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Is the empire crumbling before our eyes?


flyonthewall2983

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8 hours ago, Timbo Slice said:

The merger on Tuesday makes people think a lot of on-screen talent will get let go, but the reporting makes it seem it’s going to be more office/clerical types that go since they won’t need separate departments anymore in a lot of areas. Can’t imagine it’ll affect talent that much. 

If (and that's a big if) there are talents affected, it'll either be NXT talents from the PC who aren't progressing or healthy talents who aren't used at all (see Aliyah & Elias for instance).

Although I think that the way that they dealt with Lacey Evans and letting her contract lapse and not renew it might be the way they choose to go about it going forward. This definitely lessens the possible fan backlash compared to what went down during the pandemic era.

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I can definitely see WWE switching to the AEW model of just letting peoples' deals run out instead of doing mass firings.  I'm sure no one in the company gives a shit about the PR aspect of it, but surely they understand the morale boost of folks not having to constantly worry about the grim reaper. 

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https://www.f4wonline.com/news/wwe/port-authority-pd-investigating-sexual-assault-claim-matt-riddle-made-against-officer

The tl;dr of the story is Matt Riddle (allegedly) got loaded on the flight back from India and got into a fracas with the Port Authority police at JFK, which led to him claiming he was "sexually assaulted" by the cops. 

Not sure why WWE keeps him around at this point, tbh. 

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As most people were anticipating, tomorrow there will be a lot of cuts for people with office jobs.

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WWE President Nick Khan just issued an email to all employees announcing that all employees are to work remotely tomorrow as the company will beginning post-Endeavor acquisition layoffs.

Employees have been asked to remain home and work from there tomorrow in order to allow the company's human resources department to be able the layoffs privately.

Endeavor's Ari Emanuel noted on CNBC earlier this week that with WWE and UFC merging under one new parent company TKO, that there would be savings made through eliminating redundancies in employees across the two companies.

As PWInsider.com has noted for weeks, there have been great concerns among WWE employees in Stamford what their future would hold after the acquisition. Tomorrow, they will begin to find out, and for some of them, it will be the end of their WWE run.

Endeavor's very first 'deavors season.

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AXIOS reports that Vince McMahon is hinting that he wants out of the family business, according to regulatory filings tied to WWE's recent merger with the UFC. The new combined entity, TKO, has registered all of McMahon's shares for sale, thus enabling him to avoid the lockup period that applies to other TKO stockholders like Endeavor and Silver Lake. McMahon currently holds around 28.84 million TKO shares, which was valued at $3 billion as of yesterday's market close. On first glance, this simply seems to be about giving McMahon flexibility. Or maybe even giving TKO flexibility, given the ongoing investigation. Particularly given that the subsequent registration statement, filed last week. But that same filing says that McMahon, alongside two other TKO executives, "will be selling stockholders in this offering." That's a definite verb tense, penned by lawyers who are paid a lot of money to be accurate.

https://twitter.com/WrestleOps/status/1704922391585890783?ref_src=twsrc^tfw|twcamp^tweetembed|twterm^1704922391585890783|twgr^|twcon^s1_&ref_url=

 

Also

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‘TKO’ itself says in a regulatory filing: "Vince McMahon's membership on our Board could expose us to negative publicity and/or have other adverse financial and operational impacts on our business. His membership also may result in additional scrutiny or otherwise exacerbate the other risks described herein. Any of these outcomes could directly or indirectly have adverse financial and operational impacts on our business."

 

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Definitely some interesting news out today...

SmackDown back on USA is obviously a huge development. On one hand, going from broadcast back to cable seems like a step back for the company...but supposedly they got a huge deal that I've read is up 40% (approximately $1.4 billion) from their previous deal. That's just bonkers to me. FOX was overpaying for it network TV, but somehow its worth more to NBC/Universal? Will it become a 3-hour show?

- RAW (and NXT, which could easily just back to being a streaming-only show) is supposedly going to be on the market and there's no guarantee that it will stay on USA. Again, its a bit confusing to me. Yes, its the "flagship" show...but SmackDown became the A-show once it went to FOX and the thrust of the company became the Bloodline story for the better part of 2 years (with even Cena doing mostly SmackDown appearances whenever he'd come back) and I'm not sure what other cable channels are trying to land it. 

- ....which leads to whether Amazon or some other streamer will do a big bid. I mean, Amazon has the money to outbid anyone if they so choose. I always had the feeling, though, that Vince, for as forward-thinking as developing the WWE Network was 10 years ago, still believes very strongly in the ubiquity of old fashioned cable television. I think Vince would rather get $750m to keep Raw on a cable channel than he would take $1 billion to put it on Amazon. 

- But now it seems Vince may be straight-up cashing out? Gotta love that move. Pull off every trick in the book to essentially re-take control of the company, make a massive deal in which you come out the biggest winner over your own daughter and son-in-law, and then basically walk away having not only all the moneys but also one last showing of rrrrrrrruthless  aggggrrrresion to the Board that tried to boot you over your insatiable sex drive. 

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Yeah, many competitions are getting on that streaming train. Champions League, NBA games, several RealFootball leagues are everywhere, from Amazon Prime to Star+ to HBO, even. Even YouTube and Twitch had their own games.

The one advantage WWE does have, though, is that it does have an incredible place to catalog their stuff, which most other sports and services don't.

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