The upstart football league XFL announced multi-year agreements with The Walt Disney Company and FOX Sports to broadcast games for its inaugural 2020 season and beyond.
The games are set to air weekly on ABC and FOX, with other games appearing across ESPN, ESPN2, FS1 and FS2. The schedule ensures the games will be televised each day over the weekend; starting Saturday afternoons at 2 pm ET followed by two additional ones on Sunday afternoons. ESPN and ABC, both owned by Disney, will air key games, such as the season opener and championship.
The XFL’s first season is set to kickoff on Saturday, February 8, 2020 with teams in Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, New York, St. Louis, Seattle, Tampa Bay and Washington D.C. The football league, which will run opposite the NFL season, has yet to announce streaming partners (saying “stay tuned” in a response to SportTechie), though ESPN commonly livestreams content that appears on its linear TV channels.
By comparison, the Alliance of American Football, which was a rival spring league that abruptly closed its doors in April, had deals to broadcast through TNT and livestream via B/R Live. Its broadcast ambitions were far lighter than the XFL’s in that TNT was scheduled to televise just one AAF regular season game and one playoff game each year of a multi-year deal, while B/R Live was set to stream one game per week.
“We are thrilled to partner with ESPN and FOX Sports, two innovative media companies with extensive experience in world-class football production that will undoubtedly help us reimagine football,” said Vince McMahon, XFL’s founder and chairman.
Burke Magnus, ESPN’s executive vice president or programming and scheduling, said McMahon and XFL Commissioner Oliver Luck are “two of the sports industry’s most creative and experienced leaders” that have demonstrated “exciting plans” for their league.
“We believe in their vision for the XFL, which will be a great addition to our year-round commitment to football,” he said.
Separately on Monday, the sports technology and money blog John Wall St. reported that the XFL has been “quietly collaborating” with the NFL on a variety of rules and technology initiatives. However, in a text message to SportTechie, the XFL said that report was not accurate, and that the two are not collaborating.
Last month, SportTechie published a report about the XFL’s X Lab, an experimental division that has the football league exploring new technologies and rules changes to implement in the 2020 season and beyond. As part of those efforts, the XFL recently held a technology showcase at The Spring League, a developmental league for professional football.