• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

WWE and UFC plan merger

I'm not surprised that WWE has merged with another company.

I am, however, very surprised that UFC is the one merging with WWE.

I fully expected Comcast was going to buy WWE; that way, Comcast-owned USA Network would get to keep "WWE Raw" and "WWE Nxt", while Comcast-owned NBC would have taken over " WWE Smackdown! ", currently on Fox, without fear that networks owned by other companies would poach these programs away.
 
Joseph_Gallant said:
I'm not surprised that WWE has merged with another company.

I am, however, very surprised that UFC is the one merging with WWE.

I fully expected Comcast was going to buy WWE; that way, Comcast-owned USA Network would get to keep "WWE Raw" and "WWE Nxt", while Comcast-owned NBC would have taken over " WWE Smackdown! ", currently on Fox, without fear that networks owned by other companies would poach these programs away.
Click to expand...
UFC has strong ties to ESPN (Disney). I wonder if WWE follows UFC over to ESPN, even though WWE is predetermined, scripted sports entertainment rather than a competitive combat sport, which is what MMA is represented as being.
 
TVCOOL said:
That's good news and on the 70th anniversary of their founding as the WWWF.
Click to expand...
actually this is the opposite to me, this is bad news, just for many reasons, ranging from WWE expanding their monopoly status and possibly harming the other companies like AEW & ROH owned by Shad & Tony Khan (in ROH's case, Tony solely owns that now after buying it from Sinclair last year), Impact Wrestling, Japan's Bushiroad owned Wrestling promotions (NJPW and all women's wrestling promotion World Wonder Ring Stardom), NWA, MLW and other promotions like making sure they can't go to the main sports arenas in big cities, possibly outpricing the other wrestling promotions for wrestling talents getting big money deals and working for a talent agency as Endeavor owns one and last and not least, letting Vince McMahon regain full power in everything and allowing him and his out of touch ideas of creative complete with his booking as of late featuring giving up on storylines quickly forcing unnatural conclusions where the payoff isn't there.

i wouldn't be surprised if a bunch of talents as for their release and leave to go elsewhere where they are more happy cause i'm sure backstage morale just collapsed on this deal alone.
 
I'm kind of surprised the UFC went for this, and am interested to watch and see if UFC starts to receive allegations of fake plotlines, kayfabe and all the drama that WWE and similar are known for.

On the other hand, you need to hand it to the McMahons, I guess. They grew what started as a regional wrestling circuit to a business that was valued at around $1M in the early 1980s to an "entertainment company" that was valued at $9.3 billion at the time of this merger.
 
as expected, it has begin, last night's Raw was not booked by HHH but instead booked by Vince and the trademarks of a Vince show showed up from buzzwords like "Medical Faculty" as Vince hates the word "Hospital" when they did a angle with Bad Bunny who is a guest star tonight as well as hosting Backlash in his native Puerto Rico where he got put through the WWE Announce table by a wrestler, they did matches and segments that made fans angry, a big guy wrestler (Omos) squashed (the term to describe a quick match where someone dominates someone else in a match with the loser not getting any offensive end) Elias in a match, and of course, HHH did a promo that basically was a "public denial" that WWE was going nowhere, but truth be told, HHH's version of WWE just died a painful torture death last night, in fact the show was booked with last mintue rewrites too.

don't be surprised if HHH is gone from the company by the end of the month if not by the end of the week, same goes with talents that prefer HHH's booking over Vince's senile, petty and vindictive ways of booking. this is why i'm glad AEW and other promotions like Impact, New Japan, MLW, GCW and all other promotions i can't name here cause too many of them are here to give fans what they want, a good wrestling show. i just hope NBCUniversal and Fox get so ticked at Vince they opt not to renew their TV rights deal with WWE and signs one with a new promotion that doesn't exist yet (just like how WarnerMedia/Warner Brothers Discovery took a chance on AEW just a month or 2 before it could have it's first ever PPV).
 
Network executives don't care about the booking of wrestling matches any more than they care how the teams in the NFL choose to run their offenses. They just look at the money the wrestling programming is able to generate from advertisers. And if the numbers there are satisfactory, and the viewers are in the target demographic that the advertisers feel is most likely to buy their products, a long relationship with a promotion will continue. There is no business reason for it not to, especially if the alternative is dumping WWE in favor of a start-up that doesn't yet exist. Do you really think anyone at Fox or NBC/Universal, or at any advertising agency or marketing department in some corner of Corporate America cares who's getting squashed on Raw or what words the announcers aren't allowed to use on Smackdown?
 
CTListener said:
UFC has strong ties to ESPN (Disney). I wonder if WWE follows UFC over to ESPN, even though WWE is predetermined, scripted sports entertainment rather than a competitive combat sport, which is what MMA is represented as being.
Click to expand...
How long do the current contracts run.
 
Don CT said:
How long do the current contracts run.
Click to expand...
Google comes up with 2023 as the ending year for the UFC deal that started in September 2019. WWE's streaming deal with Peacock runs through 2026, and its broadcast deal with Fox ends in 2024. This article, written last month, speculates that Fox wants to walk away from that contract once it ends.

www.wrestlinginc.com

Wells Fargo Analysis Says Fox Unlikely To Renew WWE SmackDown At Increased Rights Fee - Wrestling Inc.

A new report indicates that if Fox were to renew "WWE SmackDown," it would not be at an increased rate over its current $205 million/year.
www.wrestlinginc.com www.wrestlinginc.com

So it looks like a transition to Disney/ABC/ESPN for WWE could be messy, with lame duck contracts having to be honored.
 
I highly doubt they put any WWE content on ESPN. Maybe FX if they want to pull the rights away from Fox or USA.
 
In my best rendition of the Dream:

"A point to pondah, if you wee-yul. What happens when da boys high tail it to da exit, cuz ol' Vinnie Mac is back in da saddle, baby?"
 
Don CT said:
I highly doubt they put any WWE content on ESPN. Maybe FX if they want to pull the rights away from Fox or USA.
Click to expand...
If FX manages to pull both Raw and NXT away from the USA Network what would that channel air on both Raw and NXT's time slots?
 
Law and Order reruns
 
TVCOOL said:
If FX manages to pull both Raw and NXT away from the USA Network what would that channel air on both Raw and NXT's time slots?
Click to expand...
if they still want Wrestling contect, they should try to steal AEW or try to get ROH since it's forced to use a in-house streaming service (Honor Club, which Tony Khan's ROH inherited from Sinclair's ownership of ROH).

maybe NBCUniversal could help form a new 3rd major US wrestling promotion if HHH left WWE and opted to launch a new promotion as everyone knows HHH was meant to be WWE's saviour after Vince's forced retirement which only lasted a few months and ended up being just a glorifed supension from his company.
 
Ok, bumping this old thread from April with some important updates:

First, the merger has been finalized as this past Monday September 11, 2023 marked the end of WWE as a family owned independently run company and as of Tuesday, September 12, WWE officially became a subsidy of TKO Groups Holdings, the company that is now the subsidy which WWE and UFC will be under the Endeavor Group Holdings umbrella. the new company is now trading on the New York Stock Exchange with WWE's old stock being retired for the new TKO Group stock under the initials TKO.

Also Friday starts the layoffs at Titan Towers II (the new WWE HQ that they moved to earlier this year from the old Titan Towers) in Stamford, CT, thus layoff employees who will lose their jobs because of redundancies with the Endeavor offices and WWE offices, meaning Endeavor employees in the same positions as their WWE counterparts will be retained while their WWE counterpart is laid off from the job

the statement about the merger's completion earlier this week:
ENDEAVOR ANNOUNCES CLOSE OF UFC® AND WWE® TRANSACTION TO CREATE TKO GROUP HOLDINGS, A PREMIUM SPORTS AND ENTERTAINMENT COMPANY

the story about the layoffs from SBNation's Cageside Seats site:
WWE layoffs are starting Friday, and here is Nick Khan’s email about it
 
You know what is the best thing about this?

Joanie Laurer may finally take her rightful place in the Hall of Fame.
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom