I hope you like your XFL news with a side of XFL news! As rumors continue to swirl regarding Vince McMahon’s new non-WWE venture, news has come out that said new company, Alpha Entertainment, has filed for a new trademark on the term “XFL.” This could mean any number of things, but there is definite smoke to the fire that everyone seems to be pining for.
To back up a bit: last weekend, news broke that McMahon is establishing a new company — a separate entity from WWE — called Alpha Entertainment, and said company is intended to explore sports ventures, “including professional football.” It’s entirely possible that McMahon wants to reboot the XFL, or maybe try a new football league that looks a lot like that failed venture.
Add that to a recent report that McMahon is more open to selling WWE than he has been at any point in the past, and baby, you got a stew goin’!
On Thursday, at about the same time that the new XFL trademark news broke, pro wrestling economics expert Chris Harrington discovered that Alpha Entertainment was funded — at least in part — by a big sale of WWE stock by McMahon.
Vince McMahon just sold 3.34m shares of $WWE to fund his "Alpha Entertainment LLC". (That would be worth about $105m+ USD at current stock price.)https://t.co/zj12YzrI5W pic.twitter.com/kRVL2aUioN
— Chris Harrington (@mookieghana) December 21, 2017
That’s not a massive portion of WWE stock (less than five percent), but it still gives Alpha a serious amount of capital to get started. That’s the great thing about starting a new outside venture: you can fund it by selling off chunks of your billion-dollar business. We all have billion-dollar businesses just lying around, right?
We don’t? … Crap, that explains a lot.
Long story short: Alpha Entertainment is for real, and McMahon thinks highly enough of his new venture that he’s willing to divest himself of at least a portion of his stake in WWE. Again: the XFL trademark news could just be for merchandise, or to protect the property just in case someone gets a wild idea to grab up the name before they can, but all of a sudden it’s looking like Mr. McMahon is planning to make another big splash in the sports world.
