In 1999, World Wrestling Federation chairman Vince McMahon was offered the chance to buy the Argonauts, and countered with a proposal to buy the entire league and "have it migrate south", which the owners refused. McMahon would instead partner with NBC to create the XFL, which would place teams in Birmingham, Las Vegas, and Memphis at the same stadiums as their respective CFL franchises previously played. Following massive losses, NBC and the WWF shuttered the XFL after one year, though it would return nineteen years later—conspicuously absent from any markets where the CFL resided.