XFL Returning In January 2020

On Thursday, WWE founder and chairman Vince McMahon announced that he’s bringing back the XFL, which is slated to begin in January 2020.

“The new XFL is an exciting opportunity to reimagine America’s favorite sport,” said McMahon. “As we move towards kickoff, we look forward to listening and implementing innovative ideas from players, coaches, medical experts, technology executives, the media and most importantly football fans.”

According to McMahon, the XFL’s first season will have eight teams located around the country and play a 10-week schedule.

The plan is to have the initial outlay of money for the league at around $100 million, which happens to be the same amount of WWE stock McMahon sold last month.

“I wanted to do this since the day we stopped the other one,” McMahon told ESPN. “A chance to do it with no partners, strictly funded by me, which would allow me to look in the mirror and say, ‘You were the one who screwed this up,’ or ‘You made this thing a success.‘”

McMahon says that they plan to have faster games around two hours long and they won’t have cheerleaders, players with arrest records and they will require all players to stand for the national anthem.

“People don’t want social and political issues coming into play when they are trying to be entertained,” McMahon said. “We want someone who wants to take a knee to do their version of that on their personal time.”

As for why the league will be successful this time around, McMahon mentioned that television ratings no longer dictate success.

“To me the landscape has changed in so many different ways,” McMahon said. “Just look at technology and companies like Facebook and Amazon bidding for sports rights. Even if ratings go down, there’s no denying that live sports rights continue to be valuable and continue to deliver.”

“I don’t think people want to see the same thing when they’re streaming as they see on television,” McMahon said. “That’s boring. I think fans want it shot in a totally different way, and I think there’s an immersive opportunity that’s more interactive to the game.”

The NFL has dealt with issues in recent years, but McMahon says that the decision to relaunch the XFL has nothing to do with that.

“The start of this league has nothing to do with the NFL’s troubles,” McMahon said. “What has happened there is their business, and I’m not going to knock those guys, but I am going to learn from their mistakes as anyone would if they were tasked with reimagining a new football league.”

Although, McMahon did say: “One thing we are not is a development league for the NFL.”

We’ll have more regarding the XFL as the news is available.