“It’s a risk like any startup.” St. Louis Business Journal’s Nathan Rubbelke on XFL’s STL Return

By Reid Johnson

On the August 19th edition of The Markcast, Nathan Rubbelke of the St. Louis Business Journal sat down to talk about the XFL (and potentially the BattleHawks) returning to the city of St. Louis in February 2023.

“It's amazing to see the enthusiasm still for the battle Hawks as at the grocery store last night, saw a BattleHawk shirts. So, you know, it'll be interesting to see if they can get the same engagement.”

St. Louis was one of the strongest franchises for the XFL back in 2020, and Nathan is curious to see if this new iteration backed by Dany Garcia, The Rock and Redbird Capital can “capitalize” pardon the pun on the hard work that was done back with the 2020 regime.

“I think a lot of that went to the team they had here for the, for the last iteration, the XFL. Kurt Hunzeker, who was the team president, really built a grassroots campaign. And of course, you had the people kind of wanted to stick it to the NFL here after the Rams left. So I think that was a huge driving factor of it of saying, ‘Hey, you didn't say, you said St. Louis, wasn't a football town, let us show you that it, that it actually is.’”

The million-dollar question with the XFL officially announcing its return to St. Louis is whether or not the “BattleHawks” team nickname will return when the league does.

“I know there's a lot of angst here when they made the initial announcement, it didn't give team names. Why in the world would they change, you know, moving the BattleHawks? That might not matter in a market like Seattle, it might make sense to rebrand.”

Besides covering sports in the city of St. Louis, Nathan also focuses his reporting on tech and startups. He likens the XFL 3.0 return to a tech startup when it comes to fundraising and looking for investors. On the topic of the XFL looking to sell off potentially 35%-45% of a stake in its league before the inaugural season has even kicked off, Rebbelke responded with:

“It doesn't really worry me a whole lot when I look at the league and what you're trying to accomplish. I kind look as sort of a startup you know. If you say you're a software company, and you're developing some sort of software, you might go out and raise a little bit of money at the start because you need some money to get this going, but then you're gonna create, you know, you're kind of minimal product. They could go to market at that point, you're probably gonna go out and raise more capital saying, ‘Hey, here we built it, we see opportunity here. Let's raise capital so we can grow it further.’ I kind of see that's where the XFL is at, they've got it kind of all the pieces put together and now they sort of need the capital probably to, to do some of the initiatives you just talked about in terms of social media and hiring.”

“It’s a risk like any startup, but I think I wouldn't be worried about it. I think it's just a growth initiative for them that I'm sure they had. They probably have figured bringing in capital. The question is, is it sooner or later than they wanted?”

In terms of the XFL and the USFL both seeking investors and funds at the same time, Rubbelke does view the USFL as more transparent in terms of the moves they’re looking to accomplish in the short-term future.

“They've (XFL) really kept a lot of things in the room about their plans. I know they'll start talking more about that as games get closer, but it has been hard to kind of track what their strategy is. Where I feel like the USFL, maybe it's been a little bit more open about you know what they're doing and why, so I'm hoping the XFL kind of gives us a peek behind the curtain, a little more into the business operations.”

With the XFL’s decision for the next 3 years to house their teams and staff in Arlington, Texas, and to fly them into local markets for game days, the XFL knows that they need to go out of their way to engage and interact with the local fanbases in their markets so that audience interest is high when the XFL takes the field in February of 2023. Nathan Rubbelke views the recent work of St. Louis head coach Anthony Becht making the media rounds in the city as a solid first step.

“The first kind of dipping their toes into the markets in their respective cities, and I think we're gonna see a lot more here in the next six months as they gear up for those first games.”

Be sure to check out our full interview on our YouTube channel, I’ll include the link below.