Despite the fact that WWE CEO Vince McMahon repeated that the wrestling company that he sits atop will have nothing to do with the re-formation of the XFL, stock for the company has made a steady rise through the course of the day.
WWE stock opened the morning at $33.61 and dipped to $33.39 during the corresponding window of time that the announcement of a press conference was made. It then gained steam through the day and peaked at $34.02 at the conclusion of the press conference.
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McMahon took part in a live-streamed conference call to answer questions about the formation of the league — which will take the field in 2020.
One of the questions that was asked time and again on the call was what role did — and will — political statements have in his league, which McMahon quickly deflated.
“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.”
The league will have 8-teams (and here are some speculative locations), play a 10-game season, with two semifinals before a championship game. The rosters will be 40-players and the contracts will be for a 52-week payday, allowing players to live, work, play and contribute to the cities that they are employed by.
“Every city is on our radar,” McMahon said on the call.
McMahon is self-funding the league, at the current time. He sold nearly 3.5 million shares of his WWE stock to raise $100 million in capital to make the XFL resurface.
It will, so he claims, be a faster-paced game with an ideal length of two hours. McMahon alluded to the idea of eliminating halftime altogether to keep fans engaged and said that the goal is to return football to the fans.
McMahon added that the decision to bring the XFL back had nothing to do with public perception of the NFL taking consistent hits with national anthem, concussions, and off-the-field issues rather that this move has been on his radar since the last league shut down in 2001.
“I wanted to do this since the day we stopped the other one,” McMahon told ESPN in an exclusive interview. “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.’”
