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It’s true, when Vince kicks it the WWE could crumble without him keeping it together. It could also thrive without him holding them back. He works as hard as anyone I’ve ever heard of and the results have been less than favourable for a while.

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43 minutes ago, Brian Fowler said:

I honestly think Vince's work ethic is sometimes part of the problem. When it was just him, Patterson and Prichard writing everything, they had to work long hours, but they were also taping weeks of television at a time and had to commit to a vision.

Now he has 20 writers under him, and is insisting on continually rewriting the show up until the day of, sometimes right up until airtime. So the long term planning gets sacrificed to Vince's need to just keep working on everything.

If someone made a good enough offer, I think Vince might sell, probably with a clause that keeps Hunter, Steph, Shane, and maybe Kevin Dunn employed.

That's a big probably because when Endeavor (then WME/IMG) bought Zuffa, you would have thought the key component would be keeping Joe Silva as matchmaker and everyone else including Dana White (who made a nice $300 million or so from the sale fwiw) would be gone. Turns out Dana White would stay and Silva's protege Sean Shelby would stay on as lead matchmaker and almost everyone else behind the camera would be eventually gone. Dana did change his mind on leaving in favor of signing a seven year extension or w/e, but the main driver for keeping him is they saw everyone as expendable except Dana. When Endeavor got in charge, they started getting rid of what they saw as non-essential personnel IMMEDIATELY including prominent people who had been with the company for years. More than likely, whoever would buy WWE would be a company of the same size and magnitude. If they install their own regime, ALL of those people are going to be gone eventually. Kevin Dunn is definitely gone. On the small chance Levesque and his wife are still there right after the sale, they are going to butt heads with the new regime and it's going to end in them resigning from their positions "amicably". Therefore, I don't see Vince selling WWE if he is still breathing. That's exactly what is going to happen if he does sell.

Edited by Elsalvajeloco
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The real value in WWE is the library/Network. Whoever buys them could probably turn a small profit without even running any shows. If the goal is to actually run a wrestling promotion, Its hard to think of a reason why a company would buy and gut WWE rather than go after an ROH, Impact, MLW, or NWA, or someone of that size. Or start from scratch, like a wrestling version of Bellator.

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2 minutes ago, Zakk_Sabbath said:

The real value in WWE is the library/Network. Whoever buys them could probably turn a small profit without even running any shows. If the goal is to actually run a wrestling promotion, Its hard to think of a reason why a company would buy and gut WWE rather than go after an ROH, Impact, MLW, or NWA, or someone of that size. Or start from scratch, like a wrestling version of Bellator.

Well if it happened immediately, there are all of the guaranteed TV deals already in place which make it very valuable. The other thing is it's the brand name "WWE". It's pro wrestling to anybody except for people like us.

I would say there are other things for sure, but just being the WWE is what is the most valuable thing.

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I don't see Vince ever selling. I'm not sure why others do. He is too prideful for that and likely wants the company to stay in the family. I imagine he has already made so that his shares go to Steph, HHH, and maybe Shane after he dies. If WWE gets sold it will be by them, and I suspect all three are sane enough to properly delegate.

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Viacom bought Bellator with the idea (well at least when they bought it from Rebney and put Coker in charge) with the idea they can replicate UFC's popularity on Spike from TUF season 1 all the way until they left for Fox in 2011. Post Kimbo Slice's passing in 2016, they (Bellator) have become dramatically less popular with each passing year that it's almost sad that Viacom even had the thought they could do that. I think Viacom didn't make an attempt (or a legit one at least) to buy Zuffa because they didn't want to pay as steep a price when they felt like a million viewers average per show was achievable with an alternative and similar PPV success wouldn't be hard to crack with that alternative. Problem is UFC's valuation fluctuated to the point where that steep price became steeper than they could ever imagine. If they could go back in time, I bet Viacom would have a completely different approach.

If you want to get into pro wrestling and you can actually buy WWE, you should buy WWE. 

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Honestly I am at the point that IF the WWE was to be sold before Vince's passing it is going to be to either TV partner (NBC Universal or FOX)

Though I have seen some on Twitter theorizing that somehow ESPN would be able to convince Disney to buy it (I highly doubt that one)

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I can see Disney buying it only because they are in a “Nobody can fuck with us mode”, and they want to corner every market in entertainment. But yes Fox is most likely the buyer. The people running the network seem to still be very infatuated with the WWE, and are still bullish of a new boom period(or they believe they can help create it).

Edited by LoneWolf&Subs
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It's not an insane thought, but Disney buying WWE gives them actual live programming for Disney Plus every week and could conceivably hold people over waiting for other original series.

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5 minutes ago, RIPPA said:

Honestly I am at the point that IF the WWE was to be sold before Vince's passing it is going to be to either TV partner (NBC Universal or FOX)

Though I have seen some on Twitter theorizing that somehow ESPN would be able to convince Disney to buy it (I highly doubt that one)

It's going to be Black (insert day of the week) because one of the first things any those potential buyers is going to think is, "Why are there 50 billion people under contract?". 

AEW would probably feast on free agents, but a lot of people are going back to the indies whence they came.

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7 minutes ago, Elsalvajeloco said:

It's going to be Black (insert day of the week) because one of the first things any those potential buyers is going to think is, "Why are there 50 billion people under contract?". 

AEW would probably feast on free agents, but a lot of people are going back to the indies whence they came.

Or “Why are we running non-televised shows?”, and “NXT UK? Is anybody watching this? Why is 99.9% of the roster made up of 20-30 year old white guys with beards?”.

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Honestly, WWE being sold would be the worst thing to happen to wrestling, as suddelny the market is going to be flooded with over a hundred free agents and not near enough roster spots/money is larger feds to go around.  You think conditions for workers now are shit, wait until it's a buyers market and they have zero leverage to anyone.

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5 minutes ago, Raziel said:

Honestly, WWE being sold would be the worst thing to happen to wrestling, as suddelny the market is going to be flooded with over a hundred free agents and not near enough roster spots/money is larger feds to go around.  You think conditions for workers now are shit, wait until it's a buyers market and they have zero leverage to anyone.

Here is the thing though: One of the reasons why I don't see Paul Levesque being kept on post-sale is if his vision is to sign the best person from the indies every other day, the likelihood of someone without the knowledge of pro wrestling understanding his vision is slim to none. And slim just left town. For fucks sake, going back to the Zuffa example I used, Ari Emanuel and the rest of the folks from WME-IMG had no idea who Amanda Nunes was and thought Ronda Rousey was gonna trounce her in under 60 seconds (well they got the time of the fight right at least). That's a goddamn champion who headlined her last fight with fucking Brock Lesnar as the supporting act. Granted, UFC's roster bloat was up there with like 400 fighters under contract at one point. My point is it's something Levesque or whoever is help crafting this is responsible for. It's an environment they created and often with little to no benefit other than signing a bunch of people. I don't expect benevolence when the goal is business results. Fortunately in MMA, instead of money mark promoters going away with the decline in MMA popularity, you just had more (RIZIN, ONE, WSOF/PFL, Bareknuckle FC, Combate Americas) pop up over time and many times overpaying people. I don't see why pro wrestling wouldn't be any different in the wake of a WWE sale. It's a market correction, not the end of times.

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The slight difference between the ZUFFA sale and a theoretical WWE one is there hasn't exactly been a dearth of money marks showing up and overpaying people over the last 20 years since the WCW sale.  We're sitting at 3 and one of those fucked off out of the business with a 4th possibly starting to throw around money.  That said, I'm not disagreeing with you per se, it's just there's gonna a ton of guys going from near guaranteed six figures to working for hot dogs and gas money again.  The PC created a real bad situation that's going to get worse before it gets better.

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On the other hand, someone coming in from the business world and doing talent evaluations of the PC may well decide that a guy with 10 years on the indies has more value than an ex-college football player with no previous wrestling experience. So the indies would be flooded with all the mini Corbins and Rawleys.

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31 minutes ago, Raziel said:

The slight difference between the ZUFFA sale and a theoretical WWE one is there hasn't exactly been a dearth of money marks showing up and overpaying people over the last 20 years since the WCW sale.  We're sitting at 3 and one of those fucked off out of the business with a 4th possibly starting to throw around money.  That said, I'm not disagreeing with you per se, it's just there's gonna a ton of guys going from near guaranteed six figures to working for hot dogs and gas money again.  The PC created a real bad situation that's going to get worse before it gets better.

Well, a good amount of that time since 2001, most people had no idea networks would be willing to pay for content like pro wrestling. Moreover, just like UFC, WWE was very good at controlling the narrative that they had all of the best talent and were the only ones who knew what to do with it. Now it's evidently clear that neither statement is true. The thing that's hindering someone signing talent is the fact that indeed WWE is signing everyone and their mama to a contract now. If WWE had the same mentality they had fifteen years ago or even ten years ago, there would be more companies like NWA under Corgan and AEW. If the WWE end goal was to make sure more companies like that weren't around, they were successful. However, that's the only thing they were/are successful at. If something goes wrong in their business like Vince passing away or more C level firings, their decline gets even more precipitous, and/or they don't get similar money from a new TV deal once these current TV deals expire, they've made the talent situation in pro wrestling untenable. 

Edited by Elsalvajeloco
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3 minutes ago, AxB said:

On the other hand, someone coming in from the business world and doing talent evaluations of the PC may well decide that a guy with 10 years on the indies has more value than an ex-college football player with no previous wrestling experience. So the indies would be flooded with all the mini Corbins and Rawleys.

I have a feeling it's going to be indiscriminately unless they find another Tony Khan-like person who is willing to take the time and look into everyone or has prior knowledge of pro wrestling. Otherwise, if that performer isn't already known to a TV audience or isn't a difference maker, value means nothing at that point.

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The stock price crashed when they pretended Vince sold half the company to the host of the Apprentice and didn't smarten people up that it was an angle right away.

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38 minutes ago, AxB said:

On the other hand, someone coming in from the business world and doing talent evaluations of the PC may well decide that a guy with 10 years on the indies has more value than an ex-college football player with no previous wrestling experience. So the indies would be flooded with all the mini Corbins and Rawleys.

No one in the Business world gives a flying fuck about Indy experience, only about what the ROI is going to be on keeping them around, and the second that drops below a made up value, they're gone.

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And the related issue, now that Wilson and Barrios are out with no obvious replacements in house, what happens if Vince dies soon? Whether his heart finally explodes, car crash because he drives 90+ mph in a snow storm, whatever...

Trips runs "wrestling operations" I'm sure, but Wall Street would never accept him as CEO, and I don't think he wants that job. Steph has a degree in business, but she's mostly been doing PR, not preparing to be the boss the last decade. Shane has no official corporate role, and his outside business ventures flopped.

Linda coming back as CEO? She hasn't been involved in years, but she does have experience.

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10 minutes ago, Raziel said:

No one in the Business world gives a flying fuck about Indy experience, only about what the ROI is going to be on keeping them around, and the second that drops below a made up value, they're gone.

In this potential hypothetical, they obviously won't give a shit about Indies, but they might think "group A need to be trained from the ground up, while group B already know how to do this job and we could train them at a fraction of the time and, more importantly, cost"

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13 minutes ago, Brian Fowler said:

And the related issue, now that Wilson and Barrios are out with no obvious replacements in house, what happens if Vince dies soon? Whether his heart finally explodes, car crash because he drives 90+ mph in a snow storm, whatever...

Trips runs "wrestling operations" I'm sure, but Wall Street would never accept him as CEO, and I don't think he wants that job. Steph has a degree in business, but she's mostly been doing PR, not preparing to be the boss the last decade. Shane has no official corporate role, and his outside business ventures flopped.

Linda coming back as CEO? She hasn't been involved in years, but she does have experience.

Insert joke about Linda knowing about Small Businesses. 

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49 minutes ago, RIPPA said:

Legit probably the only person who could have bought the WWE that wouldn't make everyone freak out is Ted Turner and he is now 81 and suffering from dementia

Shahid Khan maybe. Seems to be pretty hands off in letting Tony run AEW, he might let H & Steph run WWE similarly. 

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