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Post by sfvega on Apr 12, 2020 18:30:20 GMT -5
It's not terribly surprising. They did a lot to push back the profit in favor of establishing themselves as a league. They wanted to get a good foothold in viewers and markets, so their TV deal gave them $0 in rights fees. Which was kinda genius; that you'd take the exposure of being on ESPN or ABC over being paid to be on a mid-tier network. Also, Vince owned all the teams instead of selling franchises. He had total control and assumed total responsibility, but expected to make more in ticket sales, merch, and concession deals than was made with an abbreviated season. Who could have predicted he'd be in the position Bischoff was in because of a sudden global pandemic? Bischoff didn't see the bubble bursting and continued to spend like he'd always have this immense cashflow. Vince pretty safely assumed that the WWE would have this steady cashflow and the XFL would grow over time. But now both are bleeding money because live entertainment is out the window for maybe the rest of the year.
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Post by arrogantmodel on Apr 12, 2020 18:41:34 GMT -5
I still don't understand people's fascination with spring football, or football outside of the NFL or college.
These leagues are subpar and they never last. How many people have tried and failed? There are and would be a ton of fantastic events going on in the spring. NBA and NHL playoffs, NCAA tournament, Triple Crown races, boxing and UFC events, baseball starting up, etc.
Even a lot of football fans aren't clamoring for football year round. Let these bush leagues die. Unless the NFL straight up goes out of business, any other league won't stand a chance.
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Post by Cyno on Apr 12, 2020 18:52:37 GMT -5
From what that ESPN article described earlier, the general feeling was that the XFL was going to last as long as Vince McMahon wanted to continue funding it. Which... wouldn't exactly inspire confidence even without a pandemic shutting things down, given Vince's volatility.
But yeah, if they had a plan to set business up again next season, everyone would've been furloughed. Instead, they were outright terminated.
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Post by sfvega on Apr 12, 2020 19:14:43 GMT -5
I still don't understand people's fascination with spring football, or football outside of the NFL or college. These leagues are subpar and they never last. How many people have tried and failed? There are and would be a ton of fantastic events going on in the spring. NBA and NHL playoffs, NCAA tournament, Triple Crown races, boxing and UFC events, baseball starting up, etc. Even a lot of football fans aren't clamoring for football year round. Let these bush leagues die. Unless the NFL straight up goes out of business, any other league won't stand a chance. Spring football is fool's gold. The USFL had stars and financial backing and was viable and it still only lasted a few years. It's like football in LA or one of those quarter pushing gambling machines. It seems so easy to make money until you inevitably don't. The NFL now has 17 games. Games on all day Sunday, Monday night, Thursday night. CFB has games Thursday night, Friday night, and all day Saturday. As well as a bowl schedule that canvasses pretty much every day from mid-Dec to mid-Jan. People wanted "moar footbawww" in the mid-2000s and this schedule has pretty much covered that at every turn. It pretty much caught on well in Seattle and St. Louis, the latter of which has no real local college or professional team. I don't think their numbers were indicative of a hot market for spring football, and while their ratings didn't fall off a cliff like the first time, they were also on a steady downtrend.
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Malcolm
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Post by Malcolm on Apr 12, 2020 20:58:46 GMT -5
Honesty, with the way these other football leagues keep dropping for seemingly every weird reason under the sun, I wonder if it's less to do with spring football being "fool's gold" and more to do with the football Gods being massive NFL fanboys...🤨
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Post by arrogantmodel on Apr 12, 2020 22:19:48 GMT -5
I still don't understand people's fascination with spring football, or football outside of the NFL or college. These leagues are subpar and they never last. How many people have tried and failed? There are and would be a ton of fantastic events going on in the spring. NBA and NHL playoffs, NCAA tournament, Triple Crown races, boxing and UFC events, baseball starting up, etc. Even a lot of football fans aren't clamoring for football year round. Let these bush leagues die. Unless the NFL straight up goes out of business, any other league won't stand a chance. Spring football is fool's gold. The USFL had stars and financial backing and was viable and it still only lasted a few years. It's like football in LA or one of those quarter pushing gambling machines. It seems so easy to make money until you inevitably don't. The NFL now has 17 games. Games on all day Sunday, Monday night, Thursday night. CFB has games Thursday night, Friday night, and all day Saturday. As well as a bowl schedule that canvasses pretty much every day from mid-Dec to mid-Jan. People wanted "moar footbawww" in the mid-2000s and this schedule has pretty much covered that at every turn. It pretty much caught on well in Seattle and St. Louis, the latter of which has no real local college or professional team. I don't think their numbers were indicative of a hot market for spring football, and while their ratings didn't fall off a cliff like the first time, they were also on a steady downtrend. Fool's gold is a good phrase. I also used "White Whale" recently. It just isn't going to work. You laid it out perfectly too, the NFL and college gives us football almost every damn day of the week from July/August preseason games, to the Sept. to Dec. regular season, and Jan. playoffs, and the Super Bowl in Feb. And college has 500 bowl games. Who needs some bullshit league for a few weeks after all that? And yeah, it might have been better than the original, it was still trending down.
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ssdrivin
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Post by ssdrivin on Apr 13, 2020 1:13:05 GMT -5
I still don't understand people's fascination with spring football, or football outside of the NFL or college. These leagues are subpar and they never last. How many people have tried and failed? There are and would be a ton of fantastic events going on in the spring. NBA and NHL playoffs, NCAA tournament, Triple Crown races, boxing and UFC events, baseball starting up, etc. Even a lot of football fans aren't clamoring for football year round. Let these bush leagues die. Unless the NFL straight up goes out of business, any other league won't stand a chance.
Couldn't you argue similar for wrestling promotions too though? Unless you're WWE (or WCW for a while, before they nosedived), you're essentially nobody in the grand scheme of things, a niche little superfan novelty with a pot luck chance of success; ECW, ROH, XWF, WSX, TNA, modern NWA, LU, AEW, and a slew of 2000s attempts at starting up with big cameo names attached that went nowhere or produced a couple of tapes or DVDs and then folded. Just look at what some people were saying about AEW before it took off, people thought it was just some brand name with a rich mark who'd set fire to a warehouse full of cash, then get bored, and the whole thing would be a big fat nothing. We've seen it happen a dozen times.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying all of those promotions experienced the very same levels of success or failure as each other, and I don't mean to point any of them out as being particularly bad or un-noteworthy, or somehow irrelevant for not being WWE. I don't mean to suggest that ROH = XWF, or that NWA never meant anything. But I do feel that in terms of comparisons, they're all minor leagues compared to the internationally renowned giants of WWE and WCW. Many have come and gone without much attention, or only been appreciated by a minority of fans who know what's going on in the wrestling world and really care about the existence of competition to WWE.
My point, though, is that some people do care, competition and options are healthy, even if they're kinda small. Sure, they're expensive to start, they might have kinda weird rules, they might have uncertain futures or initially kinda weak rosters, but it doesn't mean they don't still have value. Problem is, they need time to establish in order to grow and prove themselves worthy of continuing to exist, to attract investment and better talent and TV deals. That's tricky if you don't have a banknote printing press in your office, but it's not impossible if the right rich guy hires the right people. To pull from my earlier examples, AEW seems to be doing absolutely fine for themselves just at the moment, despite having existed in any real way for less than one year.
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Post by arrogantmodel on Apr 13, 2020 3:14:29 GMT -5
I still don't understand people's fascination with spring football, or football outside of the NFL or college. These leagues are subpar and they never last. How many people have tried and failed? There are and would be a ton of fantastic events going on in the spring. NBA and NHL playoffs, NCAA tournament, Triple Crown races, boxing and UFC events, baseball starting up, etc. Even a lot of football fans aren't clamoring for football year round. Let these bush leagues die. Unless the NFL straight up goes out of business, any other league won't stand a chance. Couldn't you argue similar for wrestling promotions too though? Unless you're WWE (or WCW for a while, before they nosedived), you're essentially nobody in the grand scheme of things, a niche little superfan novelty with a pot luck chance of success; ECW, ROH, XWF, WSX, TNA, modern NWA, LU, AEW, and a slew of 2000s attempts at starting up with big cameo names attached that went nowhere or produced a couple of tapes or DVDs and then folded. Just look at what some people were saying about AEW before it took off, people thought it was just some brand name with a rich mark who'd set fire to a warehouse full of cash, then get bored, and the whole thing would be a big fat nothing. We've seen it happen a dozen times.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying all of those promotions experienced the very same levels of success or failure as each other, and I don't mean to point any of them out as being particularly bad or un-noteworthy, or somehow irrelevant for not being WWE. I don't mean to suggest that ROH = XWF, or that NWA never meant anything. But I do feel that in terms of comparisons, they're all minor leagues compared to the internationally renowned giants of WWE and WCW. Many have come and gone without much attention, or only been appreciated by a minority of fans who know what's going on in the wrestling world and really care about the existence of competition to WWE. My point, though, is that some people do care, competition and options are healthy, even if they're kinda small. Sure, they're expensive to start, they might have kinda weird rules, they might have uncertain futures or initially kinda weak rosters, but it doesn't mean they don't still have value. Problem is, they need time to establish in order to grow and prove themselves worthy of continuing to exist, to attract investment and better talent and TV deals. That's tricky if you don't have a banknote printing press in your office, but it's not impossible if the right rich guy hires the right people. To pull from my earlier examples, AEW seems to be doing absolutely fine for themselves just at the moment, despite having existed in any real way for less than one year.
Yeah, but a big name in wrestling can be all you need. Say there was some new fed in the midwest back in 2001, who was just getting started, and generating some buzz. If they had the regular crop of no-names and local talents, they wouldn't be in great shape. Now, if all of a sudden, they announced that they just signed The Rock, Jeff Hardy, The Sandman, and Scott Steiner, you'd be like, "Holy shit, there might be something to this." and you would watch. So unless these scrub leagues mange to get Brady, Hopkins, Donald, Zeke, and players of that caliber, people will check it out at first out of curiosity, and then once they realize it's not that good, they're gone. Wrestling fans love to see competition. There was competition for decades, with the territories, and then ECW, WCW, and the WWF. They're a lot more patient and understanding. Football fans have only known the NFL as the only pro game in town for more than fifty years. All those other leagues couldn't hang. The NFL gets the cream of the crop. The XFL doesn't. They never will. Nobody in the NFL is going to "jump" to the XFL, meanwhile the XFL guys would kill to get into the pros. Wrestling offers a lot of variety too. You got stuff all around the world. Different styles, stories, etc. You can like different wrestling. But how many people are like, "Yeah, I love the NFL, but I can also go for some really medicore ball after the season ends." Wrestling fans don't usually think like that.
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Post by sfvega on Apr 13, 2020 5:21:14 GMT -5
I still don't understand people's fascination with spring football, or football outside of the NFL or college. These leagues are subpar and they never last. How many people have tried and failed? There are and would be a ton of fantastic events going on in the spring. NBA and NHL playoffs, NCAA tournament, Triple Crown races, boxing and UFC events, baseball starting up, etc. Even a lot of football fans aren't clamoring for football year round. Let these bush leagues die. Unless the NFL straight up goes out of business, any other league won't stand a chance. Couldn't you argue similar for wrestling promotions too though? Unless you're WWE (or WCW for a while, before they nosedived), you're essentially nobody in the grand scheme of things, a niche little superfan novelty with a pot luck chance of success; ECW, ROH, XWF, WSX, TNA, modern NWA, LU, AEW, and a slew of 2000s attempts at starting up with big cameo names attached that went nowhere or produced a couple of tapes or DVDs and then folded. Just look at what some people were saying about AEW before it took off, people thought it was just some brand name with a rich mark who'd set fire to a warehouse full of cash, then get bored, and the whole thing would be a big fat nothing. We've seen it happen a dozen times.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying all of those promotions experienced the very same levels of success or failure as each other, and I don't mean to point any of them out as being particularly bad or un-noteworthy, or somehow irrelevant for not being WWE. I don't mean to suggest that ROH = XWF, or that NWA never meant anything. But I do feel that in terms of comparisons, they're all minor leagues compared to the internationally renowned giants of WWE and WCW. Many have come and gone without much attention, or only been appreciated by a minority of fans who know what's going on in the wrestling world and really care about the existence of competition to WWE. My point, though, is that some people do care, competition and options are healthy, even if they're kinda small. Sure, they're expensive to start, they might have kinda weird rules, they might have uncertain futures or initially kinda weak rosters, but it doesn't mean they don't still have value. Problem is, they need time to establish in order to grow and prove themselves worthy of continuing to exist, to attract investment and better talent and TV deals. That's tricky if you don't have a banknote printing press in your office, but it's not impossible if the right rich guy hires the right people. To pull from my earlier examples, AEW seems to be doing absolutely fine for themselves just at the moment, despite having existed in any real way for less than one year.
They aren't comparable. Vince set aside a ton of money to restart the XFL and still folded it. Arena league filed for bankruptcy last year. AAF had a good amount of money to start and needed a bailout from one owner to get past week two, and that was for a betting app. The XFL even if it did continue through the rest of the season would have lost money this year and probably next as well with no TV or ownership money. And you don't really attract better talent as a developmental league. The IDEA is that there's big money to be made with spring football in the US. The reality is high operating costs and no profit. And actually AEW could have made money soon if things hadn't gone upside down. They are way more financially viable than any spring football venture was. ROH or TNA or smaller promotions can operate on a shoestring budget and make a couple of bucks or break even as a labor of love like many indy promotions do. But to make a good-sized football league, you have to be willing to lose millions and millions of dollars in order to hopefully gain maybe a few hundred thousand in a few years. That's not appetizing to the people who have that kind of money, even to the ones who wanted to invest in football who have probably already invested and lost all of it.
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ssdrivin
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Post by ssdrivin on Apr 13, 2020 6:19:27 GMT -5
I still think there's some relevance in that there have been big names involved in small promotions which didn't go anywhere despite that, but fair points both, I'm not super clued up on the American football landscape, so maybe I misread some context. Seems I was perhaps a little hasty in making the comparison.
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Post by Joe Neglia on Apr 13, 2020 13:21:43 GMT -5
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Post by Dub H on Apr 13, 2020 13:31:05 GMT -5
Owed to who in this case?Not full on the loop and bankrupcies cases confuse me.
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Post by Cyno on Apr 13, 2020 13:33:11 GMT -5
The operating costs of running a wrestling promotion, even one as big as WWE or AEW, and the costs of running an actual sports league are apples and oranges. There's no real comparison.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 13, 2020 13:33:59 GMT -5
Owed to who in this case?Not full on the loop and bankrupcies cases confuse me. Big thing is probably having to pay their way out of their TV contracts since they can’t fulfill their end of the bargain.
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ssdrivin
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Post by ssdrivin on Apr 13, 2020 13:37:39 GMT -5
Well, shit. That seems pretty definitive.
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Post by XIII on Apr 13, 2020 13:42:36 GMT -5
NFL needs to buy the BattleHawks
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Post by Alyce: Old Media Enthusiast on Apr 13, 2020 14:15:34 GMT -5
How in the hell did this end up being relevant a second time?
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Post by "Evil Brood" Jackson Vanik on Apr 13, 2020 14:21:41 GMT -5
I loved the XFL but that whole "WWE and the XFL are totally separate entities thing" -
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Post by eJm on Apr 13, 2020 14:27:45 GMT -5
I loved the XFL but that whole "WWE and the XFL are totally separate entities thing" - Like, the circumstances aren't ideal but having that just put out there after all the lawsuits and such...F***.
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XIII
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Post by XIII on Apr 13, 2020 14:29:15 GMT -5
I loved the XFL but that whole "WWE and the XFL are totally separate entities thing" - LOL. This explains so much. Vince gonna Vince. No real surprise there
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