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♪
And when it comes to WWE, yes,
that would be something that would be interesting.
It would be worth exploring.
What do we buy it? Who knows?
As it relates to WWE, I think it's an incredible asset.
We've been in business with Vince for over two decades.
Created one of the great assets of all time.
And so that's all I have to say.
What I'm hearing at least from people
familiar with the situation is,
shaping up pretty pretty good the sale process.
Who's been bidding and where are you in terms of that process?
Unfortunately, I can't answer the who has been bidding.
I can tell you it's been quite a robust response.
Vince made it clear to me and to the marketplace
that he does not need to be included in any offer
or any deal moving forward.
Does not need to, but does he want to?
I'm not sure. You know, that's more a question for Vince.
♪
This morning, we announced that we have signed an agreement
to form a new publicly traded company,
consisting of two iconic global brands,
UFC and WWE.
Many doubted we would ever see this day,
that you would ever be willing to sell a control
and stake in your company.
It's the right time.
It's the right time to do the right thing.
Had the scandal not happened?
Right.
Would we be sitting here today?
Absolutely.
So you wanted him to say, oh my God, yes.
Oh my God, did he have to convince you this day?
Oh, not that much.
Vince, do you plan to be as involved as you have in the past
on the creative side?
Yes, no, on a higher level.
Yes, and the weeds, which are always lovely
getting in the weeds in the past.
No, can't do that.
♪
Hello everybody, welcome to another edition
of Wrestle Linux Radio.
I'm Brandon Thirston broadcasting live in Antivamp
for Buffalo, New York, where today is Sunday.
It's Easter Sunday, April the 9th.
2023.
And one of the biggest stories in history of pro wrestling,
in history of MMA, in history of Frank Gotch's combat sports
took place, was made official on Monday.
WWE and UFC will emerge by the end of the year.
So join me to talk about this.
It's a big day to take a victory lap all along.
Chris Cole, you and I have had this argument again and again
and again and you said, WWE will never, ever, ever, ever,
ever sell, never sell.
And I said, well, wait a minute, it could happen.
It could be maybe endeavor.
So how does it feel, Chris Cole, to have to walk this one?
If you can pull those recordings up, I'd love to listen.
Also, you pulled the one where I said Kevin Owens
and Orange Casser, Bigger, Drowsy, Roman Reigns.
Let's get all the...
This is what it looks like.
You'll never let that go.
There's some random dude on Facebook
who's got your number.
So I don't know, he's Easter, he's just anything else.
I spent time with family the last two days.
I did make a tofu ham.
And those food goes like a maple glaze type thing.
So that was good.
Tofu ham.
Does it taste good?
It had a hamness to it.
It was really just maple glaze and pineapple juice
and some broth.
Yeah, it was good.
And you felt like you were better than everybody.
No, I'm not that sort of vegan.
But yeah, I just did that.
And I had a pet of vegan chocolate bunny
today this afternoon.
I bought one of the story.
Wow, okay.
Jesse is out of town.
He will be expecting him to be back next week.
Where we made debate, whether putting Roman Reigns
over Cody Rhodes was the right decision or whether it
was the perfect decision.
More on that next week.
But we're going to give you hopefully a magnum
of this here explanation of what this merger means
or what we know about it at this point.
So if you want to participate, of course,
you can submit a super chat if you're watching today live
on YouTube.
We will read your comment or respond to your question.
So just to walk back a little bit in time.
Last week, Thursday, a couple days before WrestleMania weekend,
Nick Khan had done the media rounds,
including this segment.
You just heard a piece of audio from it on CNBC on the last call.
I don't know, this says first on CNBC.
Anyway, he was on being interviewed by Morgan Brennan
talking about robust interest.
Robust interest in a WWE acquisition or merger.
And then on Sunday, a couple days later,
Alex Sherman of CNBC breaks the news that indeed,
there is a deal near done.
This is Sunday evening.
We went live with them, different day right before night
two of WrestleMania happened.
And there it is.
A couple days later, a deal between endeavor and WWE
to merge UFC and WB together is near complete sources said.
And then of course on Monday, we got the confirmation.
So interesting that, you know, this is clearly,
and by the way, the reason I've got this screenshot up here
for people watching on YouTube,
294 page filing came out Monday morning.
That included an 8K, included the transaction agreement,
this long contract between WWE and endeavor,
where they're agreeing to do the merger by the end of the year.
So again, we go back to Thursday,
where Nick Khan's talking about,
oh, there's robust interest.
Who knows what could happen,
but there's lots of interest here.
And then just, you know, some four days later,
there is a 294 page filing.
So one thing that we could emphasize here,
and then Alex Sherman pointed out when John Powell
came out, I talked to him several days ago,
this is not a deal that was done
between the time that Nick Khan was on CNBC on Thursday
and Monday when the deal was announced.
This was, I'm sure, a deal that that was being prepared
for quite some time.
Now it wasn't executed yet,
perhaps until Sunday or Monday.
But something that was near complete for a long time,
I would think.
And maybe getting the word out there
that there's robust interest is just sort of a last call
to anybody like the Saudis,
like perhaps Liberty Media,
who may have been interested,
who were willing to make a more competitive bid.
Brandon, do you think Endeavour
is publicly saying that they weren't really,
like they were interested, but not really interested?
Do you think that was kind of just a downplay the market?
I think we spoke about it at the time.
I was, you know, to be clear.
I did not expect Endeavour to buy them.
And I was, I'm sure you got that impression
from things that I said.
But if you read between the lines,
you, now we're manually saying,
we're not going to take on,
we're not going to change our leverage position,
which means what?
I mean, they're not going to alter where they're at.
Like they're not going to go into debt.
Like, yeah, yeah.
They're not going to take on more debt.
They already have a lot of debt
because they bought the UFC all those years ago
and they're still working to pay that debt off.
And they said that they're not going to change
their leverage position.
And I read maybe some dismissiveness in, in Ari's tone,
especially in the Morgan Stanley appearance
that really made me feel like, okay,
I think they're out on doing a WB deal.
But not so.
What they're doing here, by the way,
do we have an image that will show us
what I want to describe here?
What they're doing here is they're distributing the debt
as a result of this deal.
By the way, this deal is,
I thought it was a reverse-mores trust.
It is a merger that still allows Endeavor
to split their debt across two companies.
But apparently this is not a reverse-mores trust.
Hope to have some explanation, perhaps,
when we talk to Brandon Ross later.
It's real quick to touch that
of not being a reverse-mores trust.
Do you think because it's not,
that's why the PBR tour was not thrown into this?
I don't think so.
I think there was, there's some legal reason
why they couldn't do this as a reverse-mores trust.
But I don't know enough about mergers
and what a reverse-mores trust is
and isn't to tell you materially
what's the difference here.
Because it's still the case that a few billion dollars
worth of debt is gonna go away from Endeavor
and go into this merged company.
So they're still gonna be able to reduce Endeavor,
the remaining Endeavor will still be able to reduce its debt.
So what's gonna happen here is we have this entity
up here, Endeavor, which is currently trading
under the ticker EDR, that company,
which currently has UFC in it,
UFC is going to be pulled out of it
and UFC is going to go into this new company.
My video gets all messed up when I use this red laser
so I'm just gonna not use it.
So anyway, UFC is being pulled out of Endeavor
and being put into the new company,
which is gonna trade as TKO.
I wonder what the,
I think yes is what the new company name is going to be.
They say they're finalizing a name.
So this is gonna have some name,
which we will be talking about all the time
and people will be having all sorts of opinions
about this newly merged company.
But anyway, NWB will cease to be
a publicly traded stock of its own.
This WWE ticker will no longer be a ticker that is traded.
All those W shares will become TKO shares.
And what I don't know the answer to,
which I was wondering about over the weekend
as I was doing research for this podcast is,
if I, let's say, let's say, Chris Cole,
let's say you owned, which you don't,
100 Endeavor shares, right?
When this merger is completed,
sometime presumably in late 2023,
you will probably have, out of your 100 Endeavor shares,
you would probably have some of those 100 shares
remaining Endeavor shares, EDR,
and then some of those shares would become TKO shares.
I would guess the majority of them would.
I just don't know how many of them would
because UFC is by far the biggest entity,
it's probably the majority of Endeavor, I would think,
considering they're giving in an enterprise value
in this deal of $12 billion in the market capital
of Endeavor is only like $10 billion.
So they're valuing UFC alone at a value greater
than with the stock market values, the entire company.
So I think it's safe to say that UFC
is probably the majority of the value in Endeavor.
Yeah, I mean, I would imagine the agency
that would be pretty close, the talent agency low,
feel like that's gotta be pretty substantial.
Yeah, I don't know.
Well, I'm sure by the end of the year,
when this transaction is completed,
I think we'll have a better idea.
I also think it's interesting that CNBC got so much
of the coverage of not only the R&M manual
and Vince McMahon interview, which we'll touch on,
not only the reporting of the deal being near complete,
not only Nikon appearing on CNBC with Morgan Brennan,
perhaps even some of the talk that David Faber did,
I believe on the Tuesday before WrestleMania,
who owns CNBC?
Comcast.
You're muted.
Comcast.
And what's the relevancy of that?
Well, I mean, they currently have the media rights for RAW
and plus they own PCOG.
So help me.
My NXT as well.
This is partner, perhaps.
True, I'm okay to forget NXT.
So we've learned, we know that, by the way,
if you don't know yet, this transaction is valuing
UFC at $12.1 billion, the market will,
once this is really a publicly traded stock,
we'll value it, however it values it at.
But they're saying that, hey, we bought UFC for $4.1 billion
and we triple its value, basically.
And we're valuing WWE at $9.3 billion.
None of this, my understanding is that none of these values,
this enterprise value that that endeavor at WWE
are at their own win valuing these companies at.
I don't think this means a lot at this point,
other than what does matter a lot is the portion, right?
Is how much of this merged company
is going to be WWE in the red here?
How much of this company is going to be UFC in the black?
So this essentially comes out to $51.49, I believe.
But it doesn't, does it?
It's less than that, isn't it?
Because it's like $12.1 plus $9.3, that's $21.4.
This is a $21.4 billion company,
so WWE would consist of 43%.
So anyway, and I think, but the term sheet says,
or the filing says it is going to be a 51, yeah.
And what does it say here?
Newco will be 51% owned by endeavor
and 49% owned by WWE shareholders.
Okay, so I guess I don't understand that.
Why? It's not quite.
50, 49, 51 valuation here.
And in any case, we've got the clearest view
that I think has ever been disclosed
of what's the financial state of UFC.
UFC has been part of a publicly traded company
and endeavor for many years,
but endeavor does not report exactly what UFC makes,
just like, WWE does not report exactly
what pick your show drew for a live gate,
does not break down exactly what their TV deals are,
although we know what their TV deals are worth
through independent reporting.
So anyway, we can see that in 2017, net income,
UFC lost money.
UFC lost $161 million, and they've got every other year,
and not even really every other year.
We got 2017, 2019, 2022 for whatever reason.
There's no 2018, there's no 2021 or 2020 in here.
Maybe because those years are greatly affected by COVID,
but in any case, they skipped 2018, I don't know,
but we get a sample of what the financial performance
of these companies is like on an annual basis.
And UFC lost money in 2017,
but made money in 2019, and made a lot more money in 2022,
making $381 million in net income
that is the final measure of profit after taxes
and all that good stuff, which is a lot more profitable
than WWE in the same year.
WWE in 2022, that the year that just ended the year
that they just reported on in February, $195.6 million
in net income for WWE, again, compared that to $389.
So more revenue, I don't know if I got the slide near, yes.
More revenue in that year for WWE, $1.3 billion
is the revenue that WWE generated.
UFC generated a little bit less, $1.1 billion,
but UFC made $389 million in net income
while WWE made less, 196 we could say.
So UFC less revenue, but a lot more profitable,
at least in the calendar year last year.
So is that?
Is this a win for stockholders at WWE stock
that now they're gonna get this TKO?
It's obviously if they keep it,
and I'm sure some are selling
because it was over $100 recently, right, I think.
Yeah.
The stock price has closed on Thursday,
not trade on Friday because it was good Friday.
Stock price closed on Thursday at just over $100,
closed at basically $100.
That is the highest that WWE stock has ever closed at.
It has reached like one-on-one for like an hour
or something like that and in times past, years past,
but this is the highest, this is the most highly valued
WWE has ever been.
We'll see what happens when the market opens tomorrow morning,
but is it a win for shareholders?
I mean, the stock is way up.
It's like any trend in a stock price, I suppose,
but you definitely wanted some transaction here.
If it turned out like you predicted, Chris Gull,
that there was gonna be no transaction,
the stock price would have slid back down
to maybe $80 or maybe lower than that, $75 or something like that.
They're just merging with a brand like UFC
other than maybe being bought by the Saudis.
Well, I mean, it probably wouldn't be public anyways,
but like, I feel like-
A cash deal would have been bigger
because everybody's stock would have ceased to stock.
And they just would pay out.
They would have all got all those in check.
Cash payout.
Yeah.
And I mean, you can imagine any scenario you want there,
you can imagine the Saudis buying WWE
for more than $9 billion or something like that.
And that necessarily would have been better.
But this is pretty good.
I guess to answer your question,
this is pretty good news
because you wanted some transaction.
But the stock price, the value of the shares,
the value of the equity that you hold
if you're a WWE shareholder is still in flux,
just like any other stock that you might own.
It will convert to TKO when this merger is complete
and then it will continue to be, you know,
at the whim of the market.
But this is a company that has a lot of cost savings
that they can perhaps make.
They put right here in this slide,
they expect to find 50 to $100 million in long-term,
annualized, run rate, net operating synergies.
What's that mean?
This energy means really just,
it's gonna lead to layoffs.
I'm trying to find the word for it like you're,
I'm missing the word,
but you're taking like two jobs
and you're turning them into one.
What?
We're done with these.
Maybe you're looking for that.
But yes, so there,
now this won't be all layoffs,
but it'll be largely layoffs.
There's other ways probably
that they're gonna save money by sharing costs,
but largely this is gonna be layoffs.
So we also had from Puck,
an article interviewing Mark Shapiro,
who's going to be,
who is the president of Endeavor
and he's going to serve as an executive
of the MERSH company.
We have Mark Shapiro saying here,
I know where this quote begins,
but the Puck article says,
in essence,
Endeavor will run the same playbook it did for UFC,
which has grown considerably since the acquisition,
this is back in 2016, right?
To $1.3 billion in revenue last year,
the first target as is almost always the case
with MERSH's will be synergies,
layoffs and operational efficiencies.
Mark Shapiro boasts that Endeavor took out
$70 million in costs at UFC one year after it acquired it.
So they held UFC saved $70 million
and anticipates it can save as much as 100 million
on the UFC WWE tie up.
Mark Shapiro was quoted here,
quote, anything from HR to finance to legal
to communications production to distribution
and marketing, Shapiro said.
Across every area you're going to find cost synergies.
You're going to integrate and ultimately highlight
and appoint the best and brightest teams.
So he's sort of naming some areas or some departments
where there might be layoffs.
And now that's not clear to me that there will be layoffs
that will affect UFC as well.
That's possible, but I still don't know.
We also had a comment from Nikan in an Axios article
where he alluded to layoffs,
but he wasn't as detailed here as Mark Shapiro was
in terms of actually naming areas that might be affected.
So I was reading through this nearly 300 page filing
over this weekend and I did find,
this is not a definitive answer to be very clear,
but I did find in the term sheet,
under Schedule A, under the heading Service provided by EDR
to hold Co.
And then a number of different categories and services
that Endeavor will apparently as part of this agreement
provide to hold Co.
Hold Co is the new company,
is the eventual TKO or whatever they call it.
So this is how I read this.
These are services that Endeavor will be able to provide
to the merge company and that maybe these are areas
that will be looked at especially for layoffs.
And I ran this by somebody who has experience seeing
on a board and this person thought it was on the right track.
So what we have here are streaming services,
live event production, content production,
ticketing and hospitality, sale slash licensing
of content rights, gaming rights, marketing slash event
services, consumer product licensing, sponsorships,
SEC reporting services, accounting support services,
financial planning and analysis support services,
treasury support services, accounting service centers,
support services, tax services,
this is all sounding like finance stuff.
Executive compensation, workday subscription
and HR operations transition services, payroll processing,
HR, full-time employee services, employee lifecycle services,
other benefit services, hub system, IT services, finance,
BI reporting, analytic services and digital CDP services.
So there's that administration services,
compliance services, event support services, office space,
insurance support services, procurement support,
litigation, compliance, intellectual property support
services, cybersecurity, health and safety,
corporate security, government relations,
SEC reporting, employment, legal support services,
immigration support services, corporate legal,
commercial legal, corporate communications,
corporate development services.
And then a couple other things, these are services
that the hold company, the future merge company,
will provide to ETR.
And that's just the things that we see on the screen here.
I just went through, I don't know,
a couple dozen categories there, right?
Now there's six things that are named
that the hold company will provide to ETR
and that's office space services, immigration services,
BI, that's some kind of Microsoft data visualization,
BI reporting and analytic services,
digital CDP services, full-time employee services.
So all this is super ambiguous, we can only speculate,
but I would guess that these are, these categories,
perhaps will be the categories that will be safer.
There's, but there's departments that are named here
as well as in the other list that look like,
maybe those are areas that are being identified
to likely have redundancies.
So anyway, there's that, that's a lot of departments.
Would these be both being, you know, traveling sports
entertainment type businesses?
I mean, I'm sure there's a lot of dual positions
that are just usually going to be merged.
Like, I mean, production will be interesting.
Production for UFC is extremely different than WWE
as far as the way with Hyro and producing
and camera cards and all that.
I think creative and people who work on the road
will probably be the safest because I don't think.
These are the office, like corporate employees for UFC.
And we, yes, people who work in headquarters, yes,
I would think would be.
And they just, they're supposed to move into
that new office space if they haven't already.
And what if this TKO company wants a headquarters
not in Stanford too?
I don't know.
I know these are questions that have been,
we even got the weeds of them, yeah,
because we don't know details, but.
Oh, yeah, I know.
So.
Put it in there.
So I believe when, when Endeavour bought UFC,
they cut something like 40% of the UFC workforce.
And I was talking last week to somebody who, you know,
who covered them in the man at that time
and was talking about how,
just how sweeping those layoffs were.
And they were, you know, apparently going,
like just going into the office
and sort of boxing people's stuff up for them.
So I don't, I don't know what's going to happen here,
but I expect there to be pretty big layoffs here in WWE.
So this is, this is the leadership structure
for this merged company for TKO.
Aria Manuel is the boss.
He is going to continue to still be the CEO for Endeavour.
He's going to be the CEO for this merged company.
And then he will be, what I read to be reporting to him
will be Vincent Mann and Mark Shapiro.
Mark Shapiro will continue to be the president for Endeavour
and he will be the COO for the new company.
And Vincent Mann will be the new company's executive chairman.
So he still gets to keep the same title.
He doesn't, he's not the executive chairman of WWE,
notice here, but he's the executive chairman
of the new company, which will be the parent company
of both WWE and UFC.
Endeavour CFO will still be Jason Lublin.
The new company's CFO will be Andrew Schlimer.
So I wonder if this means Frank Riddick
no longer being CFO slash president of WWE as he currently is
as we, you know, longtime listeners will know.
Frank Riddick was a long time member of W's board.
And when Vince fired George Barrows Michelle Wilson
who were co-presidents in 2020,
Frank Riddick came in and served as CFO in the interim
explicitly as an interim CFO.
Christina Salin eventually replaced him
as the permanent CFO and then she was fired
and then he became, Frank Riddick became the permanent CFO.
He was eventually promoted to president and CFO.
That's his title now.
It seems that he's in retirement or semi-retirement
and kind of coming out of retirement to do this.
So it wouldn't be surprising if he was stepping back
away from WWE.
By the way, there's gonna be a new board.
Six members will be appointed by Endeavour.
Five members will be appointed by WWE.
Two of those members will be executive members
that WWE can appoint.
I would expect them to appoint, don't know this,
there's no filing this says this,
but I would expect them to appoint Nick and Vince
as their two board members and then the other members
are supposed to be independent members.
So that presumably continued to include George Barrows,
Michelle Wilson, who knows.
But anyway, moving on to this leadership team.
Dana White will be continuing to be the UFC president.
I believe that is his current title, right?
Am I gonna have to start covering a UFC business?
Sort of by virtue of this, I'd like to have a couple of times.
I'm gonna have to come in the future.
Yeah, there's actually some other good MMA podcasts
that cover MMA business.
So maybe we'll make some friends.
But anyway, notice, we have Ari Manuel.
He's overseeing Mark Shapiro and Vince.
And then Vince will be overseeing Nikon as the WWE president.
And Vince will, I don't know if he'll be overseeing.
I don't think he will be.
But he's gonna be outranking Dana White here.
And we have Lawrence Epstein who will be the UFC COO.
I don't know who he is, but I'm guessing
he's already involved with UFC.
We do have a statement from Dana White,
people's at least on Twitter.
Would you like to read Dana White's official statement?
This company has been on fire for the last seven years
and now that we will be adding WWE to the portfolio,
I am excited to take this to another level.
Vince is a savage in the wrestling space.
Ari is a beast at what he does.
And then, Ed, well, we at UFC bring to the table
and there is no limit where the company can accomplish
in the next few years.
Savage and a beast.
That's who he works with.
Okay, so there's Dana White.
I think one of the big risks here is
whether this leadership team can get along, cooperate.
Does Dana feel,
um, feel sort of slighted maybe that,
and I say this based on nothing more than
Dana White has produced the company that is
in this transaction being valued at a considerably
greater value than WWE.
Yet it's Vince,
whose control is being given up to make this deal,
but it's Vince with the substantially smaller business
that is getting to have the higher position.
So this is a lot of egos, a lot of personalities,
a lot of ambitious people.
Who knows if Nick Khan even stays
beyond his five year employment agreement,
which began in August, 2020,
which presumably will expire in August, 2025.
Who knows if Nick Khan sticks around?
Who would at that point take over as WWE president?
Who knows?
But interesting to see if all of these folks can cooperate.
There was some joking discussion on the,
well, there was some discussion in the CNBC interview
involving Ari Manuel and Vincent Mann about,
you know, they were asked by Scott Wopner,
the interviewer, what happens when you guys disagree?
And Ari's response was that,
well, it's the same thing as happens if Dana and I
disagree, if we have a disagreeing about something,
we just won't do that thing.
You know, we have to be on the same page, basically,
was his message.
And to which Vince quickly joked to Ari,
I thought I was in charge here,
or something with that effect.
So, Vince and Mann has not been told what to do by anybody,
since, I don't know, 1982 or so.
Yeah, since his dad was his boss, yeah.
Yeah, so we'll see what happens here.
And I just, I think that's a risk to keep your eye on.
So this is the ownership structure of WWE
as it stands today.
Do you know, Friday afternoon,
I just got a barrage of filings and messages and things
that were within the realm of Wrestle Linux.
One of those things was the proxy statement.
The proxy statement came out on Friday afternoon.
Have you read it back to front?
I'm still worried about it.
You're gonna do that tomorrow, I think.
So the proxy statement comes out every year
and details of compensation for the major executives,
it details ownership as well.
So we have an update, not that it's noticeably different,
but we have just sort of a re-confirmation
of what the consistency of WWE's ownership is,
especially if you own more than a certain percentage
of the stock.
So this is what it looks like today,
as of March 15th,
according to WWE's proxy statement,
we just came out a couple days ago.
Vince, much as we've always known,
owns about 38% of all WWE shares.
Stephanie owns about 2.5%,
Linda owns less than 1%.
And then we have basically everything else
is owned by institutional investors.
The largest has been for many years,
a UK-based institution called the NSDEL train.
And then we have these sort of mutual fund companies
like BlackRock and Vanguard,
which has long been the third and fourth,
well, the second and third biggest institutional investor.
Now, the class B shares give Vince and Stephanie and Linda
and when he had the shares,
Shane, Shane no longer has any shares.
Class B shares give these family member founders
special voting rights.
So the voting power,
how did Vince make his way back into the company earlier
this year?
Well, because his votes count extra.
His votes, his shares count 10 times more
than everybody else's.
So Vince, as of this moment,
still has 81% of all of the control of WWE.
So he's able to do whatever he wants.
There is, as part of this agreement,
that just came out detailing that WV and UFC
are gonna merge.
There is a written consent.
I don't know if it's a decree,
I don't know if that's the right terminology,
but there's something called written consent.
And I take that to mean,
Vince, he didn't have to bring this to shareholders
and put it to a vote.
He who owns the majority of the voting control,
just through written consent agreed to this merger.
That's all that was needed.
Curious, I'm not sure how that came,
how that was approved by Endeavor,
but maybe somebody who knows more
about this could explain that to us.
But this is what the voting rights look like.
As always, Vince owns about 80%, 81%.
Stephanie, because most of her shares are Class B,
she owns about 5% of the voting.
Stephanie, or Linda owns about 1.5% of the voting.
Lindsay Dell Train owns 2%.
It's all moot because Vince owns the vast majority,
as you can see her 81%.
Now, what's gonna happen when the merger's complete,
assuming it will be complete, what's gonna happen?
When these shares become TKO shares,
how much is Vince gonna own then?
He's gonna own by my estimation, by my math,
18%, about 18% of the new company.
His Class B shares are going away.
His shares are not going away,
but his special privileged voting power
that enhances his voting power is going away.
And therefore, not that it really matters that much,
but so that will also be the case for Stephanie and Linda
who formerly had greater voting power relative to their shares.
So Vince will not be in control.
I don't know what kind of protections he's got.
Obviously, he has an employment agreement
and we could comb through that to see exactly
what kind of protections he's got here.
Obviously, as part of his employment agreement,
he has very special intellectual property rights
as it relates to his life story.
But he is not un-sackable as he once was.
And he is not, if he cannot force his way back
to the company in this case, as he did earlier this year.
So this is roughly what I expect the new ownership
to look like, endeavor shareholders will have
just over one half of the company.
And current W shareholders who are not
McMahon family members will have about 29%.
So Vince will have less than a quarter, less than a fifth.
Right? Yeah.
So, and for anybody wondering if this transaction
is really gonna happen,
I mean, obviously everybody's out here in public
talking about it, like it's gonna happen,
it's gonna happen, it's gonna happen.
If it doesn't happen, W's gonna have to pay up,
pay a termination fee according to their disclosure
of $270 million.
Think of that as a year's worth of WWE Raw,
US TV rights fees under a different condition.
W would have to pay a termination fee of $90 million.
So think of that as almost a year's worth
of Saudi Arabia government money.
So it basically, they've entered a heavy duty agreement here.
If this deal doesn't get done,
it's gonna cost something,
it costs to be a lot of money.
And by the way, Nick, Nick Khan, Nick Khan's gonna become
very rich.
When Nick Khan is all done with WWE,
we should tally up all the money that he will have made
from WWE.
Anyway, Nick Khan is getting a $15 million bonus
upon the completion of this merger.
Frank Riddick is getting a $5 million bonus
upon the completion of this merger.
Paul Vek is getting a $5 million bonus
upon the completion of this merger.
So they're very much incentivized
to make sure this merger happens.
That's all I have for now.
We'll talk about more of this related stuff,
but anything else to add there?
I think I asked between Thursday and today
the kind of the questions that have been on my mind.
I mean, at the end of the day,
I'm not super surprised that it was Endeavor
because it was gonna be somewhere that kept Vince
in at least control of WWE.
So.
He did mention he was asked by Scott Wopner.
Liberty was interested.
And he was like, yeah.
And the Saudis were interested.
So he was not denying that at least,
but we don't know what sort of bids they made.
So there's that.
We'll touch on some WrestleMania business news
before we go to more Vince returning to creative stuff.
Again, if you want to submit a super chat,
if you're listening live, watching live on YouTube,
we will answer your question or comment.
But just to catch up fully on WrestleMania,
it feels like, you know,
WrestleMania was like a month ago at this point,
but WrestleMania, according to WrestleTix,
134,852 tickets distributed,
basically all the WrestleMania weekend shows,
including the Ring of Honor show,
everything as we expected,
as we sort of discussed ahead of time,
everything, the Raw SmackDown Hall theme show,
the NXT Stand, the Liver Show,
the Ring of Honor supercard show,
all of these did better ticket business
than they did the year prior,
at least in terms of tickets out.
I imagine the ticket prices were slightly higher
for the most part in this year,
it was last year, so they were probably slightly higher
in terms of generating revenue.
Now, W did put out a press release Monday morning
in the midst of all of this endeavor,
UFC merger news, according to W's press release.
Night two broke the global viewership record,
I assume that means global viewership record
for any PLE ever.
Night two broke the global viewership record by 33%.
That's after night one broke what I read
to be as Zambiguously written,
but what I read to be the earlier record,
night one broke by 28%.
So what I think this means is the record,
which is probably the last year's WrestleMania,
was broke by night one by a margin of 28%.
The night two broke that record by a margin of 33%.
So anyway, this was the most watched WrestleMania ever.
It's on Peacock, about how many homes
is Peacock in in the United States now?
I mean, it's, I know,
because you get it through Comcast too,
so I mean, it's on a lot, I should know,
listen to it, it's not, we've talked about it,
but it's in about 20, 20, 20 screaming out to me, yeah.
So, and it's in more homes than it was in last year, right?
It was probably in something like 13 million homes
last year without looking it up.
So it's in more homes and it was more highly viewed.
Interesting to see what happens in terms of these disclosures,
if they continue to make disclosures like this after June,
because beginning in June,
all those Comcast customers who get Peacock for free
are gonna start getting charged for Peacock.
And I think they have to opt out if they wanna cancel it.
But the fact that they're getting charged for it
makes me think that maybe the growth of Peacock, Peacock.
Peacock subscribers are going to start to level off
because no more Comcast customers getting it for free.
Anyway, most watched WrestleMania ever.
Now, the gate, $21.6 million is the Livegate,
which set a similar number at the press conference.
So $21.6 million is Livegate for WrestleMania,
both nights combined, according to WWE.
This broke the previous record by 27%.
So, you do the math now and say, all right,
they didn't disclose what the gate was for WrestleMania last year,
also a two day WrestleMania.
But if you do the math, you do the algebra.
Now, you thought when you were in middle school
or something that algebra was never gonna be
using your day to day life, but you were wrong,
you were gonna be able to back into numbers
and SEC filings and press releases for the rest of your life.
But so this implies that last year's gate,
which they did identify as the new record.
I went back and looked at the press release.
They identified last year's WrestleMania
as the biggest gate they ever did,
despite it being two days.
But anyway, that implies that that gate last year
was $17 million, $17.0 million.
Based on filings, I had earlier estimated
that the gate for WrestleMania last year
was somewhere between $16.7 and $19.3 million.
So this lies between that range.
But WrestleMania 32 in 2016 by itself did $17.3 million.
So I'm a little confused on what the real record would be
because it would seem based on this press release
that last year's WrestleMania did $17.0 million.
But WrestleMania in 2016, one night of it,
did $17.3.
So it would appear that WrestleMania 2016,
with one event, did a higher gate than WrestleMania last year.
But this is contradicted by the last year saying
that last year's WrestleMania was the biggest
WrestleMania gate ever.
Anyway, big gate, $21.6 million over two days
is a lot of money.
Sponsorship record of $20 million plus
is what they disclosed.
That's a new record for them.
Merchandise record was broken by 20%,
up 20% from last year, which I believe was also a record.
So this made a lot of money in sponsorship revenue,
which is a key area for growth for them
that they feels under monetized,
and Alice's feel is under monetized.
A lot of merchandise and obviously a lot of ticket sales
and the most watched WrestleMania ever.
So really from all angles here,
this is a pretty strong WrestleMania.
What does WrestleMania generate in terms of media revenue
we don't have pay per view here anymore
to specifically attribute exactly what WrestleMania
attributed in terms of media revenue,
but however you wanna argue it out
and they may even allocate the peacock money
in a certain way.
Clearly, WrestleMania is contributing massive value
to the peacock deal, which they're getting $200 million
a year for.
Yeah, no, you take that WrestleMania out,
I don't think the peacock deal even happens to be honest
with you or it's very, very, very low.
So like, share, subscribe.
We'll do a quick review of things that we've done
earlier this week before we move on.
With John Pollack, we interviewed CNBC reporter,
the reporter who broke the news on Sunday evening,
Alex Sherman, we had a talk with him
that you can listen to on the post-wrestling
and the Wrestleomics YouTube channels
and on our podcast feeds.
Also, there's a Patreon, patreon.com slash Wrestleomics
you can get my weekly TV ratings reports
to get the Wrestleomics Thursday 30.
You can get the viewership spreadsheet,
you can get the podcast slides as well as other exclusive
articles and reporting that I do.
On this week's past, Wrestleomics 30, Golo and I,
I was broadcasting live from a car in a Walgreens parking lot
somewhere in Bath, New York, where we talked about
Mark Shapiro, we talked about his Disneyman,
back and creative.
We talked about the AEWK Stadium Show,
which we're not gonna touch on at all here
if you're wondering why we haven't.
The AEWK Show, how it could be a branding event,
the raw after WrestleMania TV rating,
the AEW Dynamite TV rating and the quarter hours.
All of that was talked about in our 30-minute podcast
that is every week for subscribers only.
And not just for subscribers,
we've got an article on the website,
down and trading that yes, ticket sales,
tickets distributed anyway, as well as TV ratings,
were meaningfully higher in the Triple H era of creative
based on your comparisons against the comparable
Vince McMahon months.
And MOWW lawsuit update, that is also for free
for everybody at Wrestleomics.com.
So, WrestleMania happened.
Cody Rose did not win.
Were you surprised?
A little bit.
I didn't hate the finish when it happened.
When it happened, I'm like,
okay, I trust what Triple H is doing here.
There's maybe even a bigger payoff.
You trust Triple H.
His vision of creative, yeah.
Everything that's good is Triple H,
everything that's bad is Vince McMahon.
You're probably one of those people who think that right.
No comments.
So, an update, so I tweeted a similar table
to this showing merchandise activity
related to certain talent.
I tweeted a table and then after going back into my
spreadsheet and looking at that table again,
I saw different results.
I know Fightful has reported that during WrestleMania week,
the WrestleMania branded merchandise itself
was the strongest seller.
And we do see that reflected here.
So, what we have here, by the way,
is I have a script that hits wbshop.com every day
and collects all the data from the top sellers page.
In fact, it collects, I don't know, hundreds of items.
And so what I've done here,
what I've chosen to do in the analysis here,
is give me the items that are in the top 10 every day.
And I'm saying, all right, give me all the items,
only the items that are in the top 10
on their top sellers list.
And then I'm saying, all right,
now let's see whose items,
those merchandise items belong to.
And this is your to date, what we're looking at right now.
Okay, so your to date on a daily basis,
Cody Rhodes has had 154 instances of one of his items
being in the top 10.
He is the leader, year to date.
Second is John Cena, fourth is Stonkold Steve Austin.
Yeah, I say fourth.
Third is Stonkold Steve Austin.
Fourth is Roman Reigns.
And the leader during WrestleMania week,
and in fact, week before it as well, was WrestleMania items.
So, if you wanted to make an argument,
as Jesse, I believe has on Twitter,
that Cody Rhodes should have gone over
based on positive contributions he was making
to various economic areas.
This is one of them, where you can say that, yes,
that appears that Cody Rhodes was doing really well
with merchandise.
Now, some of this is just after he came back
at the Royal Rumble,
but he's continued to do to be among the most,
among the hottest merchandise sellers.
Now, who's the hottest merchandise seller
of this recently ended week?
It's, acknowledge him.
Ex-ack, acknowledge Roman Reigns.
And that is in fact the first week where I can say,
yes, he was number one, years to date.
But there it is, I guess, if you,
you wouldn't, at WrestleMania,
people take you seriously, I guess.
So, so there's that.
And Vince McMahon, oh, I've got notes in here that I, okay.
So Vince, on the interview with Ari Emmanuel,
he was asked specifically about the scandal.
That's sort of a, it's a barrier.
People have forgotten yet about the scandal.
I have not forgotten yet.
If you've forgotten yet, you've forgotten yet.
Oh, you think about it all the time, don't you?
Don't you wish people would just stop talking
about the scandal and just forget about it and get over it?
I think people should talk about it more
because it seems to be forgotten
in a lot of these conversations.
So, it was brought up by Scott Popper in this interview
with, interview on CNBC with Ari and with Vince.
And, whoopner says, I can't help but wonder,
and I have to ask you,
have the scandal not happened?
Would we be sitting here today?
And, Vince says, absolutely.
And, whoopner asks, why?
And, Vince says, because it makes sense,
nothing's ever happened like this before.
And, again, I'm always looking at
what's best for our stockholders
and what's best for the company.
This is the best thing that's happened in a long time.
All the WrestleMania is combined.
There have been 39 including tomorrow.
Including tomorrow.
Anyway, and by the way, this,
the transcript of this interview was disclosed
as a WWE filing.
On WWE's investor relations page
and in SEC filings as well.
So, it's interesting that this interview that was on TV
has become something that's included in the filing.
But, on the other hand, I can see why it would.
It's Vince's first comments here
about the merger along with Ari Manuel.
They did a webcast earlier in the day
that was only endeavor personnel talking on it.
So, whoopner also asks him,
did that event, and he's referring to the scandal,
did that event push you towards this day
faster than you ever thought you'd be here?
And, Vince denies it and says, no, it didn't.
And, in and of itself, no.
But, it's great that we can combine
all this news together at the same time.
So, what do you believe him?
Would, if the scandal never became public news,
the scandal, you know, for the email
by the former Paralegal's friend
was never sent to the board.
None of this ever comes to the board's knowledge, let's say.
So, it never becomes a public story.
This WWE merging with UFC or selling.
I don't think absolutely not, no.
I think we're at same old, same old.
Vince had to find a way to stay in power
and saying, hey, we wanna sell, so knew he could
power play his way into re-controlling the board.
Yeah, I think being willing to sell
is a ticket that he had to spend,
that he had to use to get back into the company
with a distraction.
And, Whopper asks him, is this a good day
for Vince McMahon and WWE?
It's the greatest day of my life.
This company has been in your family for 70 years.
Is it a tough day?
Vince says, no, it's a great day.
Things have to evolve.
Family, business, it has to evolve.
For all the right reasons.
And this is the right business decision.
And thus far, it's the right family decision.
So, that's as much as he's asked and talks about family.
We should remember that Stephanie McMahon resigned from WWE.
The same day that Vince was reappointed to the board.
Stephanie left the company on a temporary basis in May,
about one month before the scandal news broke,
by which time the board surely is aware of the scandal.
So, we don't know what the relationship is
or possible disagreements are between Vince and Stephanie.
But, as we showed earlier,
Class B special voting rights will be gone
when the steal is complete.
And the notion that this company,
that WWE is going to continue for another generation,
for what would be a fourth generation
to be controlled by a McMahon family member,
that is not happening now.
Shane has been out for more than 10 years.
But, Stephanie, who knows, perhaps inheriting his shares
some day and coming into control of this company
is not going to happen.
She could still come into possession of his shares,
but that doesn't give you control of the entity,
which will be controlled by TKO,
which Vince right now looks to only be coming
into control of about 18% of.
So, we'll have a say, but not control.
I almost wonder if this sale happening
really let Stephanie move on.
Like, do we see her go to another entity,
another company?
And I always said that I could see her being
in some type of entertainment or agency company
being on the board.
So, dad will be interesting,
because maybe she could finally really, really walk away.
So, something else here.
And then, and Wapar asks, I want to ask you about
how you think about your legacy,
given where you took this company,
what's happened in the last year,
the regrets you may have as a result of all that,
and how you think your legacy and your story will be told.
This is the closest that anyone,
because Vince doesn't do public interviews.
You know, this is the first time he's really speaking
publicly since he resigned in July, right?
So, he's kind of being asked here about the scandal,
and do you regret anything?
And that's not literally what he's being asked,
but kind of, and Vince says, well,
let me just say I've made mistakes.
Obviously, both personally and professionally,
through my 50-year career.
I've owned up to every single one of them,
and then moved on.
I'm not sure the legacy stuff,
I'm not going to write it, so I don't know.
I want to say, as someone who had an extraordinary
monofilungary passion for what they did,
and Monop doing the biggest deal he's ever done in his life,
he's referring to Ari.
So, it's the closest, and it's pretty surface level,
the closest we've gotten here to Vince acknowledging
and discussing the scandal is that he's,
I've made mistakes, obviously,
both personally and professionally,
through my 50-year career.
I've owned up to every single one of them,
and then moved on.
So, he's made mistakes.
That's it.
We've, you know, in the course of him
pushing his way back into the company in January,
we did get some letters between Vince and the board.
I believe two letters written by Vince,
the board one letter written by the board to Vince,
and they kind of are related to the scandal
and related to the notion that,
well, if you come back, we think that's not the best thing
for shareholders, there may be more information out there
that the public hasn't learned about,
that would paint you in a bad light.
In those letters, we don't know that Vince has expressed
any contrition or has learned any lessons here.
He does refer to these as mistakes.
Mistakes were made, I guess.
I believe he does say I've made mistakes.
So, as close as we get,
now remember, he's going to be
in a really high position of power here
in this new company, and in the current company,
he is now officially an employee again.
He has an employment agreement.
He's the executive chairman.
He's very involved, that brings us to.
He was very involved and creative on Monday night.
A person who has seven known sexual misconduct allegations
against him, many of which have similarities to each other.
And everything's great for him.
I mean, he won out in this morning, buddy, right?
I mean, considering the trouble he found himself in,
he's done quite well for me.
I've seen Nick Collins a big win, too, but like...
Absolutely.
Now, remember, Vince isn't making any cash off of the steal.
His shares today are more valuable
because he's making the steal.
As I said, stock price closed at $100.
That's the highest the stock has ever closed at.
If those shares continue to be increasingly valuable,
he'll gain an on-paper market value
of the largest part of his wealth,
and he'll continue to be a multi-billionaire on paper.
And he could sell those shares slowly or whatever,
but he's not making any cash on this steal.
I think people, if you're only starting to learn
about this deal, you might think that Vince
is getting a big payout as a result of this.
He's not.
He did get a really nice stock award
for coming back to the company just recently,
and he will continue and always has throughout his time
in W.B. during his retirement.
He has gotten every quarter a dividend payment,
12 cents per share, which comes out to him
because he owns so much stock, comes out to
about $3.4 million per quarter.
It's a nice cash payment in the form of dividends.
So he's still making lots and lots of money,
but this is an all-stock deal
that doesn't give him any direct cash.
And it is a good deal for shareholders,
especially considering the stock has improved
in value already.
So then.
I do have any predictions of what his salary might be
as the chairman of the,
so what's the salary?
1.2 million at leave.
Now that's just his salary.
When you're an executive in a company the size of this,
the bulk of your compensation does not come
in the form of salary.
It comes in the form of bonuses and stock awards.
Nick Khan in 2022.
It's sort of ambiguous because we're talking about stock
that hasn't invested yet, but in 2022,
Nick Khan, according to the proxy statement,
that was just published on Friday,
made more than $24 million.
I think it's pretty safe to say that's the most,
any W exactly,
that I've ever been compensated in a single year.
Now a huge part of that is a stock award
that we all knew, all of us who read his employment agreement
knew that he was gonna receive.
He has these tranches that at certain scheduled times
are awarded to him as part of his employment agreement.
This is what they agreed on when he agreed
to join the company as an executive.
So he's getting a ton of money.
Vince is getting a stock compensation.
Vince is getting a salary.
It is not the biggest salary.
Nick's salary is 1.35 million.
So basically what they did,
I think we feel like we talked about this last week,
but you weren't on.
Basically what Nick and what the board decided,
I'm sure, approved of at least,
but the board decided was that they would basically
split Stephanie's salary.
So Stephanie's salary was gonna be, I think,
1.15 million or something like that.
And basically Nick got a piece of that
and Vince got the rest.
So Nick's salary went up slightly
and Vince took the rest of it, which is 1.2 million.
Anyway, Monday night, Monday night raw,
the raw after WrestleMania.
Triple H comes out, he says,
things similar to what he said
at the end of the press conference.
He says, we wanted to take a moment to say,
thank you to the superstars, the staff,
and the most important people of all,
the WWE universe.
On a day where WWE is dominating the news and social media,
then WWE comes along and makes an announcement
that is all that anyone wants to talk about.
But he's there to assure you
that we ain't going anywhere.
The same WWE that you love, Chris Gullo,
isn't going anywhere.
He closes his speech thing.
Then now, forever together.
He doesn't use the words endeavor.
He doesn't use the word UFC.
He doesn't use the word merger.
He's just sort of ambiguously referring to,
he's certainly referring to the merger.
And I think giving people a reassurance
that look, W programming is still going to exist.
Was this necessary?
I mean, I think they wanted somebody out there to-
Go ahead.
Oh yeah, go ahead.
I think they wanted somebody out there
to be a public face of this right away though.
Or was this about Vince?
Was he really saying, hey, we know that Vince is back,
but the creative isn't going to change?
Is that what he was really talking about?
I feel like that's what Friday was.
Like, we're going to do the-
Friday he may be an asset.
There's going to be a draft with all the-
and everything's going to be better.
Yeah, that's right.
I think-
I don't think any of this was about Vince.
I think this was,
given that he said very similar words
at the end of the press conference,
alluding to the merger,
I think wrestling fans do need.
I think people who do not listen to Wrestleomics
or other media or pay attention to other media
to understand exactly what this means
may just think that UFC is absorbing WWE
and that's the end of WWE or something.
There's, obviously that's not the case,
but I think a lot of people might need that reassurance.
I don't think any of this was about Vince
or him talking around Vince or reassuring you
that the creative's still going to be good and okay,
even though Vince is involved again.
I don't think it was about that at all.
I don't think he was talking in code or anything like that.
But when he came back to Gorilla,
I don't know if it was already happening,
but he might have found someone new in his seat.
Someone, he made the mistake of a seat.
And according to reports from Fightful,
from PW Insider,
we have these two tweets that I've highlighted here,
one from Sean Ross Sapp who said,
this is just over half an hour into Raw,
Sean Ross Sapp tweeted.
This show is categorically different
than how it was laid out even a few hours ago.
At least two matches scrapped or changed.
PW Insider had a report very early the following day
saying,
Vince McMahon firmly back in charge at last night's Raw.
Of course, this was still in LA.
Still, we knew that he was in town.
We saw pictures of him and his mustache at the Hall of Fame.
So we knew that he was in town.
I'm sure meeting with various people,
perhaps finishing that deal with Endeavor.
So he was in town where Raw was taking place in LA.
He was heavily involved in creative
according to PW Insider.
He was personally and heavily involved
according to multiple sources.
About 15 to 20 minutes before Raw went live on air,
there were a number of late rewrites.
People described it as not feeling like the type of changes
talent and staff had come to expect under Paul of AC.
Changes for the episode continued as the show was well
into being on the air.
And they came directly from McMahon,
who had his own office at Raw,
just as he did before his retirement
in the summer of 2022.
This is just hours after.
Earlier that morning, he had said,
he'd been asked by Scott Wopner,
you're still gonna be involved in creative.
Which I think is remarkable
that that question was even asked.
That I think we're at a moment of mainstream consciousness.
That the mainstream media, or at least,
they're informed well enough.
I don't know if it's because the creative
and the invinciest creative got so perceptibly bad.
Or they just have better producers and better research.
But that question was asked,
are you still gonna be involved in creative?
Because I think there's enough notice
that he's a detriment to creative.
And Andy said, of course, that on a higher level,
he said yes and no, on a higher level yes,
but I'm not gonna get in the weeds as I have.
I love to get in the weeds as before.
And then later that night, he gets...
Hours later.
Hours later.
He gets...
Hours later, after there had been a meeting
with talent too to reassure them
that things would not change.
There he is in gorilla, giving instructions.
31 minutes of wrestling, Brandon.
This raw on cage match, as of today,
is currently standing with a rating on cage match
of a 0.64, that's out of 10.
Not out of one, that's out of 10.
This is the lowest rated raw on cage match,
not all of them are rated.
This is the third lowest right now.
This is the third worst show in cage match
this entire database.
At least...
It looks like the down heroes are wrestling.
It is only rated higher than,
I don't know what this episode is,
but the September 21st, 2010 episode of NXT on sci-fi,
the old sci-fi version of NXT.
And then of course, yes.
The October 10th, 1999, Heroes of Wrestling.
I mean, the UW off-latch at Brawl is high rated higher than this.
Yeah.
The room's one after all.
Okay, I got this.
Yeah.
I mean, a lot of these shows don't have very many votes.
Like even that the UW Blackjack Brawl has only got nine votes.
And we're looking at like the 18 most lowest,
that's probably not a good grammar, right?
The 18 lowest rated events in cage matches database,
and most of them don't have more than 50 votes,
but some of them do.
We've got Crown Jewel, we've got two Saudi events
that were really lowly rated.
And we've got King of the Ring 1995 as well.
And we have one of the last Smackdowns of the Vince era
on July 8th, 2022.
It's probably the Smackdown that has like 11 minutes
of wrestling in it or something.
Anyway, was it really that bad of a show?
Or is this people going online pissed
that their hearing Vince is back and burying this show?
I heard people generally didn't like it too though.
Quarter hours, here's the quarter hours for Monday's Raw.
This was a really highly viewed Raw.
This is the highest demo for Raw since February 2020,
since just before the pandemic.
We saw an uptick for that final quarter hour
involving Brock Lesnar and Cody Rhodes angle
where they were about to supposedly have a tag match
with Roman Reigns and solo Sakoa.
But otherwise, this is a commercial free one hour,
big uptick from quarter one to quarter two.
So there's a lot of tuning out,
as you can see throughout the show.
Nonetheless, this show did end,
it did average in the third hour,
still a really high rating.
It's not as if all this special tuning for this episode
all went away.
It sounded as if they turned everybody off by the end of it
and they lost all they could have gained here.
We'll see what the rating is going forward, of course.
I expect it to be much lower, certainly on Monday.
But the big fear was that,
and I think we talked about it on Thursday,
the moment of truth is if he's in gorilla
on Friday night in Portland, then it's all over,
then we know what the future is gonna be like.
However, we got reports from many, many people,
including Wade Keller saying that,
Wade Keller tweeted,
there's no sign of Instagram backstage at SmackDown
as a few minutes ago I'm hearing,
waiting to hear more about whether he's involved
in the creative process though,
as I reported on Wednesday's VIP Keller Hotline,
many were hoping he was at Raw only
due to being at WrestleMania 39 LA.
So, no Vince at Raw, Triple H had an announcement,
but it was only that there's a W draft,
which is not really relevant for our purposes.
So no Vince at Raw, or I'm sorry, no Vince at SmackDown,
but he did, Vince reportedly did participate
in some sort of creative meeting via Zoom remotely.
So he was involved.
We've got this report from the torch following up here.
He said, may believe Monday was a sign
that Vince would be back on headset during shows
and heavily involved in person every week at Raw
and SmackDown again.
If tonight is any indication,
McMahon was so involved at Raw
because he happened to be in LA for Raw
and perhaps just wanted to steer things
in certain directions to show ultimately
that he still had the power to do so,
even if that's not his intent going forward.
That said he could still be more heavily involved
in WWE creative and booking going forward post-sale
compared to before the sale
and after his retirement announcement last summer,
but via long distance communication instead of onsite.
Where she should get out regarding that by the end of the night,
if he's changing plans, I haven't heard anything about that.
So this is definitely not what was happening
between, let's say, August and March.
We weren't hearing reports that Vince was involved
in meetings via Zoom.
That's what we know.
And there will be, as there already was,
a lot of Rorschach tests being done every Monday and Friday.
Was this Vince's fingers prints?
Is this Vince?
They're making fun of Johnny Gargano's height.
Is that because of Vince?
So this is not gonna end, you know?
I expect he's gonna have a more explicit involvement.
And obviously if he's in Guerrilla,
there's gonna be reports of it from the likes of the Torch,
PW Insider, Fightful.
This is, you can't conduct from Guerrilla
without being seen by talent.
We're gonna talk to reporters.
So what does that mean for the business?
I mean, it depends on what the quality of the creative is,
which remains to be seen.
The quality of the creative, I believe, caused better,
marginally better business,
but substantially better business.
And we can see that in the form of TV ratings,
in the form of ticket sales,
which I demonstrated for everybody on wrestlingox.com
and the article that is available for everybody to read.
I do wanna look at a market-to-market comparison as well
because I think the evidence will look more favorable
in the interest of showing evidence against interest here.
I think if we look at, let's look at this,
can I share this?
Let's look at a market-to-market comparison here
and say, all right, same city, same event type.
Let's compare them, TV to TV, town to town.
So Portland, for instance,
9,939 for a SmackDown this past Friday,
which is higher than the 8,000
when they were in Portland for RAW in September.
The LA post-Mania RAW is not really relevant.
By the way, post-Mania RAW and pre-Mania SmackDown
sold out pretty well in advance.
This is not the case of, say, last year,
where I don't believe these events sold out
for WrestleMania last year,
they're the RAW and the SmackDown.
This is evidence that the post-Mania RAW
and for that matter, the pre-Mania SmackDown
are doing, I don't know if they're doing
the same level of hot business
that at least the post-Mania RAW had done in the past
where that was the hardest ticket to find
because the crowd was gonna be so raucous
and so perhaps uncooperative.
But we saw both of these events sell out.
By the way, while we're at it,
the Puerto Rico events, both the SmackDown
and the backlash appear of sold out.
I believe that's according to rustic.
You could try to buy tickets yourself and find it's,
either you can only get a couple tickets or it's impossible.
But if we go back and say, all right,
let's scroll back and look at some LaVec versus Vince examples
and say, all right, Las Vegas SmackDown, no comp.
Salt Lake City, house show, well up from the last house show there.
St. Louis RAW, well up from the last SmackDown there,
but that's still in the LaVec era.
Springfield, Illinois, well up from the last,
well not well up, just about even slightly down
from the last house show there.
Milwaukee house show, hmm, about even,
almost exactly even from the first early post-hand
down the show there.
Fargo, North Dakota, slightly down.
Kansas City, Missouri SmackDown, way up
from the prior Vince era SmackDown there.
Providence, Rhode Island RAW, well up from the SmackDown there
and the LaVec era, well up from the RAW there
in the McMahon era.
New York, New York, that's the Madison Square Garden house show,
well up from the, well not well up,
6% up from the holiday house show there and, you know,
11,000 well up from the comparable Q1
Madison Square Garden house show in the Vince era.
Youngstown, Ohio, well, 33% up from the last
youngstown, Ohio show in the Vince era.
Pittsburgh, SmackDown, 10,000 well up from the previous two
instances.
Anyway, we could go through this more,
but this probably doesn't make for good audio.
So to demonstrate that, I did do a spreadsheet
and I found it was pretty even over LaVec's eight months.
I was suspect based on this though,
that the latter part of that comparison favors Triple H,
but I can't say that 100% without doing a pivot tape.
And so forth.
Anyway, SmackDown appears based on the fastest
affiliate to have done a strong rating.
We'll see what happens when the rain comes out tomorrow.
I think that's all I got.
All right, we do have a super chat.
You know, oh, there if you want to go into this.
That's not enough.
Yeah, we know that.
It's just a.
Yeah, we'll do a super chat here.
It's from Louis de Carti.
What do you guys know about ITVEW ratings?
TK always plugs a relationship,
but I know little aside from biggest wrestling ratings
in UK equals happy ITV.
What, let me see if I can find a spreadsheet for that.
I believe because AEW is on a stronger station station,
stronger channel that that AEW does do better ratings
than WWE.
I'm going to try to find the spreadsheet that I have for that.
And I like BackBodyDrop.com,
at least used to be reporting that.
I don't know if they still are.
So United Kingdom TV viewership is one of the many spreadsheets
that Corey Gibson's collecting for us.
So what's the, let's put this on the screen here.
Right there.
So if we look, boom, all the way here,
the latest we have here is March 3rd.
So this is not super up to date.
And it looks like we don't even have
WWE stuff passed a long time ago.
And in any case, what have I got here?
So as we can see here, again,
WWE stuff is not tracked beyond, you know,
I don't know, more than a year ago.
But we do see, I mean, I don't know what scale to put this on
because I don't look at UK viewership numbers.
We see, you know, about 150,000 viewers or so,
sometimes as much as 200,000 watching Dynamite.
So what is the question?
What do we know about it?
Has it increased?
I mean, maybe slightly, I mean,
this would be a slight positive slope here
if we started way back at the beginning,
which is this looks like, well,
this is like mid 2020 we start at
and then we have it not quite out to the present.
In fact, you know, this is, this is,
this is probably not completely up to date here.
If I, right here on the air, update this pivot table,
I wonder if this will go further.
Yeah, it goes a little bit further out.
But looks pretty flat in what, what I just added here.
I don't know if I even really added anything
because we're still looking at January.
In any case, it's more highly viewed than,
at least where Ron Smackdown were about a year ago.
I don't see any reason to think that they're way
more highly viewed.
They might be more slightly more highly viewed
than they were before because that's the trend of,
of US viewership.
Oh, and, oh, look at this.
Ratings are down for eight for A.W.
We do see a little bit of a downturn here in recent months.
All right, yep.
And then that, that's the, all the super chats we have for today.
It was coming through here.
Yeah, that's all we got.
Okay.
Any plugs?
Um, you could see me, uh,
ringing out on the Saturday in Medina, New York
for a USW spring smash.
Uh, and I have some comedy dates coming up later in April.
So check out for those as well.
The median pay, we do have this, this last thing to add,
I suppose on the sign off.
The median pay for W employees.
No, this is not included.
I always get this question.
No, this is not include wrestlers because wrestlers are not
employees.
The payment contracts for employees only.
The median compensation for, for a W employees in 2022 was $105,000.
Not bad.
$105,000.
And the SEC, as of a few years ago, requires all these companies to say,
all right, tell me what your CEO pay ratio is.
Tell me what the ratio of the median employee is.
To your CEO.
So the CEO is Nick Khan.
Nick Khan made, as we can see here, 20.
Oh my, I said, I said $24 million, 20 about $25 million,
$24.9 million,
which is total compensation, including massive stock awards.
237 times the median employee.
So Nick Khan is very well compensated.
Um, that's about all.
But they have Roman Reigns is on the cover of the annual report.
That's all I got.
Um, we'll be back on Thursday to talk about whatever,
wrestling business news there is to talk about for subscribers.
Um, thanks everybody for listening and we will talk to you next time.
Bye.
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