XFL folds again

• Read about The Rock buying the XFL here

On Good Friday, ESPN broke the news that the upstart XFL has had to “suspend” operations, sack all employees and also has no plans to return in 2021 (when hopefully the COVID-19 pandemic is contained).

More interestingly however it was also reported that the XFL has “no plans” for a 2021 season. So, the fledgling league is folded again?

Nearly all staff, expect a few senior executives, have been laid off also.

Yet, as per the ESPN report, XFL COO Jeffrey Pollack held a ten minute call on Friday to let all employees in on the developments and that in effect the league would be shuttering.

However, the XFL is definitely dead with it filing for bankruptcy today.

Previously, on March 20th 2020, the XFL announced it would “cancel the remainder” of its maiden season due to the COVID-19 outbreak. This followed other leagues, like the NBA, with one XFL player from the Seattle Dragons team testing positive for the virus also.

The season ended with the DC Defenders being the top team in XFL East over the St. Louis BattleHawks, New York Guardians and Tampa Bay Vipers. Meanwhile in the XFL West, the Houston Roughnecks were undefeated and leading the division over the Dallas Renegades, Los Angeles Wildcats and the Seattle Dragons.

With the announcement of the end of its first season, some top players were already picked up by the NFL. Breakout league player, quarterback P.J. Walker has already been scooped up by the Carolina Panthers on a two year deal based off his performances in the XFL.

With the XFL done once more (quite likely permanently again) one player actually experienced being part of two failed leagues this year. Charles James II played both in the XFL and the AAF (read more about this failed league here). The player wasn’t too down about being sacked once again either.

As you can see above, in previous posts from BusinessOfSport.Net I looked at why the XFL failed the first time around and also how the league was shaping up a year out from its start. It is of serious interest to me to see how new leagues perform and what innovative approaches they take to try to become relevant.

How did this version of the xfl do?

In short, I think it is safe to say that the XFL 2.0 was a hell of a lot better than the first product.

It is clear that a lot of work and thought had been put into how the league would operate and was a lot more professional than the first iteration. XFL Commissioner, Oliver Luck, spent two years building the product and league with a group of staff, with distinct differences from the NFL and NCAA built around kickoffs and points. In addition, it created a body to look at player health specifically concerning the head, while also working with Kinduct to record player injury information.

It also secured a broadcast deal with ABC/ESPN, locked up partnerships with DraftKings (official fantasy league partner) and PointsBet (gambling partner). Broadcasts were quite unique with players given insight to media directly after plays had been made.

Meanwhile, on contentious plays, fans saw officials make live decisions within the replay booth, something that doesn’t happen in the NFL.

Even the “fun” factor of the league was evident. Its social media team put out engaging content that was quite different in tone from the NFL’s and also built its own “culture” around things like beer snakes, see the below Tweet as an example (Commissioner Oliver Luck even got in on the action as well).

Most importantly of all, the quality of the actual games was much improved from XFL 1.0. In fact, that was the biggest gripe, amongst many of the first version of the league. The 2020 XFL had plenty of action, the rule modifications were well thought out and for the most part, decent football was being played.

With a broadcast deal with ESPN/ABC, the first game of the new league saw 3.3 million people tuning in to watch. Yet by week 5, the ratings had declined to a worrying average of 800,000. Sports Illustrated believed that for the league to become viable and money spinning audiences could not dip below the 750,000 mark. The COVID-19 pandemic has now left this as a “what if” scenario.

Despite these concerning numbers, could the XFL have survived?

A bright spot in st.Louis pointed to the xfl’s future

All you have to do is look at the St. Louis BattleHawks to see if the XFL could have survived long-term. In January 2016, the city lost its NFL team, the Rams, to L.A. after 21 years in the city. As of 2019, the city of St. Louis was still paying down debt on the team’s stadium, of $60 million.

With this absence of a football team, it is safe to say the city really embraced their XFL team. Well over a thousand days had passed since a team played in the St. Louis dome and the BattleHawks opener with over 29,000+ fans packing the stadium out. According to XFL News Hub, the team had the most sought after tickets of any team in the league also.

This is despite being the small city out of the eight chosen to have a XFL team. The TV ratings were also the highest in the US for all XFL games, even excluding the BattleHawks’ games. As pointed out by the St. Louis Dispatch, this seemed to point to a wider trend of smaller markets really embracing their XFL teams. Behind St. Louis, Seattle which was the second smallest market in the XFL had the second best attendance and TV ratings of all teams.

The video below really highlight how engaged fans in St. Louis were and points to where the XFL could have gotten to in select cities. In fact, the league might have really thrived by bringing football to cities starved of the support and built long term, engaged fan bases.

So will we ever see the XFL ever again? Given the impact that COVID-19 has had on even more established leagues, and the outlay of cash already put into the league by owner Vince McMahon, this could well be the final version of the XFL we will ever get to see.

Given how admirably the league performed in its second incarnation, that is a damn, damn shame. Hopefully we may see it again in some shape and form.