WWE is in advanced talks to be sold to Endeavor Group, according to a new report from CNBC‘s Alex Sherman. The UFC’s parent company has been seen as one of the frontrunners to buy the wrestling promotion since talks of a sale began at the start of the year Sherman writes that a deal could be reached as soon as Monday and that WWE and UFC would merge into a new publicly-traded company as part of the agreement. The deal is reportedly set for $9.3 billion and Endeavor would own 51% of the company while WWE shareholders would own the other 49%.
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As for who will be in charge, Vince McMahon is expected to remain the executive chairman of WWE, Dana White will still be president of the UFC, Nick Khan will be WWE’s president and Mark Shapiro will remain Endeavor’s president.
While not in CNBC’s report, The Hollywood Reporter previously noted that Endeavor was only interested in the deal if Paul “Triple H” Levesque “promised to stick around.” Levesque took over WWE’s booking duties as its Chief Content Officer back last July after McMahon temporarily left the company.
A big question that lingered over the sale discussions was what would happen to McMahon after a sale occurred. Khan has repeatedly stated in interviews and investors’ conference calls that McMahon has claimed he’s willing to step down. At the same time, McMahon also played a more active role backstage during WrestleMania for the first time since his “retirement.”
“Yes (he’ll step down). Without question. He’s declared it to the board, he’s declared it to us in management. It’s all about shareholder value. Obviously, he is a shareholder, so it’s not about what role he’ll have, it’s about maximizing that value opportunity,” Khan claimed at the time.
Companies like Comcast, Netflix and Amazon were repeatedly named as frontrunners during sale talks as they all had the means to broadcast WWE’s weekly programming and monthly pay-per-views without needing to worry about media rights deals with other broadcast companies. And while Endeavor has a deal with Disney to air UFC events on ESPN+, it doesn’t own any streaming services or cable networks. WWE’s current media rights deals with NBCUniversal (airing Raw and NXT each week) and FOX (SmackDown each week) end next year.
