XFL Shuts Down Effective Today
April 10th, 2020 at 12:51 PM ^
I'm sure Vince McMahon has another hare-brained scheme up his sleeve. He'll survive just fine.
April 10th, 2020 at 12:57 PM ^
He’s had some stinkers, man.
The World Bodybuilding Federation which was bodybuilding competitions on pay-per-view.
ICOPRO, a line of bodybuilding supplements that they promoted endlessly but failed miserably.
He bought the Debbie Reynolds hotel in Vegas and was going to make a WWF hotel and casino when the WWF was mainstream in 1999 but it never came together and it was sold shortly after they scrapped the plans.
WWF New York, a Wrestling themed nightclub in Times Square. Did well at first and then 9/11 happened which killed its business. They were losing millions of dollars a month on it.
XFL 1, XFL 2.
WWE Studios. Enough said, yikes.
While you can’t argue that list, I’ll note that throughout my career the people I’ve seen become most successful are those that persevere through multiple setbacks and failures. They have an uncanny ability to shrug off those things and keep trying.
This one was not a stinker. The world literally ended.
Agree, the ratings by today's standards were quite good
"The world literally ended." Yikes, I'm late starting my life in eternity.
Yeah he might survive ....
https://www.forbes.com/profile/vincent-mcmahon/#60d165a1b897
#1196 Vincent McMahon
Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images
REAL TIME NET WORTH
$1.9B
as of 4/10/20
April 10th, 2020 at 12:57 PM ^
Very bad timing. It seemed like it was going to succeed. The product was much better than the AAF.
April 10th, 2020 at 12:57 PM ^
You just beat me to it...
Even though they say they hope to resume in 2021...I'm gonna take a wild guess and predict this league will never return.
ESPN is reporting that the XFL has no plans to return in 2021
I must have read it the wrong way.
The CBSSports pod cast interview with McMahon,he said they league is planning on returning in 2021 with 2 more teams
But he could just be saying this to keep the interest
April 10th, 2020 at 12:57 PM ^
I assume this is going to be a temporary closure and they'll try to return in 2021 or 2022
It was a cute concept but I cant envision the league trying to start over. Ratings were sub par and the football was...well...boring.
XFL has come out and said they have no plans of returning
People want football. Just not the same football. If Vince ever put his capital into something like the Arena Football League, it could work. It has the history, draws an average of 8-10k fans in an arena, was fun to watch, and put a couple guys into the NFL.
They need someone like Vince to put his money/brand into it and it COULD succeed. Put teams in Birmingham, Columbus, Louisville, Oakland, Orlando, Salt Lake City, San Antonio, and St. Louis and it could work.
Semi-related, Wimbledon gets a $141 Million paycheck this summer for collecting on Pandemic Insurance, surely that has to be more of a thing in society moving forward. Given the rate of human population growth, and various factors I seriously doubt COVID-19 will be the only pandemic in my (I'm 26) lifetime.
COVID-19 is already the second pandemic of your lifetime (H1N1 was the first in 2009). I’ve been through a third pandemic (H3N2 in 1968).
Let’s hope we get this one under control soon, and that the next one is mild.
See here for a list of previous pandemics.
+1 - I meant a pandemic of this magnitude
I know, I know. Although considering how contagious the damn thing is we’re fortunate that the death rate is low.
At the same time that makes it harder to fight because people don’t always take it seriously. People took SARS (scary fatality rate) and Ebola (terrifying fatality rate) pretty damn seriously for good reason.
Are they shutting down or suspending? My understanding is they are suspending the league, and suspending usually means you are hoping to bring it back later down the road.
The league always had strong financial backing with Vince McMahon, so assuming he isn't completely pulling the plug, its possible they come back when this is all over.
They may be hoping to return some day, but ESPN is reporting that they have no plans to return in 2021.
Good. They had a chance to capture the market by continuing to play while all other sports were shutting down, but they decided to be cowards instead.
Yeah, fuck those players for not wanting to spread an illness killing thousands of people.
You're so brave.
Found the troll-bot
Logged in to down-vote. This is a nonsense take. There is no way a start-up league has enough cash reserves to pay players, coaching staffs, and support personnel to play in empty venues. And attempting to allow paying fans would be currently illegal in nearly all of their teams' home cities. So no .. zero chance to "capture the market."
XFL? More like an ex-FL
Sucks. I'm probably in the minority, but I actually enjoyed it for the month it was going on (gambling on it sure helps). I wasn't watching entire games but I definitely was tuning in each weekend here and there to it, and adapted the DC Defenders as my team.
By the time the NFL season is over, I'm football'd out. I don't care about basketball, so having a couple months of watching a hockey game here and there til baseball starts up is fine with me. I can't see another league ever working.
Welp. At least we got to see Pep Hamilton vs Jim Hermann miked up against each other in one of the weirdest UM fan bizarro matchups of all time. Wonder where they end up now?
If you're not Piling Driving an opponent or cannon shooting He Hate Me through the field goal net then you're just another minor league fly by night.. The End!
It would have been interesting to see if it could have survived without the pandemic short-circuiting it. WWE is obviously hurting without the house show/live taping money, and leagues like the XFL REALLY relied on that gate money.
Damn. They had a spark. This could have worked.
It would have failed anyway because, unless they become some sort of farm system for the NFL, none of these 2nd rate leagues will ever work because there simply isn’t the talent to sustain it.
Think about how painful it was to watch teams like the Lions, Bengals, Dolphins, Redskins and Chargers last season.
Now, imagine a professional league made up entirely of teams that ARE NOWHERE NEAR THE SAME LEVEL OF TALENT, and you get the picture pretty quickly why it isn’t going to attract fans.
April 10th, 2020 at 11:24 PM ^
Ah, crap.
I really, really enjoyed the XFL.
This totally sucks.
I went to a couple of games in Seattle, and it was very fun and affordable.
Also, Seattle had 3 Wolverines: Jeremy Clark (CB), Channing Stribling (CB), and Will Campbell (OL for the games I saw).
I'm hoping that the XFL is back next year.