• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, June 13, 2023

If sports is such a big thing for live, linear TV, why have professional football league competitors failed over the past 40 years?

The latest version of the XFL, under first-year ownership by a group led by actor Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson, might be getting closer -- even as it lost $60 million in its first year in operation, according to Forbes.

Rule changes to spike viewership, as well as strong TV network carriage on ESPN and Fox Sports, continue. Next year it is estimated that the league could get to $100 million in revenue -- from ticket sales and rights fees. The league did not estimate net losses -- or profitability.

This year, the collective national TV revenues totaled an estimated $17.1 million, according to EDO Ad EnGage -- ABC ($9.8 million), ESPN ($6.4 million), ESPN2 ($140, 100), Fox Sports 1 ($797,900), as well as ESPN+.  All that means is there is a way to go -- for the league and for the TV distributors.

Johnson and its investors still believe starting a NFL-type sports franchise -- the NFL being the most profitable and highest revenue-producing U.S pro sport -- is just good business. That is why TV-focused entrepreneurs believed this was a good idea, going way back to the start of the USFL in the early 80s.

Back then there wasn't a real concern about the health of live, linear TV. But as that business continues to get squeezed, the hope is that it will have staying power when other programming alternatives crumble or move entirely to streaming services.

Johnson says he and his investors are in it for the long term. It bought the league from Vince McMahon for a very modest $15 million in 2020.

The XFL -- which recently ended its first season -- touted that it is getting noticed in terms of quality. Of the 408 players that played this year, on a total of eight teams,  67 had been invited to workout for NFL teams with 22 signing NFL contracts. 

For many -- at least in the NFL itself -- that's a good start -- that the play on the field is NFL-like quality.

Consumers, viewers? Maybe that's another story.  The league averaged anywhere between 400,000 and 800,000 a game.

The XFL Championship game -- the most-watched game of the year -- had a total of 1.43 million average viewers. The Super Bowl totaled just under 100 times that number.

The problem then remains, convincing potential fans and consumers this league is the real deal when it comes to tackling what remains of the linear TV playbook.