The demise of the XFL returns the spotlight to one of the most vexing questions in sports: Can any minor league football startup succeed?
Since Vince McMahon’s splashy second try got off the ground in 2018, conventional wisdom held that his XFL stood a better chance than most. If for no other reason, the bold chairman of WWE had the personal wealth to absorb losses and a reputation to not care what critics thought.
But with the coronavirus pandemic restructuring American life on a daily basis, McMahon’s willingness to suffer a financial hit changed and the XFL joined previous leagues from the United States Football League to the Alliance of American Football in the dustbin of sports history. Now in bankruptcy, the XFL’s assets are for sale, but nobody in the industry puts much stock in its chances of being revived under new ownership, and the overall economic conditions would seem to push new projects well into the future.
Mike Trager, a veteran TV sales and programming executive who negotiated the USFL’s first TV deal and has been involved in other football startups, thinks it’s not possible as a truly free-standing business.
“If you want to start a spring football league, you have to do it in concert with the NFL,” Trager said. “Without that association, I just don’t see any way football can work in the spring because of the overwhelming cost of the sport.”
Even before the AAF crashed and burned in 2019, the list of failed secondary football leagues was a long one, including the Fall Experimental Football League, the United Football League, the World League and the USFL. The Pacific Pro League, originally set to start this summer, has been silent. Anyone trying again will fight an uphill battle with investors worried about adding their own money to that list.
But former XFL employees, coaches and players resist that grouping, arguing that the XFL this year showed signs of legitimacy and market traction none of the others did, except for the USFL in the 1980s. But that goes to show how hard it is for any startup league in sports: even when things go right, there’s scant room for error.
“[McMahon] found out his projections were short of what he thought, and the coronavirus is a perfect excuse for this to get out as gracefully I guess as you can,” Trager said.
