December 25, 2017 Wrestling Observer Newsletter: The Vince McMahon football mystery, women’s Royal Rumble

A tweet by Brad Shepard about Vince McMahon restarting the XFL has led to confirmation of McMahon starting his own holding company and registering football-related names in September.

Shepard wrote that an announcement would be made on 1/25 for the rebirth of the XFL, the brainchild of Vince McMahon that turned into a co-ownership with NBC. The league lasted one season, 2001, and when all was said and done, both partners had lost a total of $137,988,000.

Because the XFL is sometimes referred to as the greatest professional sports failure of all-time, the initial reaction was that reviving it would be a terrible idea. McMahon actually teased it in the closing seconds of the “30 for 30″ special on the league that aired on ESPN.

But the landscape is completely different now than it was at that point in time. The XFL business model was the idea of building a football brand and making money through things like live ticket sales, merchandise and sharing in television ad revenue.

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