I don’t think it ever works as an independent body. Independent professional sports eventually all devolve into some form of novelty sport for a simple reason — nobody cares. People care whether their favorite college or NFL teams win.
The NBA has to some degree propped up the G League and WNBA financially, but those leagues would almost certainly be losing money as an independent body. MLB props up the minor leagues to a certain extent, supplying them with talent and an affiliation that people do care about.
The XFL drew 17k to four games its opening week. That’s not very good considering they are in pretty large markets already. They’re playing a ten game season with one playoff round, which means they max out six games of revenue. There are tickets going for as low as $20, so I don’t see how they drive a large amount of revenue with its attendance. It costs a lot of money to play football, you have to fly 100 or more people from city to city, pay for hotels, meals, uniforms, staff the stadium, pay players, coaches and everyone else involved in the operations.
You can’t find stats, rosters, standings, box scores or any other information on ESPN.com. By contrast, the G League has all that info available online at ESPN in real time.
That almost certainly means the XFL isn’t investing in the technology to make that info immediately available. Many of the team websites have photos that look like they were taken by mom who snuck on to the field.
The reports of player salaries are all over the map, with some reports of salaries as low as $27k. But regardless, guys are walking away from millions in the NFL to retire early and live a normal life. Guys with name recognition who were college stars probably aren’t signing up to play for what they could make at Home Depot.
I hate to be Debbie Downer, but there have been a ton of side football leagues come and go over the years. The only one with staying power has been the CFL, which is operating in a completely different country, but has never really caught on here much.
I think anything you put on TV will get some eyeballs — Literally. People watch bowling, Honey Boo Boo, people cooking spaghetti and all sorts of other random nonsense. So if its long term purpose is to be a league that just takes up space on one of the 800 channels for people who don’t want to go outside, it might work.
If people think it’s going to someday rival the NFL or be anything more than another version of the Arena League — I don’t see it.
