WWE merger analysis with Brandon Ross of LightShed

And we are alive. It is John Pollock joined as always by Brandon Thurston of Russell Nomics. It is another edition of Pollock and Thurston Interview. Joining us today in the hot seat, a man that I'm sure many people that are interested in this subject matter very familiar with. A familiar voice on WWE earnings calls a analyst at Light Shed. It's a pleasure to welcome Brandon Ross to the program. Brandon, how are you doing today? Thank you so much for joining us and taking some time to chat with us. I'm good. It's great to be here guys. TKO earnings calls now, right? It'll take about nine months or so before that deals close but it'll be a lot of fun to have these two companies together and get to look at these two businesses, UFC business and the WWE business under the same umbrella, at least for the analyst. I don't know about exactly what's going to happen in terms of the dynamics internally. We'll see as that unfolds. Well, as you've had some time to digest this, Brandon, I mean, you had been one of the people at the forefront looking at this endeavor being a very logical option for a landing spot. But this is a lot of interesting personalities all under one roof. And from a commercial standpoint, Vince McMahon, a Dana White, how do you assess some of the dynamics that come with a merger like this and a lot of powerful figures that have typically run their companies and now you are working in concert with one another? Great opportunity for shoulder content. That's what I know. I think, honestly, these two businesses will probably wall their under the same umbrella and they'll have the ability to share some costs and do some cross promotion and kind of take the expertise out of each other's businesses. They'll probably be run pretty separately. I mean, you already see the management structure where Nick is going to run WWE, Dana is going to run UFC. I expect those to be pretty siloed fiefdoms where most of the crossover happens through strategic meetings. This transaction, which you correctly predicted, by the way, we talked to you several months ago and you were talking, basically the only one talking at that point about the notion that endeavor could acquire or merge with WWE. And you would talk about a reverse morris trust that was listening to your latest podcast last Friday. And this is actually not a reverse morris trust. No, this isn't. So the way a reverse morris trust would have worked would have been that the shareholders of endeavor would have gotten ownership in the new entity. And it would have been a completely separate company with no endeavor ownership. What I missed about the possibility for that transaction was, endeavor would have had to own 80% of UFC for at least six years, I think, and they didn't. So they couldn't do it under that structure. So under the current structure, the deal endeavor owns 51% of TKO. And that's endeavor the company, not the shareholders of endeavor. And it's different. And one thing I'm trying to figure out lately is that I take it that all W shares when this is complete, all W shares are going to become TKO shares. That's correct. Yeah. That'll be 49% of the stock. 51% is going to be owned by EDR. But like, does endeavor do endeavor shareholders get TKO shares or is it just endeavors going to be being? No, no, no, no, equity. That's right. That's under a reverse morris trust. What you said previously, endeavor shareholders owning it would have been the case. But it's actually endeavor the corporate entity. Yeah. And like, how does that work for control, I guess? Like, who controls that 51% equity that endeavor owns is just RE or whoever the CEO is. I guess like, ultimately, the shareholders of the board of, you know, like in air quotes. But ultimately, it's it's it's RE's game. I mean, he's the leader of that organization. How pivotal was Vince McMahon in all of these talks from your understanding, Brandon, and sort of the appetite that was out there of not just getting into business with WWE, but primarily having Vince McMahon as a focal point in the next iteration of this company? Sure. I saw what you guys saw, right, which was Ari, who definitely has a very longstanding relationship with Vince McMahon. He said that he wanted Vince involved and asked specifically for him to be involved. The, you know, the party line is that this wasn't a requirement from Vince. Whether or not we should believe that or not, I honestly don't know. I don't want to make a judgment call either way, but kind of entering the mind of somebody, any business owner, especially one with a very type A personality whose entire identity and life has been wrapped around one single company or product is probably going to want to force his way into continuing that involvement. And as chairman of TKO, he actually is in a position, in a power position, in a bigger organization than he was before. And he won't have special voting rights. And in this case, I, but reading the filings that came out last week, Monday, it sounds like this is going to be a one-class shareholder system. That's how I read it as well, Brandon. So it's not going to be the case now where he has a little over a third of the stock, but 81% of the votes he's going to have by my math about 18% of the control. And that's correct. So it remains to be seen, obviously, how much ultimate control he's able to wrestle, whether it's from a creative standpoint or a business standpoint. And that remains to be seen. It seems like Ari will likely give him as much leeway as he wants. And I don't know, you guys are more equipped to tell me, how do you think that Vince's imprint has been on maybe the end of WrestleMania or the subsequent shows? Or do you think... Who's definitely there the Monday after? No, I know. I know he was there, but was his imprint on the creative is what I'm asking you guys. Oh, on that Monday show after WrestleMania, that was a Vince McMahon show. And subsequent shows, I mean, last Friday's show this past Monday, Vince McMahon was not there presently. But it's ultimately, it's no longer this idea that it is church and state where Vince is working on a sale and has nothing to do with creative. It is public. Like the public line is that, yes, I am involved, but I'm not in the weeds. So, I mean, that is, working with Paula Beck at the very least. And there's going to be that influence. And I think that's the big picture influence on storylines. And that will permeate, I think, into certainly having more of a hands-on approach than the last couple of months. But I certainly feel like there's going to be that specter of Vince with the creative direction of this. And to be clear, what's been reported, right after he retired or resigned, he was apparently not involved. I mean, Paula Beck and Vince were probably having conversations and who knows what kind of influence he's exerting through that. But when he came back to the company in January, I mean, we had Paula Beck make comments on the earnings call about how beneficial it is to have him back as executive chairman. And obviously, he was there in LA during WrestleMania week and he was there at the arena the following. He was in gorilla. He was in the back. No, I know. I know he was in gorilla and no one could miss him. No, no, he's put a giant bullseye on his face for everybody to see. And it does become very interesting, Brandon, because I mean, just listening to the earnings calls, and this is the first time I've had a chance to speak with you, like you certainly seem to be very engaged with sort of like the news cycle of professional wrestling. And that seems to be something Brandon and I have noticed is that a lot of analysts, like, they might not be watching the weekly programming, but they certainly seem to have a better read of the fan's perception of the on-screen product. And if you're Paula Levesque, you can certainly lean back on metrics that have improved under this nine, 10 month run where he has been leading the creative direction. This is not just, you know, fantastic. But first of all, the numbers speak for themselves. That's it. Second of all, I think any analyst who's doing their job speaks to the customers of the product that they're analyzing. And in, you know, customer conversations, Mark on our team is a huge wrestling fan. I actually thought about bringing him on this podcast with me. And I think both of you should meet him. So he is, he's really on the beat of what's happening creatively. Obviously, I watch here and there, not to the same obsessive. You were at WrestleMania, right? Yeah, I was, I was only there the first night, but I did watch the second night on Peacock. And I'll tell you why. I thought the content was awesome. Especially was very good. Yeah, I was more into it. And obviously, I'm much more casually involved with the content than you guys are. But I was more into that, that night one of WrestleMania than any of the previous shows that I've attended live. I think that it was a pretty universal opinion, especially about this night. So like this was a pretty well received, WrestleMania by, you know, anyone's standards. I think it was a very, very well received show. And it was also, I mean, they're most financially rewarding WrestleMania as well. You had the opportunity to speak with Nick Khan last week following the announcement of the merger. And I kind of want to go back and just some of your impressions when Nick Khan made this giant pivot in his career going to WWE in 2020. And how much did that catch the industry off guard? And what kind of a hiring this is for WWE in terms of just the importance that Nick has brought to this company in terms of not just business dealings, but I think perception wise as well. Certainly has been a very important three year period. And he's been at the forefront of it. Sure. I think, first of all, I think George and Michelle actually did a great job involving WWE. It's brand, not only it's, I don't mean it's brand with wrestling fans, but it's in the industry perception of WWE. I think the move into streaming at the time looked like it was some really forward thinking stuff. And there was a lot of respect that others in the media industry, other companies gave to WWE for that move. I had not started covering WWE before the network launch. How much were TMT analysts really covering WWE before the network? Was the network launch a big change? Yeah. That was, it wasn't necessarily the network itself, but it was the their ability to get to a million over the top subscribers at the real beginning of OTT. I mean, that was, there were very few companies at that time who could boast that. It was who Netflix, it was Amazon Prime, I mean, which both have broad content. I don't even think crunchy role had gotten to a million yet. If you want to go back to like sort of single product OTTs, and I think MLB did. MLB.tv. Because UFC fight pass around that time too, right? Yeah, but it was later, I think, and I don't, it never got to, you know, it was a pretty revolutionary idea to cut the middleman out at that time. And obviously, George and Michelle had a huge hand in that evolution and taking that risk, you have to give Vince credit, I mean, ultimately Vince controls everything. And he was, you know, willing to, or not just willing to, he really embraced that step. And I think that, that was an important shift in perception around WWE as a business. Obviously, others caught up in the OTT world. And then in that next iteration, it made sense to, and I was unsure about this at the time, but it's worked out. It made sense to license that content out to a third party and focus solely on creative. And when you, when you moved back into that and George and Michelle left for whatever reasons they left, we don't need to get into that. I think that Con was, was a pretty good choice to continue to elevate that B2B perception. Because as a Hollywood agent who had dealt with a ton of brands and a ton of mainstream Hollywood folk, it was a chance to continue to evolve WWE in a positive direction. Does that make sense? Yeah, it does. And I'm kind of curious because you must be on so many of these earnings calls every quarter. Yeah. Like, is there something? I tried to estimate how many I've been on in my life once. Well, I can't imagine, but I'm sure it's in the thousands, multi thousands. It's crazy. Like, what, what are certain skill sets that Nick Con possesses in that role as a front-facing executive that is communicating what can be some very dry information in a way that's digestible. And does he have a unique skill set when you are looking at other kind of executives that are in this role to this is what I, this is what I like about Nick on the earnings call. First of all, he has broad perspective because he's still in the conversation on everything going on in media. And that's very clear. Number one, and number two, he's willing to communicate what he's hearing in a public forum, which is something. Yeah, break store, which is something you never see from a sea level executive on an earnings call. So I've, I've definitely appreciated and enjoyed that. And I think it's me, WWE's earnings call, even beyond people who are invested in WWE, a little bit of a must lesson. And so if you're getting a broader audience that also helps you to rope in a broader investor base, because inevitably they're also going to be paying attention to the rest of the call. So I think Nick's strategy in that regard, I don't know how much his partners necessarily love it, but I think it's work for the investment community. Compared, we brought up FightPass and given how they launched in relatively close proximity to one another, but very different, different views when it comes to pay-per-view content and the way the network went versus the UFC that has stayed in that business is, and that has been to me from fans after this merger, the number one concern is WWE going back to a pay model for its largest shows. Are we too far removed that you can put the toothpaste back in when WWE's streaming rights are up with peacock? How do you see them kind of navigating that streaming space? My belief is that yes, we are too far removed at this point. Number two, I think you're going to have now this negotiation around the Ron SmackDown rights coming up. And as you know, NBCU owns the Raw rights and they own the rights to those pay-per-views, the old WWE network. My guess is that they might want to, I'm not saying they're gonna, but they might want to add an extension to the pay-per-views deal as part of this negotiation. And optically, I think it probably makes sense for WWE to do it because my belief is NBCU is happier with the performance of the WWE network content than the actual raw content. And probably think they underpaid for the network content. So maybe you can show the street a little bit more of a step up and then you could get those deals co-terminus so that you have the most optionality in the future when those rights are all up. And those deals are about a year and a half. Yeah, about two years apart. Yeah, apart. They'll expire I think five years after 2021. So I think March 2026, I think it was on the peacock. Yes, I mean, it's closer to, yeah, it's a year and a half. It's it be a sets and a September versus end of March, you're correct. Are you it's as we're looking at the overall landscape of major live sports rights, how influential do you feel like the NBA rights are going to play into this when you are here? The idea of NBC opening to me, it's like, there's such a trickle down to these other rights. Like that seems to be the Yeah, yeah, the NBA is obviously the biggest right steel that's outstanding. And you've seen all of the potential partners for WWE on this on this deal, maybe with the exception of Fox has expressed interest in the NBA, whether we've heard it firsthand or second hand or you know, it's it's it's in the media. It sounds like NBCU wants to get one night one night or day a week. Maybe it's a Sunday night situation to to, you know, fill out the year when football is over. That makes a lot of sense. So those are going to be expensive rights, obviously. You know, I know that Turner has the rights to AW. You got to look at them as still like kind of a dark horse for these rights. And then yeah, why not? Right? If you watched yesterday, the max premiere, I don't know if you guys watch that. I'm aware. Yeah, they said that sports and news are going to be a big part of the service. They didn't want to give the details now. But you know, what if they abandon the NBA and it makes more sense to do WWE rights because they're less expensive? I don't know. I mean, there's so many questions open right now is what I'm saying. And they all center, as John pointed out around the NBA rights. Yeah, in that case, Turner doesn't know or WBD doesn't own both W and AW. They would probably let AEW go in that case. Maybe so, maybe not. Right? Maybe they want to be the home of all things wrestling. I have no idea. I'm not saying that there's a great chance of this. I'm saying that it is a possibility. And there are a number of potential bidders. And like, I don't know the exact appetite of each of the bidders. And you have to take, obviously, the digital seriously. Amazon, Apple, YouTube, obviously is doing sports rights now. They started with NFL. And so, how much do you think, I mean, for wrestling, those deals will probably be done before NBA gets done, right? Because NBA is 2025. These wrestling deals are both 2024. So, how much does our networks, like setting aside money because they have to, wow, we probably really have to spend on NBA. So, maybe we spend less on wrestling or is that just not that big of a fact when considering wrestling? No, they're wrestling. There have been ongoing talks for NBA rights already. I mean, we just had NBA All-Star weekend in February. If you looked around, you saw executives from every media company there. Yeah, Bob Iger was there. He spoke at the NBA Tech Summit. You have to imagine that these rights negotiations are already really ongoing. And that these companies are probably have a decent idea of what it's going to take. And the way that the NBA wants to slice and dice these packages. And I don't know if you listened to the last Fox earnings call. I don't know if you guys noticed this, but Lachlan Murdoch, when he was asked about WWE, content was asked, which said, well, it depends on how other sports content goes. Now, they're not, and I don't believe they're bidding necessarily for the NBA, as I indicated earlier. But what is that other rights? Is it NASCAR? Is it NBA? So I think that the NBA... SEC is the college property that's going on. Yeah, that's correct, which is the biggest. Maybe it's also earmarking for any potential follow from the Dominion voting scandal. They may be that's their ongoing coverage. On the side of whether it's the NBA rights, the WWE rights, what's your kind of guess in terms of like term that these broadcasters are looking for? Are they looking for 10-year deals? So we're not sitting back in five years to renegotiate, or would we be looking at sort of... Keep it to WWE like our five years of reasonable term that we're probably looking at. My guess is that WWE is probably going to one do another five-year deal. NBA is interesting. Obviously, you saw the NFL do a much longer term deal than they had in the past. I wouldn't be surprised if the NBA, if given the flexibility with all its partners, vis-a-vis digital, did a longer term deal. And it's just thinking long-term and about the market in general. There's a lot of talk about how streaming is not producing the profits that linear TV did. And maybe if can these life sports rights values grow indefinitely as they have? For people predict the plateauing and the fall of life sports rights fees for years and years. But is streaming the problem with streaming not being as profitable, at least at this point, or not profitable at all, unless you're Netflix, as traditional TV? Is that something that's going to finally plateau these live sports fees? There's a very good chance of that. Because the thing... I mean, if you have to look back at the history of sports rights and media to really understand why sports rights got as expensive as they did, and that had a lot to do with the affiliate fees tied to the bundle, which you could keep jacking because everybody subscribed to the bundle. And you would lose a lot of subscribers if you didn't have certain content. And so that kind of continued... As affiliate fees kept going up, they continued the escalation of sports rights values. Then you got to a situation where the audience may not have from a subscriber standpoint have been there, but it was the only thing that was working on linear TV. So linear broadcasters, networks, had to have that content. Otherwise, they had nothing. Now, as they transitioned to streaming, at the beginning of streaming, they were loss leading. But as everything really moves to streaming, over time, that loss leading is going to have to go away. And you're in a new model fully, which is much less profitable and much harder to keep the scale of subscribers on at all times. So my guess is that at some point, sports rights gets to the other side of the curve. I don't know when that's going to be that. And none of us do. If your business earns millions or tens of millions in revenue, stop what you're doing and take a listen. Because NetSuite by Oracle has just rolled out the best offer we've ever seen. NetSuite gives you the visibility and control you need to make better decisions faster. And for the first time in NetSuite's 22 years as the number one cloud financial system, you can defer payments of a full NetSuite implementation for six months. That's no payment and no interest for six months. And you can take advantage of this special financing offer today. 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They could never have gotten a public. If you're the UFC side and thinking selfishly, what are they getting out of this merger and inevitably going to be layoffs, I would say, on both sides that you're always going to see in these kinds of ideals. How are you looking at it from the UFC side? Yeah, cost rationalization as you pointed out and unfortunately the inevitable to part of cost rationalization is body rationalization. Then you have to look at and think, what does WWE do better than UFC that UFC can learn from? One thing that Nick has really pointed out to me is on CP, on consumer products. There's a much bigger consumer products presence with WWE. I think that comes naturally with the storylines attached to it. That's why you have action figures and more successful video games, etc. I think they're going to try and extract some of that DNA from WWE. I think the cross promotion opportunities are there. Can WWE promote UFC fights to its audience? Can they bring in fighters from UFC? Maybe not necessarily into storylines, but try and elevate them to a wider audience possible? Do you think that that could be a cross promotion on WWE and UFC? Is that a risk for UFC's brand? Worked matches. The UFC fans, especially those who aren't as well acquainted, started to think, wait a minute, there's pro wrestlers on this UFC show hanging out. Does that mean maybe? I don't think it would go that way. I don't think you'd bring pro wrestlers to UFC. I'm more talking about bringing UFC fighters onto WWE. I just mean if there's a presence you even cage side a lot? There are years. I mean, look, you have Brock and Ronda Rousey. There has been some crossover, obviously, in the past. I'm not saying that they become full characters, but they could get worked in a little bit, probably. You tell me, you guys are much more attuned to the creative, and I know that you're fans of the NBA journalist. Let's go, John. I don't want to make claims when I'm not the expert in the area. I feel there's enough of a maturation of the audience that sort of in this day and age understand the differences between the two, but I certainly believe there will be resistance if they feel like they are being force-fed WWE content. To a degree, you might get some of that on the wrestling side, but from my sense, Brandon, is that the wrestling audience is more open to the idea of a Conor McGregor coming on to promote his upcoming fight, do some angle on Raw to promote the event, whereas I do feel like the MMA audience is going to have some more resistance to pro wrestling promotion within the body of the UFC. That's why I think it's a one-way thing, and that's why it's beneficial to UFC and not necessarily to WWE. Yeah, I think promoting UFC on WWE programming is fine, but what if every UFC show has a promo for the next PLE with WWE? I feel like if I'm Dana White, I'm starting to feel like, well, I don't know if I want something that's kind of a sport, but not really a sport to be reflecting and questioning maybe the integrity of how real my sport is, especially in John knows about the gambling issue that they had there and with really as UFC and all that. So it's a major issue for them to navigate when they were up here in Canada, like taking, like you could not bet on UFC for a period and on like several outlets for that concern. I'm certain that they don't want to- What was the story behind that? Well, essentially what you had was there was this extreme line movement going into a fight that certainly raised eyebrows, and you had this fighter James Kraus that was making a killing off of gambling advice, but he's also like a very well-renowned trainer that has a lot of information, and that was being conveyed. And suddenly you saw all of these line movements involving fighters that were attached to him, at least just one fight that had the big line movement, and that was enough to spook a lot of gambling outlets and pulling UFC gambling from several areas. Like New Jersey was looking into this, Ontario was looking into this, and it was something UFC has a massive deal with draft Kings, and they, like gambling is a huge part of the presentation on UFC and for their revenue, and they do not want to be getting into any major- And they probably see that as an investigation. Yeah, I don't think I could agree with you guys more. This is a one-way promotion opportunity, likely. I mean, you get into the gambling side of it right before this deal was announced, and you had WWE news broke that they were looking into the possibility of betting on WWE matches, and the argument there is well people bet on the Oscars and other, you know, thing where the Oscars aren't really scripted per se. They're predetermined, like the press. Yeah, with predetermined outcomes before their error, yes. An interesting issue on the UFC side, that is not something WWE has to contend with, is the fact that coming out of the pandemic, one of the big talking points from Dana White is that we're not interested in politics, you tune in here, it's a break, but UFC became very politicized during this time, and Dana White's stance against COVID when he was running when others weren't. And this past Saturday, if you watch their pay-per-view, here they are in Florida, you have Donald Trump in the front row, you have Jorge Mosvidal shouting out Trump and Ron DeSantis, and it's as we're going into the next election cycle, like UFC, like there is a very significant, like right-wing leaning that extends into the programming, and that is something WWE is not. Like it's a very apolitical program that is not going to touch any of those, and MMA, like from the fighters, like there's certainly that element that you're, they pretty much get a live microphone, and there are a lot of politics embedded into MMA when you sort of look under the rock of the people that populate the sport. Totally. Let's not forget, though, that Vince McMahon's politics, I think, are very much aligned with those of Dana White's. Well, that is, yes. Free from the programming, but yes, it's another part of your life. Free from the programming. Look, as you guys have pointed out continuously, one is scripted and one isn't. One is trying to have much broader family appeal than the other. It doesn't mean that there aren't some cross-promotion opportunities, but I think, as I said at the beginning of this, these are going to largely be run as separate entities. And when there are opportunities to cherry pick some things or get help from the other, they will lean into that, but I, you know, that's not going to, there's not going to be a serious integration of these two businesses. As we wind down here, this has been a fantastic discussion. As we are going into the WWE's earnings calls, which is announced for May the 3rd, it seems every quarter, it's always great anticipation of these earnings calls, but this one, especially so given the recent news. And would you expect the McMahon's involvement on this earnings call, or is this still going to be kind of Nick Conne? No, I think this is going to be the Nick show. I actually didn't see that. It's my third. I have a daughter do on May 3rd, so congratulations. Thanks. I hope I can make that earnings call. Now it's in the morning for now. It's all right. You guys got me a little worried. Hopefully, you know, little baby will hold off for a couple of days because I'm really looking forward to that earnings call. Yeah, currently scheduled for 8.30 AM, which I'm guaranteeing Brandon that it'll get moved to 5 PM. Oh, of course. It may get moved to May 10th also. Who knows? That's true. We say all moves here. Yeah. I think it's more likely than last time that Vince, because Vince had already come back. It was February, but I think still more likely that he did. I would be absolutely floored if Vince was on this call. He clearly doesn't like doing that. If I was running investor relations and they have a very good investor relations team there, Seth does a great job. I would be, well, I guess not that it matters because Vince is going to do a Vince once a day, but I'd be shocked if he was on that call. Just the nostalgia of him coming on and stating, we merged with the company, take it away, Nick. That's it. That's all that. Very good impression, John. I can't do Brandon. Not that Brandon. Brandon Thurston really has it down pretty awesome. Let's hear it, Brandon. Now you're on the spot. You guys put me on the hot seat for a little while. We've got a treasure trust of IP and revenue and take her away, Nick. I've got to be on speakerphone as well. The muffled Vince connection. I think you guys were equally as good with your impressions. Well, Brandon, well, first of all, congratulations on your expected daughter. Yeah, thank you. Maybe after once you are settled in, we would love to have you back on. We'd love it. There's going to be a major story for months and years to come, I am sure. But I do encourage everyone to go check out the many podcasts that are out there. Brandon, where could you direct people to hear more of your analysis that goes much beyond just WWE? Yes, www.lightshedtmt.com and the Light Shed Podcast and Light Shed Life. Those are our products. Alright, well, we are going to say goodbye to Brandon and we will be taking some of your super chats and Brandon and I will wrap this up. But Brandon, thanks so much for joining us. We really appreciate the time. And by the way, for people watching on video, notice we had some video issues with Brandon. So we weren't able to get them on the screen, but he was wearing a Light Shed 316 shirt. We did see it for a moment before we went on. That is true. I don't know if that was my economics 316 shirt in the mail. That was a gift, but it's going to be one that I get a lot of wear out of. I'm already planning on wearing it on the Light Shed Podcast tomorrow. So, yeah, I probably won't wash it tonight, but don't tell anyone. Thanks a lot for the time, Brandon. Thank you. Take care. Alright, that was Brandon Ross. Dare I say, Brandon, I think he did come away just loving our impressions and that was a fun chat. Yeah, it was excellent. Great stuff. I continually go back to looking at all of these media rights and how the NBA, obviously, that the major one out there, but the potential effect, if you're talking about NBC, getting back into the NBA business and the idea that if there are games available, that some of them could seat down onto the USA network and it goes without saying the Warner Brothers Discovery talks with the NBA and the direct impact that will have on its AEW negotiations. But it'll be interesting, as you mentioned in the interview, the idea of when they go into these talks of knowing in the future, they have to have this available money available for their NBA rights, which are they are looking for a massive, massive increase, just mind-blowing money that they are expecting here. Yeah, the NBA is already getting 2.6 billion per year. Yeah, am I able to share this on the screen? I think I am. I don't know, maybe not. But anyway, they're getting 2.6 billion. They were just under a billion in the, there it is, in the round before that. So I haven't, I don't know, it's probably out there, but I haven't heard really looking for a 3X increase. I think maybe I saw one article say they were looking for. I might have to look it up, but it was like over the term, I want to say like 72 billion over the life of the deal, like a gigantic increase over what they're getting now. I mean, to compare AEW, which we have on the screen here, way down at the end, 44 million, that's a drop in the bucket compared to NBA's current deal, much less when they get an upgrade, assuming they will get an upgrade. So I don't know. And comes at a time as they are just expanding the hours of AEW programming. Like we've got, we just finished week three of All Access. It is, you know, there's the rumored Saturday show. We just saw a two hour block on Friday that to me, over performed greatly of what I expected going into last Friday. So it seems like it's a key part of their programming and to this chart, even with a multiple increase, it is a very small amount, but it's also Warner Brothers' discovery, like how much available do they have? It would seem to me to like AEW is certainly within their means to give not just a notable increase, but to be able to retain unless we get Warner Brothers' discovery aggressively going after WWE rights, as was thrown out there. Which it ran as not the first one who has thrown that idea out about the idea of, you know, the multiple benefits of WWE being in talks with Warner Brothers' discovery. We'll see if that ends up on the aggregators later. Analysts says, B.D. could buy W.D. and get rid of AEW. But I think, I'm not as bullish on AEW rights as I was on the podcast episode where we sort broke down the math and justified how you can make a 3X increase or 5X increase even. I don't, you know, the atmosphere has cooled off. I mean, since that day, that Netflix reported that they didn't grow and subscribe or sequentially from the prior quarter. Things have really cooled in terms of content spending. And then the economy has had issues more broadly too. But I think there's probably an understanding among the executives about how much they're going to bid probably more so, I mean, certainly more so than we do just trying to sit around and predict it. I feel like these media executives kind of know what the other media executives are going to bid. They're not completely going in blind and bidding blind. So I think, and I think AEW's, there's a good chance that AEW is partly in a small stake is owned by W.D. so there's that incentive. Why would you sort of ditch your current wrestling product if you do own a stake in it? So I think AEW will probably get a raise and I do think that W will, you know, will get a raise assuming their content doesn't fall apart and Vincent Man takes over. But even if it does, I don't see Raw and SmackDown falling in the ranks. And in fact, the last two episodes did quite well. Given the various options that are out there for AEW, do you have any strong leaning on what you would do with this Wembley Stadium show in terms of broadcast? I think that's going to end up on Max. Yeah. Which we alluded to in the brand and alluded to in the interview is the combined Discovery Plus and HBO Max. Even though Discovery Plus is still going to be a standalone streaming service that you can buy by itself. This is very confusing for me as a Canadian without access to Max, but yeah, piecing it together. Yeah, we have Crave up here that gets the HBO programming. So that is a succession yet. This was a spoilers. Did you watch a Sunday night live? I had to avoid so many spoilers, but I have watched the most recent episode the other night. Yeah, a tremendous episode of television. But if we go any further, we will get massacred. Let's go to just one question here from Ryan Archer who asks, do you think that WWE will move PLE's back to Sunday and or have weekends with UFC on Saturday, WWE on Sundays? What do you think about the pairing of these shows? The move to Saturday seems to have been a very strong move by WWE. Yeah, I think we discussed the Saturday is Saturday better than Sunday. I don't know because there's other things involved with certainly with Peacock, with how they report our WrestleMania, our Royal Rumble was so many double digits of percent more highly viewed. Well, that's got to be largely due to the fact that Peacock has millions and more subscribers in this year versus last year. But I'm sure we won't be seeing UFC and W on the same night. Same weekend. No, which is an example we have coming up. We can see that lately. Have there been UFC's and PLE's on the same night? It's been very rare, but May 6th, there is a UFC pay-per-view the same night as the Puerto Rico show backlash. I could imagine those being pretty rare. You're not going to avoid fight nights, but that to me is not a big issue, but a big pay-per-view on a WWE night. I think those are nights you want to avoid. We are going to get SummerSlam versus Nate Diaz and Jake Paul on D'Zone pay-per-view coming up in August as well. That's the same day as SummerSlam. Correct. Yes, they will be. Probably have C-fight. This is a D'Zone pay-per-view, but we will have the Paul brothers probably on opposite cards that particular evening. My last question. As you have had time to digest the TKO letters that we expect this to be, do you have any sense on what the name of this company is going to be? Because I have a theory. Yeah, I don't know. I imagine TKO will be the initialism, but I don't know. Because you keep hearing the word blockbuster. That is my prediction, is that we're going to blockbuster somehow. Vince has used blockbuster multiple times, and I know Vince is not going to just use a word multiple times for no reason. That's my theory. The blockbuster is somehow tied into this idea for a name of a company. B, we've got TKO as the letters. I know it's foreign, but TKO is a very lame name for the whole entire company. It's going to resurrect the media brand blockbuster. It's a knockout. Well, again, I think we could just add one more thing. I think we could see this TKO company, maybe even include boxing in the future. If this goes so well for them, why not go for the next pillar, if you will, of combat sports? It's something that Dana White has talked about, the idea of Zufa boxing, going back years, and that went away and of late. It's resurrected itself. And if we remember one of Nick Kahn's interviews, not all that long ago was throwing out the other box. So that, to me, would be a logical extension. We even saw some boxers on the pre-show for WrestleMania. It seems like that would be something that would make a lot of sense for them. That is a very difficult industry to navigate, where you are talking about government oversight and being with fighters that do have a protection with the Ali Act, which is very different from UFC and WWE and its freedoms, but would not surprise me either. And they have this connection, at least with Logan Paul. And Logan Paul has done boxing. Is he the one who fought Mayweather? Yes, Logan. And so they have that connection there, and there's something interesting happening, at least economically, with these boxing fights between these influencer celebrities. And that sounds very WWE to me. Yeah. And also a way that you could kind of take your UFC fighters and put them into a boxing space. There is the opportunity for something there, but we will see. We'll power slap find its way under the TKO banner. I don't know. Power slap is there going to be a season two of power slap. It's going to be on rumble. As we talk about the right wing leaning politics of a day away. Is there still a paper view is what you're talking about, right? Or is it just going to be they're going to do another season that's on rumble? Well, the the paper view ended up being moved onto this free rumble service, which this paper or this this finale came and went, and I heard nothing about it. But season two is supposed to be on rumble, and they're going to film this in Abu Dhabi. Okay, that is the plan. No more no more TDS. Maybe we should be streaming on rumble. I don't know. I don't know what kind of audience we'd find on rumble as people can alert us to how we would fare under rumble. Maybe that's anyway, we will wrap things up. Brandon is going to be back later tonight. How did you feel Brandon week is going here on post wrestling? Have you heard because we've got Brandon from New Jersey joining the postmarks on Saturday, and we got it was very tough for me. I felt silly calling him Brandon Ross and Brandon Thurston. You can tell there were a few there where I was actually one time I went to address you and got his answer. It's tough to navigate when you got double Brandon's here. Well, this is the wisdom of a sick man. You can't have people the same first name. He did some man proven right clearly. So we weren't going to rename you though for the purposes of the show is Gregory Thurston. But what's coming up tonight? The dynamite rating will be coming out in about a half an hour and we'll have whatever action there is to that. And I don't know. Usually what I do is I look at my Twitter feeds. Whatever I've been tweeting about is a good chance what I'll talk about. Whatever I've tweeted about between Sunday and Thursday will be the material for the show. So maybe a Ric Flair travel map. How? That's what I want to know. How did you do that? Dude, your work always impresses me. But when I saw this, you are literally one of one that could create this. Go to Brandon's Twitter. I came and put it into words what he was able to develop and how I would love to watch the making of. Let's try to make it brief. So it's based on cage match data. The credit for the data goes to cage match, of course. So I'm isolating. I filtered out all of Ric Flair's matches and I have a column that's the location which comes from the database. And I used a library in Python to say, okay, here's the location name. Give me the launch student latitude. And so I had to do all that. And then he kind of got to organize in just the right way for this thing called flourish to put it into the map. And it takes a lot of time. But that's basically how I did it. It was very impressive. I think like that. I'm just watching this thing. I would just sit down and watch this for 40 years worth of Ric Flair's travels around the world. So go check that out. Wrestlenomics 30 will be up tonight. Patreon.com slash Wrestlenomics. You can also check out post wrestling cafe.com and highly recommended. Stay tuned for our next in our interview series. Brandon and I will have to consult the spreadsheet and we will be able to have a bunch of names too. Okay, we're going to we'll definitely have some forthcoming interviews coming your way. So thanks to everyone that joined us live. These are very fun to do. And that is it for us. Goodbye. At Kroger, we want our fresh produce to meet your expectations, which is why we're dedicated to doing up to a 27 point inspection on our fruits and veggies, checking for things like scarring. In fact, only the best produce like zesty oranges and crisp carrots reach our shelves. Because when it comes to fresh, our higher standards mean fresh produce. Kroger, fresh for everyone. Choose from a great selection of digital coupons and use them up to five times in one transaction. Check our app for details. Kroger, fresh for everyone.