Bankruptcy Court Approves Of Sale of XFL To The Rock, Dany Garcia and RedBird Capital

As we reported earlier this week, The Rock bought the XFL in a $15 million purchase with RedBird Capital and his business partner Dany Garcia. ESPN reports that early this morning, a bankruptcy court in Delaware has officially approved the sale. US District Judge Laurie Silverstein approved the decision after the XFL settled a dispute over the price with the court’s unsecured creditors committee. The sale will be finalized later this month and includes $9 million in payment of cure amounts.

Garcia, who will have an executive position with the XFL, said: “We’re doing all the steps that need to happen for the execution of that. But we’re also being mindful to what has actually been successful. It has been really interesting to see that [in sports], when you create a bubble, your players are safe. When you don’t, it’s chaos. We are a league, because of the number of teams we have, that actually can create a bubble environment. Those discussions are active.

We’ve been in close discussion with the current XFL management team. There are a lot of excellent people in that team. While it’s not 100 percent just turning the lights on, there is still a tremendous amount of infrastructure and relationships that you can actually call people back, pull people back. We saw the work that they were doing for this year, and there was some excellent, excellent work. There is a team there.”

The XFL declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy on April 13, less than a month after the 2020 season was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. While over thirty individuals or groups had interest in the sale, the bid from The Rock, Garcia and RedBird were the only qualified bid. A planned auction set for Monday was cancelled. President and chief operating officer Jeffrey Pollack said the sale was a ‘Hollywood ending’ to the process. Garcia has said that they are planning a 2021 launch.