“I’ll chase him round Good Hope, and round the Horn, and round the Norway Maelstrom, and round perdition’s flames before I give him up.’’
— Captain Ahab, on his quest to hunt down Moby Dick
“The new XFL will kick off in 2020 and quite frankly, we’re going to give the game of football back to fans. It’s still football, but it’s football re-imagined.”
— Vince McMahon, on his quest to bring back the XFL
Two years from now, perhaps shortly after the final gun of Super Bowl 54, Vince McMahon will set sail on the sports media sea in his quest to hunt down his white whale — the XFL, resurrecting the body of his failed football league.
By the time this latest voyage ends, McMahon could lose more than a leg.
I have the utmost respect for McMahon’s business acumen and his impact on American culture today. His fingerprints are everywhere — the showmanship on display at U.S. Bank Stadium, the reality television that dominates programming, even into the White House.
But this? Start a new football league? He might as well be a tobacco farmer in Virginia.
McMahon wants to sell a product whose narrative today is one of what has gone wrong, not what is going right. He is launching a new football league at a time when television ratings continue to spiral downward — the traditional television ratings for Super Bowl 52 Sunday were the lowest since 2009 — with no clear answers as to why.
AUDIO: Sportscasting great James Brown with Thom Loverro
I get that advertisers still want to buy time on NFL games. It’s live TV, perhaps the only place where they can be assured that viewers won’t DVR their way through their costly product messages.
But even if they are watching, there are less of them, and despite claims of record revenue, the fact remains that for the past two seasons, the NFL’s rate of “givebacks” — free advertising because of declining ratings — has been more than 20 percent. And, according to Ad Week, a big drop in December resulted in a drop in ad revenue for 2017.
“The NFL is experiencing a structural decline in viewership, and it is going to be an issue,” analyst Michael Nathanson told Recode.net.
A recent Wall Street Journal and NBC News poll (this year’s Super Bowl was hosted by NBC Sports) showed that the number of adults who say they follow the NFL has dropped by 9 percent since 2014. And their core audience — men 18 to 49 — has dropped by 24 percent since 2014.
In this landscape of the business of football, McMahon wants to set up shop
The WWE czar would have you believe the problem is the NFL — the most powerful sports entity in America that has grown the game to a level that dwarfs other professional sports competitors. All of a sudden, the business operation that printed money was doing things the wrong way. The national anthem protests, instant replay, penalty overload, poor quality of play — all have been pointed to as reasons for the downward direction of the sport that has known no direction but up for the last 60 years.
McMahon seems to believe these problems can be addressed and overcome. “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.”
The biggest problem though, may be the product itself, reimagined or otherwise — football, no matter whose league it is.
Unless McMahon is the 21st century version of Jonas Salk, he is about to start a league where, by the time 2020 comes around, the product that he will be investing $100 million of his own money in may be banned nationwide for youths 14 and under because of fears of long-term brain damage, with no answers in sight. The count so far of states proposing to ban tackle football is three and counting — including Maryland.
The day following McMahon’s XFL announcement, there was a panel discussion in Washington about the future of football, and former NFL linebacker Chris Borland, who retired three years ago after one season in the league, called for only flag football for any children 13 and under.
By the time McMahon’s XFL starts, it may air with a surgeon general’s warning.
There are some aspects of the league that appear on the right track — single entity ownership by McMahon, as opposed to franchises, which will give him total control. It’s what helped UFC grow to what it has become today. And, given the streaming landscape and options such as Facebook, You Tube and others, a traditional television contract may not be necessary for success.
Also, with NFL Players Association boss DeMaurice Smith’s declaration that the union is preparing for “war” in the labor talks when their current deal with the league runs out in 2021, McMahon may position himself as an alternative for players if there is some sort of work stoppage. But that;s temporary, at best. We are talking about small goals, not lofty ones — Arena Football, not the NFL.
In case, you haven’t been paying attention, the Arena Football League — the only real professional league besides the NFL that has sustained some sort of existence of note over the past 20 years — is down to four teams, and two of them are owned by Washington Wizards and Capitals owner Ted Leonsis.
Yet here is McMahon, opening up a shopping mall in an online world.
“I wanted to do this since the day we stopped the other one. 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.’”
— Vince McMahon, ESPN interview on resurrecting the XFL
“From hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee. Ye damned whale.”
— Captain Ahab, his last shot at the white whale
• Thom Loverro hosts his weekly podcast “Cigars & Curveballs” Wednesdays available on iTunes, Google Play and the reVolver podcast network.
• Thom Loverro can be reached at tloverro@washingtontimes.com.
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