Vince McMahon Says He's Open To Selling WWE

On Friday morning, WWE Chairman and CEO Vince McMahon addressed the possibility of selling the company during a call with the investors. According to the 71-year-old entertainment mogul, he's "open for business."

The company's third quarter financial results have come in, and the numbers are very solid. However, the WWE only managed to hit the lower end of their fiscal targets. During the 3-month period, the WWE network had an average of 1.46 million paying subscribers.

The company also had an OIBDA (operating income before depreciation and amortization), which is the WWE's favorite profitability measure, of 24.5 million, according to CageSide Seats. The projected numbers for average paid subscribers to the WWE network were 1.49 million (+/- 2%), and an OIBDA of $24-28 million.

During his opening remarks to the investors, Vince McMahon tried to spin the figures to the best of his ability in order to display optimism for the future of the WWE.

McMahon said: "We remain very bullish on our long-term opportunity with our WWE Network and the ability to distribute our content directly to our global audience.... As far as television ratings are concerned, our brand extension we think continues to work very well. As far as is SmackDown as you know we went to a live format, it's live format is about twice the ratings that were in the same time slot a year ago and is about 16% above what we were doing with SmackDown on a tape basis on Thursday nights on USA."

Given the business climate in which huge companies are merging, the investors pressed McMahon about the possibility of him selling the company to a larger conglomerate.

In an effort to not agitate his investors, McMahon seemed to present himself like he was open to the idea.

McMahon said: "Again we're open to anything but I think that you know controlling your own destiny is so important. And I don't know how much you lose control over that you know by being absorbed or sold or what have you, but again, we're open to anything, we're business people, so it's not a question of if the right deal came along, it's one of those things where if it's a deal you couldn't refuse, we're listening. Otherwise you know we're creating our own content, which is extremely valuable as George said over all platforms and that's important. The old content is king is true, maybe truer today than it's ever been. So we're open for business."

While he may say that "we are open for business," the likelihood that McMahon would ever sell the company is extremely low. The deal would have to include a slew of guarantees such as his daughter Stephanie and son-in-law Paul "Triple H" Levesque would takeover the company, and also a heap of money large enough to persuade them to leave.

Do you think Vince McMahon should sell the WWE?

[H/T CageSide Seats]