Vince McMahon says he isn’t trying to swerve anyone and buy back the XFL, which he put into bankruptcy due to the COVID-19 pandemic after a half-season.
The news came out of a bankruptcy filing Tuesday. The WWE impresario said he was keeping his options open in the original filing so he had a chance to “make up my mind.” The committee’s filing last week pushed him to decide against a bid, he said.
“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 in the deposition. “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.”
McMahon originally launched the XFL in 2001 and rebooted the league in 2019. McMahon owned 80% of the league through his management company Alpha Entertainment and 20% through the WWE.
The second incarnation of the XFL made it through five weeks before the pandemic shut it down and McMahon decided to take the bankruptcy route. A report last week suggested he was going to try and buy the league back at a discount.
The XFL has hired the Houlihan Lokey brokerage firm to handle the sale. Letters of intent are due June 12 from interested parties. Final bids are due July 6, subject to approval by the bankruptcy court, in hopes of putting potential new owners in position to get the XFL back on the field in spring 2021, if desired.
