XFL Futures and Week 1 lines via William Hill

Odds to win 2020 XFL Championship
Dallas Renegades 3/1
Tampa Bay Vipers 3/1
DC Defenders 9/2
St. Louis Battlehawks 13/2
Seattle Dragons 8/1
Houston Roughnecks 17/2
Los Angeles Wildcats 17/2
New York Guardians 12/1

XFL Week 1 betting lines
Seattle Dragons vs DC Defenders (-7), Saturday, 2p.m. ET/1p.m. CT, ABC
Los Angeles Wildcats vs Houston Roughnecks (-5), Saturday, 5p.m. ET/4 p.m. CT, Fox
Tampa Bay Vipers (-5.5) vs New York Guardians, Sunday, 2p.m. ET/1p.m. CT, Fox
St Louis Battlehawks vs Dallas Renegades (-7), Sunday 5p.m. ET/4 p.m. CT, ESPN

 

Man!
You would have to a total degen to bet on a fledgling league filled with has beens and never weres.

 

If I were in Vegas I'd probably money line the four dogs just for the hell of it.

 

If they hang a line on it and you feel you have an edge you go to the window.
Doesn't matter if its the XFL or raindrops racing down a window.

 

You're not wrong....but this is also the best type of league to find a bad line you can exploit.

 

This is Christmas Day Blue vs. Gray Game levels of gambling degeneracy. Is He Hate Me the Commissioner?

 

Did they post lines for " Does XFL finish the first season " ?

 

I went to an XFL game at Sam Boyd Stadium.
They wanted 200 dollars for a He Hate Me jersey.
After the league folded my brother picked up XFL jackets at a liquidation store in MA called Building 19.
I still have my Los Angeles Xtreme jacket .
I'll be wearing it this weekend to have some small talk buzz

 

Not to mention a league where the teams are all owned by the same guy. Every questionable call should be met with healthy skepticism as Vince McMahon will do everything in his power to ensure the ratings are high and I would not put it past him to make sure teams in the big markets end up playing in the playoffs.

On another note, the first week of the old XFL had 14.1 million viewers. I wonder if this new league gets even half of that.

 

Picks from Bank The Book.com on the weekend games
DC Defenders -6.5
LA Wildcats +4.5
Tampa Bay Vipers -3
Dallas Renegades -7
Analysis is in this link: https://www.bangthebook.com/xfl-betting-picks-predictions/678352/
Let's see how good or bad these picks are.

 

I would flat bet every underdog money line.

 

Wow, didn't know Vince McMahon is running this. I stopped watching Wrestling and the NBA in middle school once I found out both sports scripted predetermined outcomes, one being more flamboyant than the other.

They mentioned the XFL on local sports talk radio today, and said it should have staying power as long as the games are televised, which they stated all the games will be split across a few networks. There are no meaningful sports this time of year (next meaningful American sport event is the NCAA bracket gambling extravaganza), and should be able to top sports ratings until "March Madness" due to the "football" fanaticism of the typical average American sports fan.

 

The ABC and/or ESPN games on TV will have point spreads on their score scroll.
Could not remember the exact wording from web article that I read.
Fox will not have any gambling info.

 

After action report, maybe a degen, maybe smart. Followed similar model of the AAF, was on all 4 unders and all 4 dogs. Cashed 3/4 dogs and 3/4 unders. The AAF league had plenty of unders because it's so much easier to teach defense than offense and it showed. I would think the books may over adjust next week so I will be watching it carefully. The unique scoring makes the O/U especially intriguing. The game really discourages punting because of the touchback rules so you see more 4 and outs and better field position. Once the offenses gel I can see scoring starting to tick up. However points after tourchdown seem to be way down. They are expecting the 1 pt to be about 50% 2 pt to be about 33% and 3 point to be around 5%. This is where the game totals get tricky. Previously 6 touchdowns was the magic number to get to 42 about 75 percent of games historically go over this number. However now you're talking about needing at least 1 extra score to push this total if you only get the PAT 1/2 the time 6 touchdowns is 36 plus 3 is 39. 49 another big benchmark of 7 touchdowns now needs possibly an extra touchdown.

While this league was all about offense, if the market reaction is not significant I expect I will be on all 4 unders, and probably all 4 home teams or maybe dogs haven't decided that yet.

Kickoffs are cool but again better field position should lead to better scoring down the road.

 

Narrator: They didn't get half of the old XFL's viewers this time around.

Viewership peaked for Saturday's games at 4 million viewers. The issue the old XFL had was that they started at 14 million and the last week of the season they had like 2 million. The XFL V2 better hope they don't have the same drop. With all that said, it has not been a good 10 days for Vince McMahon's financial portfolio.

 

You shouldn't expect the ratings of an NBC televised evening football game in 2001 to compare to a Saturday afternoon game on ABC in 2020. If they can draw 2-3 M a game in 2020 for weekend afternoon games, that will make the networks quite happy. It's a very different world. TNT is paying a gazillion dollars to air NBA games that draw under 2 M viewers a pop, on average.

ANYTHING sports related that draws 1.5 M viewers is a valuable property in 2020. The question is, can they draw it, and can they draw enough at the gate? Personally, I'd be slightly more concerned that your big season opener football games drew 17k fans, on average.

 

IIRC, those games on NBC were on a Saturday night back in 2001, historically the lowest rated night for all ratings and they still had 14 million viewers. I am not sure what to make of the attendance. Part of me says that they are ecstatic to get 17k people to the games and hope that the product on the field will lead to more people going to the games since the tickets are cheap. The other part of me says that they need to be concerned that, as the teams shake out, getting 17k will be a great week. If that Tampa team plays like that every week, their homes games might get 4k people by the end of the season.

To the overall product, I watched about 3 halves worth of the XFL and the play on the field is clearly that of guys not good enough to be on the 53 man roster for an NFL team. WRs who can't run routes or catch the ball, QBs who throw in to quadruple coverage, defensive players who can't tackle or cover a WR. The games reminded me a LOT of watching the 4th pre-season game of the NFL, where none of the starters are playing and by the second quarter the team is playing guys who are all getting cut before the start of practice the next day.

 

Attendance for the 4 XFL games:
St Louis Dallas 17,206
Tampa Bay NY 17.634
LA Houston 17,815
Seattle DC 17,163
Total fans 69,818 were in attendance to watch the first week of XFL

 

That lime green color of Tampa just did not look that 'tough' to me..I like the logo however...

 

I liked that logo and set of unis the best. The Guardians...yeesh, just a terrible, generic uniform.