Both Vince McMahon and Ari Emanuel have made public statements regarding their negotiations surrounding WWE following Endeavor’s acquisition of the company, which aimed to merge it with the UFC to establish the TKO Holdings Group.
Emanuel, the CEO of Endeavor and TKO, made these remarks during the Bloomberg Screentime conference. As previously reported, he emphasized the substantial interest in the media rights to Monday Night Raw, given that their current deal with the USA Network is set to expire next year. The USA Network is not expected to retain Raw and NXT after striking a deal to bring SmackDown back to their programming lineup. Consequently, Emanuel has signaled that there is significant demand for Raw’s media rights.
During his presentation at the conference, Emanuel acknowledged that the TKO stock price had suffered several setbacks for various reasons. These included concerns related to the PFL’s investment from Saudi Arabia, reports indicating that NBCU was no longer in contention for the rights to Raw, and ongoing investigations into Vince McMahon by federal authorities regarding the hush money scandal.
Emanuel offered insight into these developments, stating,
“I would say to you there’s plenty of interest in Raw right now. I know people are like, ‘NBC is out of the mix,’ and that’s why it went down. I think there’s three things that happened. One, the reasons the stock is down is they thought Raw was the best package. I saw a 40 percent increase which was in line with expectations… Two, the P.F.L. situation and three, probably Vince (McMahon) in our deal, wanted to be able to put, at any point in time, his stock. He’s 78 years old. He’s been working at this for decades and decades so, I think those three back-to-back issues…”
