Is the XFL taking the WWF down with it?

As smashmouth football ratings continue to fall, some wonder whether Vince McMahon is endangering his wrestling empire.

By Eric Boehlert

Feb 20, 2001 | It was supposed to be a marketing match made in heaven. In March 2000, NBC and the World Wrestling Federation pledged $100 million to launch the XFL, a new "smashmouth" football league. With the WWF's Vince McMahon and his golden raunchy touch at the helm, the XFL promised to lure young male viewers back to the network on Saturday nights with an outlandish mix of jackhammer hits on the field and bodacious cheerleaders off it.

Three weeks into the season, though, the XFL's television ratings have collapsed, and now NBC is stuck in a prime-time hell. Instead of pondering which of the eight teams will be playing in the XFL championship game come April, the better question may be, Will NBC even televise the game? (It could be punted over to TNN or UPN, networks that also carry XFL games.)

NBC had promised advertisers a modest 4.5 rating for its broadcasts of XFL games, which is actually less than what the network had been getting with its "Saturday Night Movie" earlier this year. (A ratings point represents roughly a million households.)

Yet based on preliminary data from Nielsen, last weekend's game drew just a 3.8 rating, pinning NBC in the ratings cellar for the night again. (When the final national numbers are released later in the week, that rating is likely to shrink to 3.5.)

Not only is the beleaguered league underdelivering an audience, it's not even delivering the right audience. Advertisers would likely cut the WWF and NBC some slack if the XFL were actually attracting hard-to-reach men in the 12-to-24 age bracket, which the league promised to do.

But those viewers, who as a rule don't stay home to watch TV on Saturday nights, abandoned the XFL after the first week, leaving men age 49 and up as one of the XFL's biggest demographic groups. Reaching middle-aged men was not exactly what U.S. Army recruiters had in mind when the Army signed on as the XFL's biggest advertiser.

Meanwhile, the notion that savvy cross-promotion between the testosterone-drenched XFL and NBC would provide a boost to the network's ratings-challenged NBA games has proved to be inaccurate. After two weeks of XFL games, the network aired the annual NBA All-Star Game on Feb. 11, and it went down as the lowest-rated All-Star Game in NBA history.

But NBC isn't the only one nursing its wounds. After successfully expanding its sports entertainment brand into bestselling books, platinum CDs and No. 1 video games, the usually sure-footed WWF suddenly has a rare flop on its hands. And the company is paying the price.

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