Is Vince McMahon trying to covertly buy his own bankrupt XFL?

[Sounder]

Vince will not be in on the bidding for buying the XFL out of bankruptcy. Of course there have been snarks out there accusing him of shuttering it just so he could acquire and relaunch it for pennies on the dollar. So Vince is pulling out. But there will be bidders.....
ABC/ESPN/Disney would be the preferred. I heard there are five parties bidding on it.

[Sounder]

Keep this site open fellas......we ain't done.

[MGB01]

Um how do you think they had a "crowd" on RAW?

(Which of course the AEW marks are taking credit for and is totally bordering on Jesse Ventura Story-style parody)

Besides they had an employee test positive at the Wrestlemania taping. Maybe he's just guessing (and of a course the unnamed XFL player would have never been tested if that were the case).

Roman Reigns and Sami Zayn, who both have ready-made storylines when they get back, would have been part of the roster cuts back in April if that was true. You want me to keep going down the line?

The WWE checks temperatures of the people coming in and the wrestlers wear masks. That is it. The thing about the virus is because people can have it and have not be sick to have it. They can be asymptomatic. That's the issue with WWE only checking temperatures.

So where's this big outbreak then? The state of Florida should have been the epicenter based on the Super Bowl alone, and WWE's been doing shows at the PC for over two months so obviously something's working--else half the roster would be out. This is the same fear porn that leads to "NFL rookie tests positive for COVID", and then it turns out he had it for two weeks and was cleared two weeks before the draft.

Don't trust Florida? fine. How about my state, the ground zero which has been blatantly manipulating COVID data to the point the DOH (fitting acronym BTW) stopped counting flu deaths at the end of March, with three weeks left in the season?

Now one has as much to do with the topic at hand as the other one. Let's have this discussion elsewhere, thanks.

[MGB01]

Vince will not be in on the bidding for buying the XFL out of bankruptcy. Of course there have been snarks out there accusing him of shuttering it just so he could acquire and relaunch it for pennies on the dollar. So Vince is pulling out. But there will be bidders.....
ABC/ESPN/Disney would be the preferred. I heard there are five parties bidding on it.

Problem I can see with ESPN is they're going to be tied up with so much in the next few years, where does it come from?

But they're the ones that had the perfect TV setup as a lead-in (sort of) to the NBA and could throw in a few Sundays as well. So in the absence of multiple ownership groups, this is about as good as it gets for now

[4th&long]

Let me get this straight - creditors are going to chase away their best chance of getting paid (under a new contract) by hounding Vince M out of the bidding so there may be no XFL?

Are people stupid? Its Chapter 11, its a reorg with debt clearing. - 3 options

1) he buys back and brings back most people under new contract

2) No one buys it and no gets paid (or sells for near nothing)

3) Someone else buys it (cheap) and brings in their own people.

So Coach Hayes would rather not have a job in 2021? That's how I read it.

And not just me:

>>In a deposition footnoted in Tuesday's filing, McMahon said he had reserved his legal right to be a bidder in the original bankruptcy claim. He said he did that because "I think I was trying to make up my mind." The committee's filing last week pushed him to decide against a bid, he said.
~
"Accordingly, all that the committee has managed to do," the attorneys wrote, "... is to chase away a potentially significant bidder for the debtor's assets."
~
The XFL has hired the Houlihan Lokey brokerage firm to handle the sale. Houlihan Lokey managing director William H. Hardie III said in a filing Tuesday that 20 potential purchasers have signed non-disclosure agreements to gain access to confidential company data. An additional six potential purchasers are in the process of signing similar agreements, according to the filing.<<

https://theathletic.com/1837471/2020/05 ... h-in-2021/

>> Vince McMahon has pulled out of bidding for his bankrupt XFL, but dozens of bidders are looking over the league’s financials and interested in relaunching it next February.

Those revelations came in a series of filings Tuesday, in which the league founder McMahon blamed a creditors’ committee for hounding him out of the bidding by accusing him of rigging the process.

“I don’t know why that’s out there, making me out to be the bad guy, (that) I’m going to buy the XFL back for pennies on the dollar, basically,” McMahon said last week in deposition testimony, part of which he included in a footnote to his legal filing. “That helped me move into the direction of I’m not going to be a bidder, not going to have anything to do with it. I do hope that someone will pay a lot of money for it, and I do hope that it will survive.”

The creditors’ committee last week in court papers claimed McMahon had... <<

IMO...

If no credible buyer steps up - I think VM will step in as a "white knight" buyer. Fans will be fine with that - but a third party buyer may have better luck pulling back in all the laid off front office, back office, team coaches and trainers etc...

[johnnyangryfuzzball]

IMO...

If no credible buyer steps up - I think VM will step in as a "white knight" buyer. Fans will be fine with that - but a third party buyer may have better luck pulling back in all the laid off front office, back office, team coaches and trainers etc...

I, too, think that Vince is likely to not be done with this yet if he can get his way.

But I also think that an outside buyer (unless it's a TV partner) would be less likely to want to go with the status quo and hire their own, possibly cheaper, staff.

[4th&long]

IMO...

If no credible buyer steps up - I think VM will step in as a "white knight" buyer. Fans will be fine with that - but a third party buyer may have better luck pulling back in all the laid off front office, back office, team coaches and trainers etc...

I, too, think that Vince is likely to not be done with this yet if he can get his way.

But I also think that an outside buyer (unless it's a TV partner) would be less likely to want to go with the status quo and hire their own, possibly cheaper, staff.

Agreed on outside buyer, which is why I do not understand the pushing off of VM. Granted some coaches may never go back so they have a scorched earth policy, but lets face it they got paid for 2020, and only way they can get paid in full in 2021 is if it survives.

XFL proved that they had a better model than AAF - Large markets = better attendance and TV ratings. Big nets = Bigger TV ratings. AAF was not without hope but SLC and Memphis and maybe Birm were not needed, ie too small. Even SA, SD are smaller than any XFL market but were much closer.

Is there any chance of Tom Dundon buying in? Possibly with others? He knew XFL was the issue vs AAF. With his experience and XFL potential he could make a go at it.

[Tank55]

There's always a chance, but I'd be very surprised if Dundon ever gets involved in startup football again.

[MGB01]

I hope Hayes wouldn't be like that, otherwise I might have to go back and push the possibility that Chris Warren (who was about as much of a punt returner as Earl Thomas is) called fair catch right before JH blew him up before the dramatic last series in the Derrick Thomas seven-sack game.

[Sounder]

I was looking to see if I could discover just who other than Fox/Disney would do something with this. I know Sinclair, a broadcasting conglomerate with 200+ stations in it's cache.....as well as a large number of Fox rsn's.....has stated an interest in growing it's sports footprint for it's regional sports holdings as well as nationally distributed digital service Stadium. It owns KOMO TV in this market, an ABC affiliate. They own Fox affilated stations across the country as well. Could it be a player? Those of us tired of frisbee, strongman contest, and Shogun fights might like the idea.