XFL
The XFL is a professional American football league in the United States. Consisting of eight teams divided equally between an East and West division, the league was founded in 2018 and began play in 2020. The company was headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut, and was the successor to the original XFL, which was controlled by Vince McMahon's World Wrestling Federation (WWF, now WWE) and NBC, and ran for a single season in 2001. The league intended to compete in a ten-game season and a two-week postseason in the winter and spring months, after the Super Bowl. All eight teams were centrally owned and operated by the league (as opposed to the franchise model, with each team having different ownership groups) and spread across the United States in markets currently or recently represented by an NFL franchise.
In announcing the reformed XFL, McMahon stated that while it would share its name and trademark with the previous incarnation, it would not rely on professional wrestling-inspired features and entertainment elements as its predecessor did, instead aiming to create a league with fewer off-field controversies and faster, simpler play compared to the NFL. The league and its teams were owned by Alpha Entertainment, a private company formed independently of WWE by McMahon (although WWE was listed in filings as holding a 23.5% minority stake in Alpha Entertainment).
After 5 weeks of play, the XFL announced that its inaugural season would come to a close on March 12 because of growing COVID-19 pandemic concerns and social distancing mandates. On April 10, the league suspended day-to-day operations and laid off its employees; it filed for bankruptcy three days later and put itself up for sale. On April 21, recently fired former XFL commissioner Oliver Luck sued McMahon for wrongful termination.
On August 2, it was reported that actor and producer, Dwayne Johnson and longtime business partner and ex-wife, Dany Garcia partnered with Gerry Cardinale’s RedBird Capital to purchase the XFL for $15 million, hours before an auction could take place.
The original XFL ran for a single season in 2001, as a joint venture between WWF and NBC spearheaded by Vince McMahon and NBC executive Dick Ebersol. The league attempted to be a competitor to the National Football League—the predominant professional league of American football in the United States (and where NBC had lost its broadcast rights to CBS three years earlier), running during the late winter and early spring to take advantage of lingering desire for football after the end of the NFL season. It featured various modifications to the rules of football in order to increase its intensity, as well as on-air innovations such as Skycams, placing microphones on players, and in-game interviews with players. The league was criticized for relying too heavily on "sports entertainment" gimmicks similar to professional wrestling. Back in 2001 the XFL aired during the wrestling “attitude era,” and was more maintaining their lust for violence and sex appeal making them have harder hits, fewer rules, and modest cheerleaders, and for the lack of high-level talent among its players. Despite strong ratings for its first games, viewership eventually nosedived, and the league folded after the conclusion of the inaugural season. Both partners lost $35 million on the XFL, and McMahon eventually conceded that the league was a "colossal failure"
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