Dwayne Johnson, actor and former WWE star and his group of investors have accepted to buy the XFL for $15 million, according to a statement that was released to newsmen on Monday morning.
This comes as the XFL declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy on the 13th of April and has been seeking investors to come forward with offers for the past three months now, marketing itself as a made-for-TV product that could transition as early as 2021 to a bubble concept during the coronavirus pandemic.
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The movie superstar Dwayne Johnson and his investment partners, which include Dany Garcia along with RedBird Capital Partners are planning to play next season.
“We’re planning for it,” said Garcia, the first female owner of a major American sports league. “We’re doing all the steps that need to happen for the execution of that. But we’re also being mindful of what has actually been successful.
“It has been really interesting to see that in sports when you create a bubble, your players are safe. When you don’t, it’s chaos. We are a league, because of the number of teams we have, that actually can create a bubble environment. Those discussions are active.”
Going forward, the sale has to be approved by a bankruptcy judge at a hearing on Friday this week. Although on Monday afternoon, the bankruptcy court’s committee of unsecured creditors filed an objection as a result of some assets included in the sale proposal.
Garcia also confirmed that she will have an executive position with the XFL and that both she and Johnson will have a hands-on approach to running the league. When asked about hiring other executive-level leaders, she said: “We’ve been in close discussion with the current XFL management team.”
“There are a lot of excellent people in that team,” Garcia said. “While it’s not 100% just turning the lights on, there is still a tremendous amount of infrastructure and relationships that you can actually call people back, pull people back. We saw the work that they were doing for this year, and there was some excellent, excellent work. There is a team there.”
XFL president and chief operating officer Jeffrey Pollack is among the league’s few active employees. Most were laid off on April 10 this year due to a shortage of fund.
McMahon had considered bidding on the XFL himself in the early stage of the bankruptcy process but later decided to back off.
Dwayne Johnson in a statement provided a glimpse of the McMahon-like flair he could bring to the league.
“The acquisition of the XFL with my talented partners, Dany Garcia and Gerry Cardinale, is an investment for me that’s rooted deeply in two things — my passion for the game and my desire to always take care of the fans.
“With pride and gratitude for all that I’ve built with my own two hands, I plan to apply these callouses to the XFL and look forward to creating something special for the players, fans, and everyone involved for the love of football,” said Johnson, who played football at the University of Miami from 1990 to 1994.
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While Pollack in a statement described the pending transaction as “a Hollywood ending” and said Johnson’s investors are “a dream team ownership group and the XFL is in the best possible hands going forward.”
Currently, Cardinale is the managing partner and CEO of RedBird, which manages more than $4 billion in assets. Last week, it bought a controlling interest in Toulouse Football Club, a French soccer team. In November, it invested $125 million in a new company that secures commercial rights for the NFL
