Endeavor announced last month that it intends to merge The UFC with WWE to form a new publicly-traded company under the Endeavor banner. While a placeholder name, New Whale Inc., was announced last week via an SEC filing, Endeavor President and COO Mark Shapiro confirmed in a new with The Athletic’s Richard Deitsch that the intended name will be TKO Group Holdings, Inc. The stock for the new company will be traded as TKO and both UFC and WWE will still retain their respective company names.
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“We’re going to run the UFC playbook,” Shapiro told Sports Business Journal last month when asked how Endeavor plans to grow WWE following the merger. “The opportunity to putย Vince McMahon‘s creative head with Dana and Ari is going to create a significant amount of value for shareholders.”
“That’s how it has successfully played out for the UFC over the last six years. Remember when we bought it for $4.1 billion? People thought that price was crazy. Now, it is valued at $12.1 billion. I mean, what a story. We hope to do the same thing with the WWE,” Shapiro continued.ย
During WWE’s latest quarterly investors’ call, a question about what influence Endeavor and UFC might have over WWE’s booking was repeatedly brought up. Both WWE President Nick Khan and Paul “Triple H” Levesque pushed back against the idea.
“I can certainly represent emphatically to you on the creative that there’s no one at Endeavor or the UFC that has any interest in trying to interfere with that, in any way whatsoever,” Khan said at the time. “I think [UFC President] Dana White would also represent to you that never or almost never, I don’t know the specifics but never would be my guess, have the Endeavor folks told him no, you should do this match or you should do it this way. That’s not what they do.”
“Creatively, we look forward to continuing to do what we do and the momentum that it has,”ย Triple Hย said. “And on top of that, I speak for myself, I’m incredibly excited about what endeavor brings to the table and how we can utilize them to expand our efforts and really hyper focus on them internationally and, and growing what we do across the globe. I think they’ll be incredibly helpful there.”
