left Coast investment banker Bill Hambrecht has a dream. In it, you settle in on Friday night to watch the football playoffs between Mexico City and Las Vegas.

When Vegas wins, you make more than just a few bucks from your fantasy football league. You make a windfall in your brokerage account, too, because you own shares of the team. Maybe you even doubled your gain by shorting shares of Mexico City.

Okay, maybe that last part isn't part of Hambrecht's dream. But it could be, if his United Football League gets off the ground. Joe Nocera reports today on the New York Times website that Hambrecht is trying to start a professional football league to compete with the famously monopolistic National Football League.

He and his partner, Google executive Tim Armstrong, have already committed $2 million each. They've hired a C.E.O. and C.O.O., who both formerly worked for the National Basketball Association. And the first team owner to saddle up to the venture? None other the than dot-com billionaire and certifiable sports nut Mark Cuban.

Think Hambrecht's crazy? Keep reading.

U.F.L. teams (eight of them by the first pre-season games in August 2008) will be based in major television markets that the N.F.L has either avoided or abandoned, such as Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and Mexico City. A television contract might come from a cable network--Nocera suggests USA or TNT. Games will be played on Friday nights, when the N.F.L. is prohibited from broadcasting under a 1961 federal law that also gave the league an antitrust exemption.

Initially, owners will pony up $30 million for 50 percent of the team and the league will own the other half. But eventually, each team will go public and the shareholders will own one-third. Fanaticism could get a whole lot costlier.

It's worth noting here that Hambrecht's other dream (one that's come to life, albeit with moderate success) was to turn Wall Street on its head by taking companies public in Dutch auctions.

His firm, W.R. Hambrecht and Co., charges issuers a fraction of what major investment banks charge, and it prices public offerings through shareholder auctions.

It helped out on Google's initial public offering (which is how Hambrecht and Armstrong met), but its clients are predominantly lesser-known names.

Whatever their platform, it's safe to say the U.F.L. I.P.O.'s are a long way off. Finding seven other Mark Cubans won't be easy. Hambrecht expects team owners to be able to sustain losses for up to five years. Already, the famous oil investor and hedge fund manager Boone Pickens backed out of plans to buy a franchise.

It's an ambitious dream, though, and a fun one to contemplate with Hambrecht.

by Megan Barnett

Photograph of William Hambrecht