WWE Sold To Endeavor
WWE is the biggest professional wrestling company in the world. It’s been that way since it started about 60 years ago. For the past few months, the company has been breaking its own records for sales, revenue, etc. The recent success has been very crucial for WWE as they were looking to sell the company for the past couple of months. Today, they reached a deal with Endeavor to acquire the biggest wrestling company in the world.
WWE And UFC Merging
Endeavor announced that they will be forming a new company to merge the WWE and UFC. Endeavor is the parent company of UFC. WWE shareholders will hold 49% controlling interest and Endeavor will hold 51%. Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel will be leading the company as the CEO. The new company’s President and COO will be Mark Shapiro. Furthermore, Vince McMahon will be the Executive Chairman of the Board. Thus far, Dana White will remain President of the UFC and Nick Khan will remain President of WWE.
WWE will be sold at a value of $9.3 billion. In terms of shares, it’s $106 per share before any post-end dividend. In order to stay at $150 million, WWE and UFC will contribute cash to the new company.
What Does This Mean?
While not much has been confirmed about what will or won’t change, we can speculate. For starters, it’s safe to assume that the day-to-day won’t change. So that includes who’s in charge of creative and the active product. Many superstars may get released along the way, which is extremely unfortunate. Also, fans may have to start paying for premium live events again. The UFC has a deal with ESPN+ to house their content, but you still need to pay for their pay-per-views. One last thing that may change is WWE may start to advertise more. So having advertisements on the ring, on the turnbuckles, etc. Just to make it clear, none of these changes has been talked about. It’s solely just my speculation.
