Around the globe, football is far and away the world’s most dominant and popular sport. In the United States, though, it’s known as soccer, and American football (that oddly named game which actually involves very little kicking) is the cultural king. Fan devotion, robust merchandising, and sprawling, enormously lucrative television deals all power a behemoth business with over $15 billion in annual revenue, helping to make 26 National Football League teams rank among the top 50 most valuable sports franchises in the world.

With all that appetite and opportunity, it’s somewhat surprising that an alternative professional league hasn’t also carved out a successful, lasting niche in the United States. The latest organization to take a run at the American football market was the Alliance of American Football (or AAF), which debuted to much fanfare in 2019 but ended up not even completing its inaugural season. (USFL lasted three seasons in the mid-1980s, upstart XFL had a one-year run in 2001, and UFL lasted 2009-12)

Director Steven Potter’s Alliances Broken, which debuts this week on iTunes, VUDU and other streaming platforms, chronicles the run-up to and fallout from its 57-day active existence, which left a trail of lawsuits, a current tab of just under $50 million debt, and over 1,200 people suddenly without a job – a stunning collapse that has been justifiably called, even by one of the participants herein, “the Fyre Festival of American sports.”

On the surface, the AAF had many things going for it. It was co-founded by respected former NFL executive Bill Polian and CEO Charlie Ebersol, the charismatic son of actress Susan St. James and former NBC Sports chairman Dick Ebersol, an American television legend responsible for producing many Olympic Games and Super Bowl telecasts. Among myriad advantages, it also touted media deals, some attractive venture capital investment from the tech sector, and a business model which leaned into ascendant revenue streams like fantasy gambling. This well-polished surface, however, would mask a shambolic strategy – and possibly just a flat-out sham.

Potter’s project began as a work-for-hire offshoot for one of the eight league teams. As things devolved, he kept the cameras rolling. This definitely makes for some interesting footage. Most of Alliances Broken, though, exists as a post-mortem, with a healthy roster of interviewees from different perspectives serving as disaster tour guides. Among the biggest names featured are Orlando coach Steve Spurrier, a celebrated former Heisman Trophy winner. Among the most insightful, from a birds-eye view, are sports business writers Daniel Kaplan and Conor Orr, Orlando team president Mike Waddell, and the Leverage Agency’s Benjamin Sturner.

Interviews with low-on-the-ladder team personnel and of course players – guys on the fringes, some with a couple of years of NFL experience seeking a second chance, others undrafted college players looking to indulge their passion for football a bit longer – form the other narrative column of Potter’s documentary. And it’s these segments that infuse the film with a certain melancholic streak because if there’s anything tougher than witnessing big dreams die hard, it’s seeing maximum good-faith efforts taken advantage of, and not met with honesty and integrity. 

Alliances Broken sidles up to the big question which exists just beneath the surface of its story, about the privilege and benefit of a doubt granted a well-connected young White man with a legacy name. But it doesn’t quite dig into Ebersol enough to qualify as a flawed character portrait. Neither does the movie particularly plug into or by itself craft a rising tide of doomed inevitability, as Chris Smith’s Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened did so well.

Characterized instead by a laissez-faire editing approach that could stand some outside eyes and tightening (Potter also serves as his own editor on the project), Alliances Broken connects mostly as kind of a randomized grocery list of deceit and foolhardy decision-making. What makes it work is that there is such an abundance of rich, engaging material, from hiccups making payroll to players in only its second week of games and one of its prominent funders being arrested on felony bank fraud charges to AAF’s assertion that it was “a technology company as much as football alliance.” Late in the movie, there’s even a twist involving a self-proclaimed, uncredited co-founder of the league, who found himself pushed off to the side by Ebersol. (He’s now one of many parties involved in litigation.)

Ultimately, Alliances Broken is a tale of hubris and an illustrative reminder of the fact that the “show” in show business isn’t limited to only the entertainment industry – that businesses across all sectors indulge in hyperbolic self-mythologizing. When there is substance to back up that big talk, that’s less of a problem. When fiscal realities and planning don’t align with grandiose public proclamations of triumph, however, flameouts can occur, disproportionately impacting those who bear the least culpability.