XFL Thread

[Big Boss Man]

Thanks, thought Cro Cop came over as part of the deal, but yea great roster. I do think Tommy had what it took to be a big star in Boxing but like you say he needed a better calibre of fighter to go up against. Sugar Ray was still a PPV draw back then, of course his fights with Roberto Duran are legendary. I have some old boxing VHS somewhere where it's him, Hearns, Hagler & Duran fights on. That era of boxing with Iron Mike too is a golden era. Always been a huge boxing fan and used to really enjoy the ESPN ringside specials. We had Frank Bruno here who fought Mike in the late 80s and it was cool to see him finally win the World title in the early 90s.

[Bandit]

The greatest boxing match ever happened in England.


You had Nigel Benn, Chris Eubank, Michael Watson and Nicky Piper from the UK in a stacked middleweight division in the 90s. And middleweight boxing is dangerous as hell because those guys have the punching power of a heavyweight and the speed of a welterweight, so lots of tragedies came from Middleweight boxing.

[Big Boss Man]

Yea sadly Michael Watson got badly hurt in a fight against Chris Eubank. That fight was televised (a lot of their fights were on ITV) so the viewers saw that all happen. But that era with Benn, Eubank, Watson etc was a golden age here too. Think I got some of those fights on VHS tape too.

[Bandit]

lol he's actually going to get money for this. Vince must be the greatest salesman ever. He sells a stinky pile of shit, has it given back to him, and then nearly 20 years later sells the same pile of shit to someone else even though they fully know how bad it is because they watched a documentary about it. "No, it will be good this time. Honest." Amazing.

I think they should just buy the 2001 games and replay them with comedic sound effects and Yakety Sax. I'd watch that.

[Big Boss Man]

[Bandit]

The first AAF game on CBS Saturday did 2.9 million viewers. It beat the NBA game on ABC which did 2.1 million.

The first XFL game in 2001 did 11 million viewers.

[Dr. Zoidberg]

[Big Boss Man]

Not a smart decision because if the XFL tanks again he's lost a grand total of $360m of WWE stock he owned. I really can't see the logic behind relaunching the XFL anyway when it's unlikely no top college prospects will go there instead of the NFL and no one will watch a game full of ex NFL practice squad/college players/high school players. The XFL also had hype of the Attitude Era to back it up and NBC behind it too, now I think it's a huge mistake unless they have some groundbreaking ideas.

[Dr. Zoidberg]

He's still got lots left so it doesn't matter if he flushes $100s of millions away.

[Big Boss Man]

I guess, but that's almost $400m of stock he's flushing away. He could have invested that money, in idk, health care for the WWE talent, expanding into countries they don't have much presence in yet, in the performance centre and making the WWE product better overall.

Plus there's talk the AAF might fold already but it might be to put them in a better leverage position with the NFL players association.

https://xflnewshub.com/xfl-news/the-aaf ... this-week/

If the players union is not going to give us young players, we can’t be a development league. We are looking at our options, one of which is discontinuing the league.”

https://eu.usatoday.com/story/sports/20 ... 287922002/

Although

[Dr. Zoidberg]

He could have invested that money, in idk, health care for the WWE talent, expanding into countries they don't have much presence in yet, in the performance centre and making the WWE product better overall.

He could have been doing that, but he's never going to do that. Especially the last part.

[Bandit]

Vince feels he's going to break even if this is a failure because he will be getting more TV money than he did in 2001. Plus he has FOX on his side so they've probably talked about creating content for Fox Sports. I don't know if he will, because I don't know how much this costs versus what a network would pay. But he is in a decent position right now. I wouldn't do this if I was Vince, but he's obsessed with clearing up his biggest failure. To him if he can possibly stop the XFL from being a punchline it's worth the gamble.

[pixel]

I also think that Vince saw that the NFL was at its most vulnerable with all the outrage surrounding protests, Tom Brady and what not. It makes sense to produce an alternative for football fans when they're the most likely to stop watching the NFL altogether.

But here's the problem: Colin Kaepernick isn't the conservative boogeyman that he once was. Aside from the AFC's inability to beat the Patriots, there seems to be really good parity these days after both championship games went into overtime.

They might have struck pay dirt had the XFL (or AAF) launched in 2016. But with the AAF teetering towards oblivion, I think this will be history repeating itself. When it folds or fails to launch, the XFL will prove that any new football league came around about 50 years too late in the U.S.

[Bandit]

Yeah, the NFL squashed the protest controversy by not showing the national anthem for regular season games. And Kaepernick has been quiet since he settled out of court with the NFL. And the ratings rebounded. But I don't think conservative boycotts were the reason, I think 2017 was just a mediocre season and 2018 was better so viewers came back. I think conservatives were claiming on social media they were boycotting but still watching. Like the "I'll never buy Nike again" shit where sales didn't go down at all.

[Big Boss Man]

Yea some real good and interesting points. I definitely think Vince was fired up when he did the ESPN doc and thought he could write the wrongs he made in the past. I think these things he could do to at least give the XFL somewhat of a chance

-playing games in the NFL offseason

- making the game more free flowing with minimal stoppages

- make the game more fast paced

- having teams in former strongly supported NFL team areas such as in Oakland when the Raiders move for example, then you can tap into that interest.

Things like that so it's different but putting out a "product" with lower level talent isn't going to tick any boxes. The USFL succeeded because it did have some real talented players, who eventually went onto to the NFL. But I think most prospects aren't going to go to the XFL when there's the NFL and the chance to make multi millions of dollars.

It's fine for semi retired or guys who never made the cut. But the quality level of the game will I think be affected unless they at least have top college prospects or former NFL players in the league. If Vince is going to be directly competing with the NFL ... he might as well have just threw the money into the wind.

[Bandit]

[Dr. Zoidberg]

[Dr. Zoidberg]

[Bandit]

Vince McMahon's XFL relaunch officially has several broadcast partners, but without the financial windfall of rights fees they might have expected.

The football league announced Monday that ESPN and Fox Sports will share in broadcast rights for the entire regular season and playoffs with games on ABC, Fox, ESPN, ESPN2, and FS1 both Saturdays and Sundays.

Kicking off in 2020, opening day will be on February 8 with the championship game scheduled for Sunday, April 26.

More than half of the XFL's games will be on ABC and Fox, something they expect will help increase exposure as it returns for the first time since its infamous one-and-done season in 2001.

One surprise regarding rights fees was reported by John Ourand of the Sports Business Journal:

"The networks are not paying a rights fee, but ESPN and Fox are picking up production costs, which generally amount to around $400,000 per game, sources said. As part of the deal, the nets will sell ads around the game; the XFL will handle sponsorships at the venue. ESPN and Fox will hold streaming rights to XFL games. The two nets also will cross-promote games during game broadcasts."

At 43 games, that adds up to roughly $17.2 million.

McMahon has sold a lot of his WWE stock to privately fund the XFL through Alpha Entertainment which he has said will run completely separate from WWE.

Perhaps part of hesitancy into a large rights fee deal was due to the disaster that was the AAF, a competitor that launched this season on CBS Sports with money troubles from the onset. The league didn't make it through its first year and ultimately may have a legacy of gambling technology instead of anything that happened on the field.

Fox acquired the rights to WWE SmackDown for more than $1 billion over five years that kicks off this September on the broadcast network.

[Dr. Zoidberg]