Vince McMahon Returns to WWE

[JLowe]

5 hours ago, Elsalvajeloco said:

If they do try to sell, it's going to be:

1) NBC Universal

2) An ownership group made up of parties that couldn't buy majority interest of their own

3) They will fall flat on their face and won't be able to give away anywhere close to their asking price.

We can rule out WBD and Disney just for all the reasons that have been stated the last few weeks. Plus, WWE wouldn't be that hot of a property. If WWE was doing I dunno.... early 2000s pre brand extension PPV business and in the same ballpark TV ratings for both Raw & SD (minus XFL and the WWF New York), they would be in a much better position.

All they need to do is spend a few shows insulting Elon Musk and they'll be able to sell to him for more than value

[Elsalvajeloco]

28 minutes ago, Greggulator said:

The Rock is not buying the WWE. Like… whatever entity buys the WWE will need $7 billion.

The Rock bought the XFL right before it was going to hit bankruptcy for $15 million. And he did that with a private equity firm called RedBird Capital that makes sports themed investments. And they only have $2.5 billion or so to go out and buy companies to sell a few years later. 
 

But what could happen — a bunch of different investors and investment firms get together and pool their money to buy the WWE. And The Rock could be a part of that as a public face type of person.

Call me cynical, but I don't think they get $7 billion. 

[Dolphman 3000]

1 hour ago, Go2Sleep said:

Vince selling to the Saudis would be his best swerve since Montreal.

It wasn't on anyone's radar until a couple days ago, but in retrospect, it's so obvious. Vince makes out like a bandit and everyone who stuck by him gets rewarded by working 10 Crown Jewels a year with no tv exposure (except the women who all just have their contracts terminated).

Sami Zayn should probably just ask for his release now

No way any of this ends well for him

[Dolphman 3000]

54 minutes ago, Greggulator said:

But what could happen — a bunch of different investors and investment firms get together and pool their money to buy the WWE. And The Rock could be a part of that as a public face type of person.

With LIV the Saudis went after Tiger Woods and settled for Greg Norman

I could see them going after The Rock and settling for Hogan instead - didn't the one Saudi prince think Andre the Giant was still alive?

[odessasteps]

Arguably, they settled for Mickelson and some other “names,” including the then-upcoming European Ryder Cup captain. 

Suppposedly, their next target is the Olympics and the 2030 World Cup, as part of an intercontinental bid with Egypt and Greece.

[NoFistsJustFlips]

This financial talk is fascinating to me. And Gregg is doing a phenomenal job breaking down all the ins and outs of the stock market related components.

But I'm baffled so many people are missing the mark of what's actualy happening here. WWE isn't for sale. Vince will NEVER sell. He was gone 6 months and HATED it. He's not going to sell the company to cash in and be a weird rich billionaire. He's already got more money than he could spend in 50 life times. This has nothing to do with money. Running WWE is his only passion / hobby / obsession / purpose in life. He pulled the nuclear option to get back in and make sure they *can't* sell.

This was a strategic move to get back into his old spot. He knew dropping lines about the media deals & sales would drum up tons of stock market enthusiasm. Meaning if the board publicly rebuffed him shareholders would be furious. They would argue the board is preventing WWE from making the most profitable decisions by not allowing Vince in to make those sales. These aren't wrestling people. They don't understand Vince is an unhinged maniac. They think he's this brilliant businessman. And he is. But he's also got a death grip on this thing til the day he dies.

WWE will not sell while Vince is alive. I'm 4,000% sure of it.

Edited January 7, 2023 by NoFistsJustFlips
4,000 not 4.000 lol

[GuerrillaMonsoon]

I hope you're wrong and Vince spends his final days promoting shows of strapping Evel Knievel's corpse to a motorbike and having it jump Snake Mountain.

[Dolphman 3000]

3 minutes ago, GuerrillaMonsoon said:

I hope you're wrong and Vince spends his final days promoting shows of strapping Evel Knievel's corpse to a motorbike and having it jump Snake Mountain.

Darby to WWE?

[GuerrillaMonsoon]

Nah, no imitiations. Dig up what's left of him. Reanimate it. Strap it to the motorcycle. Remote control it. Saudi money, brother.

Edited January 7, 2023 by GuerrillaMonsoon

[zendragon]

1 hour ago, Elsalvajeloco said:

Call me cynical, but I don't think they get $7 billion. 

Dodgers went for 2.15b with Magic as face of the ownership group, that was 11 years ago. I could see some rich hedgefund fucks w/the rock doing something close to 7

[TheVileOne]

11 hours ago, just drew said:

Oh it definitely sucks, and I imagine TK got some very tasteful fruit baskets today from one "M. Black Shymalan" and one "Sr. Idolo" on account of Uncle Tony not granting them their releases. I can't imagine Dragon Lee, given that he just got the largest nXt contract ever, feels very good today. I should stop. This kind of conjecture doesn't do anything.

You shouldn't stop. Now is the time for conjecture and for humor. 

[Greggulator]

45 minutes ago, NoFistsJustFlips said:

This financial talk is fascinating to me. And Gregg is doing a phenomenal job breaking down all the ins and outs of the stock market related components.

But I'm baffled so many people are missing the mark of what's actualy happening here. WWE isn't for sale. Vince will NEVER sell. He was gone 6 months and HATED it. He's not going to sell the company to cash in and be a weird rich billionaire. He's already got more money than he could spend in 50 life times. This has nothing to do with money. Running WWE is his only passion / hobby / obsession / purpose in life. He pulled the nuclear option to get back in and make sure they *can't* sell.

This was a strategic move to get back into his old spot. He knew dropping lines about the media deals & sales would drum up tons of stock market enthusiasm. Meaning if the board publicly rebuffed him shareholders would be furious. They would argue the board is preventing WWE from making the most profitable decisions by not allowing Vince in to make those sales. These aren't wrestling people. They don't understand Vince is an unhinged maniac. They think he's this brilliant businessman. And he is. But he's also got a death grip on this thing til the day he dies.

WWE will not sell while Vince is alive. I'm 4,000% sure of it.

I absolutely would not be shocked if this were to happen . 
 

But Wall Street is just as carny as wrestling. For people who do not have experience with the terminology:

There is something called passive investing and something called active investing.

Passive investing is doing something like buying a mutual fund or an ETF (which are more or less a stock you can buy comprised of hundreds or thousands of other stocks), usually to track an index like the S and P 500 (the 500 biggest corporations traded on stock markets ) You just buy one of those things and hold on to them and watch it raise in value over a long period of time.

Or there is active investing. There are all kinds of mutual funds out there where you hand money over to someone who thinks he has a strategy and ability to outperform something like the S and P 500. Or you can hand money to a wealth manager to pick stocks for you, too. And you pay these people a lot of money in fees for their expertise.

But guess what? Something like 80 percent of actively managed funds underperform what the S and P 500 does. Hundreds of billions (and possible even over a trillion) of dollars go to active managers when every single piece of research shows this is not really a wise thing to do. 

But the active managers have done such a good job at making the marks believe that they know things that other people don’t and have insights no one else does. These are the types of people I talk to for my job or listen to speak — and most of them have the same exact insights and say the same exact things and went to the same exact colleges.

At the same time, a lot of big investors also have their connections and information gets shared. Rumors and hunches move from trader to trader. Seeing the WWE’s stock pop this big on the news leads me to believe something is up. I could absolutely be wrong on this and common sense as a wrestling fan should make me see things like Vince wants back in. But I just think the money is saying something. 

Also LOL at Bryan Alvarez talking about why the stock popped today versus the first time the WSJ mentioned Vince wanted to come back. He insinuated it was because investors think Vince is coming back solely to close a deal whereas the first mention made it seem like Vince was coming back for the whole shebang.

I really cannot stress this enough. Nobody gives a shit about how nerds like us in the wrestling bubble feel about whether it is a good show with consistent booking with new stars being made. That absolutely does not matter in the eyes of Wall Street. Because somehow, despite all of us nerds hating the product, the WWE consistently finds ways to make a shit ton of money,

[GuerrillaMonsoon]

Greg do you have a Patreon I can buy you a drink from? This is fucking tremendous and really helps separate the wheat from the chaff. Thank you

[Elsalvajeloco]

23 minutes ago, zendragon said:

Dodgers went for 2.15b with Magic as face of the ownership group, that was 11 years ago. I could see some rich hedgefund fucks w/the rock doing something close to 7

If I were Dwayne and had that type of clout, WWE would be lower on my priority list. I would be trying to turn Seven Bucks into its own major studio.

[The Natural]

Thank you for the informative posts, @Greggulator.

[Greggulator]

19 minutes ago, zendragon said:

Dodgers went for 2.15b with Magic as face of the ownership group, that was 11 years ago. I could see some rich hedgefund fucks w/the rock doing something close to 7

An e-commerce guy and Alex Rodriguez are buying the Timberwolves for less than $2B and they are having a hard time putting the money together.

Sports ownership is weird. Most people buy teams because of the ego trip but they also understand and see that valuations of sports teams and TV rights deals and etc are consistently going up. So it is a weird mix and like a really profitable vanity projects. Also, pro sports leagues in the US have a very controlled approach when a team goes up for sale. Any sale of a team needs approval from the other owners of the league. So there is a vetting that goes in ahead of time so things run smoothly. The Suns just got sold to a billionaire and everyone kind of knew it was coming because the guy inquired about maybe buying another team earlier.

I don’t think a group of pooled investors is going to get a few billion together to buy the WWE as a vanity project that also makes money. It is really hard to put something like that together for a publicly traded company where there are a bunch of possible bidders who have insane sums of money to work with. Elon Musk was able to do that for Twitter, but he is literally the richest man in the world and he was also bidding against himself. But the WWE is in sort of an auction right now where a lot of entities with a lot of money are interested.

[TheVileOne]

6 hours ago, Greggulator said:

Also, I know everyone dreads Vince "getting the book" or whatever. But I seriously doubt that will happen.

I know I might be delusional but I think he really wants to sell the company and fast, and he was worried that the convoluted structure of co-CEOs and without his expertise in negotiating big deals (and, yes, he has that expertise) was not going to result in a deal getting done.

My theory with this: Vince is 77-years-old. Who knows how much time he has left. As of yesterday, the WWE was valued at $6.3 billion dollars. (That's called market cap - you multiply the price of each share by the number of shares.)

When someone or a company goes to buy another company, it has to pay a premium to entire shareholders to agree to the sale. This is what happened with Elon Musk and Twitter.  Elon Musk and his cohorts bought Twitter for $54.20 a share.  It was selling around $40. 

WWE shares are at about $85 right now. And as I said earlier - this is a company with a lot of intellectual property it turns into profitability. It generates cash. Companies like that are really valuable right now. 

And like I said - I know enough about this to understand that any guess I have on valuating a company is outside of anything I can do. But if you were to tell me that Disney or Fox is going to buy the WWE for $100 a share - again, somebody is going to have to pay Vince a lot of money to sell the company - I would not bat an eye.

So Vince could go to the grave knowing he turned a wrestling promotion into an $8 billion corporation bought by one of the legendary media enterprises in history. The dude of course has an insanely big ego. That's a lot more gratifying to an ego then booking WrestleMania.

Yeah but a lot of people thought all the "budget cuts" over the last two years were Vince McMahon leaning out the business and prepping for a sale. Now he's actually talking about a sale. 

So even if he were to not book again, and they sell the company, whose job is really safe at this point in the event of a sale?

[Elsalvajeloco]

16 hours ago, Greggulator said:

An e-commerce guy and Alex Rodriguez are buying the Timberwolves for less than $2B and they are having a hard time putting the money together.

Sports ownership is weird. Most people buy teams because of the ego trip but they also understand and see that valuations of sports teams and TV rights deals and etc are consistently going up. So it is a weird mix and like a really profitable vanity projects. Also, pro sports leagues in the US have a very controlled approach when a team goes up for sale. Any sale of a team needs approval from the other owners of the league. So there is a vetting that goes in ahead of time so things run smoothly. The Suns just got sold to a billionaire and everyone kind of knew it was coming because the guy inquired about maybe buying another team earlier.

I don’t think a group of pooled investors is going to get a few billion together to buy the WWE as a vanity project that also makes money. It is really hard to put something like that together for a publicly traded company where there are a bunch of possible bidders who have insane sums of money to work with. Elon Musk was able to do that for Twitter, but he is literally the richest man in the world and he was also bidding against himself. But the WWE is in sort of an auction right now where a lot of entities with a lot of money are interested.

100%

Re: Vince won't sell

The only person I am convinced won't sell his team/company while alive is Jerry Jones. Everything else has a price. When UFC got purchased in 2016, everyone including the WWE were fishing for buyers because it seemed preposterous (it is) that the UFC got 4 BILLION. A company that almost died itself in 2003/2004 in a niche little sport that almost died in the late 90s until it got regulated got 4 billion dollars. When it was clear no one else was going get that type of cash even if they had a much better argument, that's when the search stopped. Now it's starting back over again just because the TV money has hit, and short of another Hulk Hogan or Steve Austin or maybe a crossover star no one thought would come along that spurs further growth, it's not going to be more valuable than it is now. So Vince McMahon has a price. Now will he get it has always been the question.

[Greggulator]

I appreciate the compliments! If you really want to “pay me a tip” as it is — drop some of your money and subscribe to your local newspaper. And especially do this if you do not live in a major metropolitan area with a big daily newspaper. 

i really have a passion for financial news and finance talk. But one thing I believe — this stuff is complicated, and it is complicated in many ways because the “smartest people in the room” want it to be so complicated that it feels like they are the only ones who know what is happening and you should give them your money.
 

I work really hard at learning about these things and I have a decent ability at explaining them in a way for people without the background can understand.  I am really lucky that I get to do this for my career.

I want as many people as possible to learn about how money works in our economy. The reason why is because I think the more people understand complicated topics in finance makes for a better financial system that is more fair for everyone. I think people should invest and save and build wealth. But people don’t always see how the game is played and because of that they lose out. And I also am the first to admit that I do not know nearly all of the rules of the game. 

It is really awesome that the WWE is in a scandal like this because it is a company that people understand. Something like FTX? Not as easy.

I also owe the WWE a bit of gratitude for being able to make this my career.

I worked for crappy small town newspapers when I was right out of college covering town council and school board meetings. I was living in Massachusetts for a few years and a small newspaper there hired be to be their business reporter.

At first, it meant I wrote about real estate development and new stores opening downtown (since it was a tourist trap) and things like that. 

Arizona State University’s journalism school has a business journalism program. They offered seminars at different newspapers around the country where they trained you in the nuances of business journalism and offered a certificate.

One of the things they discussed was how to look at the documents publicly traded companies have to file - quarterly reports and annual reports - and how to write about them them. I had no idea any of that existed or what it meant. But I loved the seminar and took the materials they handed out and used all of the WWE’s documents (like the ones I broke down today) to sharpen my skills. I picked the WWE because obviously I am a huge wrestling fan and I know the business. And it id also a pretty simple business in terms of how it makes money. I also was trying to get my MBA (didn’t finish) and had a class that was the basics in how to analyze a company — all of the ratios and metrics Wall Street types use. I used the WWE for my final presentation, in which I had to come up with a predicted stock price for the company in a year and justify why using the basic models financial professionals use. 

But the newspaper part was the key for me. And subscribing to the local paper helps democratize information, will hopefully help keep a younger journalist able to get experienced with explaining complicated material, and makes us all better for it. 

Sorry for the long-winded emo post!

[GuerrillaMonsoon]

Look, my local paper just records the goings on at my local shopping mall and alternates between "Barry's Vaccums Confident Latest Model Will Suck Off The Competition" and "Local Teens Apprehended After Shopping Trolley Skylark" but if that's what you want, I'm game.

[The Natural]

Meltzer:

Quote

What a day this has been. The update is that Vince McMahon is back as Chairman of WWE. For right now, it is business as usual. Nick Khan, Stephanie McMahon, Paul Levesque and Frank Riddick are keeping their positions and will be the people running the day-to-day of the company. Vince is not, for now, going to shows or working out of the office, but only will be part of sale talks and TV rights talks. Those in WWE noted that the key people in the company were aware that this power play would be attempted. The going public with the attempt to sell was his way back in, because that news was going to send the stock price up, instead of the fear of it declining, with him back in charge. A meeting was held today where it was made clear that everything will be staying the same, that Vince is there to negotiate a potential sale, that there is no guarantee there will be a sale and that the company also could be taken private.

For the short-term I expect that will be the case, but long-term, I wouldn't bet on anything. But they did bring up the idea of selling before the TV rights negotiations are finished. Obviously a ton happened behind the scenes because the board voted unanimously barely a week ago to not allow him back, and he responded by starting to change the board. We have a ton more in the issue even though McMahon was not yet put back in that position at the time that story was completed.

At the afternoon meeting, headed by Khan, Stephanie and Riddick, they talked about Vince being back to negotiate a possible sale and the next media rights deal. They noted Vince would have final say in both of those deals. All employees were there but none of the talent and of course they pushed this as a positive for the company. Khan talked about Comcast (NBCU), Disney (ABC/ESPN) and Netflix as potential buyers.

The stock closed today at $84.27 per share, up $12.23 per share giving the company a $6.27 billion market value.

 

[Peck]

6 hours ago, John from Cincinnati said:

https://frontofficesports.com/public-investment-fund-saudi-arabia-wwe-sale-liv-golf-vince-mcmahon/

Uncle Saudi > Uncle Howdy

[ExcellenceofAirPollution]

Nothing about this Vince news is too surprising to me to be honest.  I figured it was a matter of time before he was back.  I wasn't expecting Wilson/Barrios back as empty suit puppets for Vince but it makes sense, and it just exposes what a joke the board is.  The stock going up so much isn't surprising either as they're clearly wanting people to think they're positioning for a sale, of course Wall St eats that shit up.  Perception is reality and even if they don't sell and just end up with better TV deals the stock will be fine.  I don't think they'd actually take the company private again but stranger things have happened.  I also don't expect much of a public blowback or fan backlash to this news.

And to all the talent out there, in WWE, in AEW, free agents.....nobody in the business should be surprised by this.  For any disgruntled talent in AEW hopefully this is a wakeup call of how good they have it with their job security and a boss who isn't a sociopath

Personally I've been largely done with WWE for a while.  Vince stepping away didn't bring me back and I'm not sure what would at this point.  My only concern is how this affects AEW and the larger pro-wrestling landscape.  I don't think Vince can stay away from creative completely.  Of course they're saying that now, but plans are always subject to change when VKM is involved.  IF he stays true to his word and leaves Paul in charge of creative I'll be pleasantly surprised because by all accounts he's doing a good job and it's clearly for the best longterm.  I also don't think he can resist being on TV, even if it's just a wink wink cameo.

Definitely gonna be a lot of talent walking on eggshells for the forseeable future.  For selfish reasons I want Vince's first official action to be firing The Good Brothers again, just because.  "TELL KARL ANDERSON TO FUCK KARL ANDERSON!"

[Infinit]

@Greggulatorthanks for the insight!! Really appreciate you going above and beyond to explain this all

[The Natural]