Dwayne Johnson Just Signed A Major Deal With The NFL
Dwayne Johnson just signed a major deal with the NFL and it is looking like he is going to now help the sport innovate and grow.
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Dwayne Johnson is a star’s star. The dude seems to find major success with just about everything he gets involved with, a testament to his insane work ethic and almost generational charisma. While we mostly know him from his work on the big screen, taking part in blockbuster after blockbuster with more on the way, the actor has also just gotten back into the sports space, essentially where he got his start. According to Variety, the Dwayne Johnson-owned XFL has just signed a deal with the NFL meant to have the two entities working together to grow the game of football.
This new deal between Dwayne Johnson’s XFL and the National Football League will be around helping the latter develop new systems, better rules, and better mental and physical training techniques in an effort to grow the sport as a whole. The XFL, at least to start, won’t be hosting any games in their league, but rather will be working in different training environments to better improve play on the field and also to innovate around in-game experiences. They say there’s a plan to leverage technology as well as training systems to really improve the play on the field as well as the fan experience. It’s definitely an interesting partnership, one that would seem to have a much better chance of success knowing Dwayne Johnson is involved.
For what it’s worth, Dwayne Johnson hasn’t always been involved with the XFL. The league was originally founded all the way back in 2001 by the WWE’s Vince McMahon. It was meant to compete with the NFL by adding an “extreme” layer to the sport, eschewing some of the basic safety rules in the place. It lasted all of one season at the time with ratings cratering after the first week of games. McMahon rebooted the league in 2018 and in 2020 they started playing games again. This timing was unfortunate with the Covid-19 pandemic essentially all but canceling the rest of the season. They filed for bankruptcy and in stepped Dwayne Johnson with business partner Danny Garcia who bought the entire league for $15 million dollars.
It will be interesting to see where this partnership with the NFL goes and if it makes the XFL actually commercially viable going forward. For starters, working with the NFL rather than competing against it puts Dwayne Johnson and company on significantly better footing than the original iteration. From a business and practical stance, it would seem Dwayne Johnson is already setting the league up for better success. From here, it will be fascinating to see how the two entities work together and whether they are able to help each grow and innovate.
As for Dwayne Johnson, well he’s gearing up for another big year. This summer will see him officially enter the DC Extended Universe when Black Adam hits the big screen. It’s sure to be a blockbuster of the highest order and the early looks at his character, as well as the other Justice Society of America folks seem pretty incredible. That movie is slated to hit screens on July 29th.
