XFL Suspending Operations & All Employees Laid Off

Kliq

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Mar 31, 2013
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Vince was supposed to have enough money earmarked for I believe three years of operation. At first glance, I would assume that they are just laying people off during the down period and plan on resuming operations later.

However, WWE's stock has already fallen off a cliff in 2020 and the company is going to get hit even further due to a loss of WrestleMania revenue and the likely loss of one of the blood money shows in Saudi Arabia, so Vince is in a different financial situation then when he first relaunched the league.
 

8slim

has trust issues
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Nov 6, 2001
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In all fairness this isnt a situation where they fucked it up as much as the world changed on them and they had no ability to do anything about it
Yeah, the league seemed to be fledgling along well enough in its first few weeks. A few cities were really turning out, attendance-wise. Blame it on the Corona.
 

riboflav

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Jan 20, 2006
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It's too bad. My son and I enjoyed watching it especially because you could listen in on the coach/qb communications.
 

Awesome Fossum

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Really tough break for them (along with the rest of us). It was a lot of fun while it lasted.

I was super impressed with Oliver Luck. If I were an NFL team -- especially one with a compromised brand like the Redskins -- he'd be my target for team president.
 

Kliq

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Mar 31, 2013
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They swear they're coming back.
No 2021 season though. Which means 2022 at the earliest, and then you are still talking about a league without a lucrative enough TV deal to break even, so you are taking on more losses during a time when nobody knows what the financial atmosphere is going to be like, in hopes of landing a big TV deal I guess for the 2023 season.

A big factor it appears in this is that the era of networks handing out massive deals to sports leagues may be coming to an end. Established brands like NFL, NBA, MLB, etc. will be fine, but not sure if networks are going to gamble big on an umproven product. That is why Meltzer mentioned that Jan. deal with Turner being massive for AEW, they would have never gotten that kind of deal a few months later.
 

Awesome Fossum

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That's from March 12 and was probably a true position at the time. I wouldn't put any stock in it on April 10, with nearly the entire workforce laid off and the Commissioner MIA.
 

mauidano

Mai Tais for everyone!
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Aug 21, 2006
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Hey Vince! Too bad Linda left her gig at the Small Biz Admin. to go head up your pal's super Pac.

Really; who didn't see this coming? The Curse of Trump.
 

Ale Xander

Hamilton
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Oct 31, 2013
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A post-Covid merge wouldn't be the worst thing, quiet frankly. Contract the worst performing (revenue) CFL West team (Winnipeg? since it has NHL competition and fairly small market) to get to 8.

Have 1 league, 8 teams in each "division/country. Limited inter-division games in regular season but more than zero. Then have playoffs within each division and a bowl/championship between each winner.

Have the best things from each League (big L) combined. (Yardage and # of players from CFL, marketing and attitude from XFL)
 

mwonow

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Sep 4, 2005
7,095
A post-Covid merge wouldn't be the worst thing, quiet frankly. Contract the worst performing (revenue) CFL West team (Winnipeg? since it has NHL competition and fairly small market) to get to 8.

Have 1 league, 8 teams in each "division/country. Limited inter-division games in regular season but more than zero. Then have playoffs within each division and a bowl/championship between each winner.

Have the best things from each League (big L) combined. (Yardage and # of players from CFL, marketing and attitude from XFL)
Actually, the CFL does pretty well in most cities - only , Montreal and (especially) Toronto are weak:


Team 2019 average home attendance
Saskatchewan 30,896
Edmonton 30,321
Calgary 26,593
Winnipeg 26,379
Hamilton 23,255
Ottawa 22,305
BC 17,567
Montreal 17,275
Toronto 13,370
 

Captaincoop

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Jul 16, 2005
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They tried the US expansion thing in the 90s and it failed badly.

The XFL 2.0 had some real potential as a viable spring TV product, whatever it takes to get it back sounds good to me.
 

Phil Plantier

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Mar 7, 2002
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Actually, the CFL does pretty well in most cities - only , Montreal and (especially) Toronto are weak:


Team 2019 average home attendance
Saskatchewan 30,896
Edmonton 30,321
Calgary 26,593
Winnipeg 26,379
Hamilton 23,255
Ottawa 22,305
BC 17,567
Montreal 17,275
Toronto 13,370
I don't understand why so few people watch CFL games on TV. In 2019, the viewership was around 500,000 per game per week . That's less than the last week of the XFL (833k). That's, like, MLS-level viewership as an absolute number. It's about 1.43% of the Canadian population. The average NFL viewership is triple that as a share of the population.
 

Traut

lost his degree
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I don't understand why so few people watch CFL games on TV. In 2019, the viewership was around 500,000 per game per week . That's less than the last week of the XFL (833k). That's, like, MLS-level viewership as an absolute number. It's about 1.43% of the Canadian population. The average NFL viewership is triple that as a share of the population.
All that I can say is that bad football is really terrible to watch. I go to a lot of AA games and find the on field product to be fairly similar to MLB absent the number of home runs. The pitchers throw hard, the defense is good, and the base runners are fast.

Bad football is awful to watch. The XFL was a pretty good product with a massive hole - QB play. And the offenses weren’t nearly as creative as college and/or the defenses were better than college defenses. Someone smarter than me could break that down.

But really the game as a good TV product is highly dependent on QB play.
 

mwonow

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Sep 4, 2005
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Also, as the attendance numbers show, the CFL is really popular in secondary markets, and not in the three major Canadian markets, which is where most of the potential viewers live.

If you're in Winnipeg, the Bombers are big news. If you're in TO, you're more likely to root for the Bills than the Argos.