5 Things To Watch For During XFL Week 1
1. How Is The New XFL Presented?
For all the mistakes of the original XFL, one of its lasting legacies was the innovations it popularized in how football is presented. The NFL essentially owes the skycam to the XFL, as even reports at the time hailed the league's unprecedented access and camera angles.
This time around, the XFL looks poised to continue trying to bring some of those innovations to the sport's broadcasts. According to the Sports Business Journal's John Ourand (h/t Awful Announcing), the XFL is going to return to giving fans unprecedented access into the minds and mentalities of the coaches and players on the field as the action unfolds.
The success of broadcast decisions like that could draw in more viewers and help the league create stars by showcasing their personalities to the world during games. In other words, it could be a way for the XFL to further differentiate itself once again by hooking viewers with compelling content that they can't get from any other football league.
That could go a long way towards making the XFL a success, at least in the short term, even if it were to take a little while for the quality of play to pick up.