Potential Buyer Pulls Out Of Race To Purchase WWE?
One potential WWE buyer doesn't sound too interested in splashing out right now...
WWE's seemingly impending sale will go down as one of the wrestling stories that will define 2023, for better or worse, though one potential buyer has intimated that it may not be as interested in acquiring the pro wrestling juggernaut as speculation as suggested.
Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel stated during the UFC ownership group's Q4 2022 earnings call that although WWE is "an unbelievable product," the company isn't looking to "do anything as it relates to changing our leverage position right now."
Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel on $WWE on today's $EDR call sounds like he doesn't want to take more debt:
"[WWE] is an unbelievable product... [Vince McMahon's] business is really valuable, but we're not going to do anything as it relates to changing our leverage position right now." pic.twitter.com/iUqfMWwpUD
— Brandon Thurston (@BrandonThurston) March 1, 2023
The UFC was purchased by Endeavor, then WME-IMG, for $4.025 billion in July 2016. WWE Executive Chairman Vince McMahon is reportedly seeking around $9 billion to sell the company he purchased from his father in the 1980s.
Although sexual misconduct allegations prompted Vince to resign in disgrace last July, he has been back in WWE since January, returning to the Board of Directors to facilitate a sale (per his own statement). WWE CEO Nick Khan has indicated that a sale could happen sooner rather than later, stating in February that a deal may be struck within the next three months.
Along with Endeavor, Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund and the Khan family, owners of AEW and the Jacksonville Jaguars, have been speculated as potential WWE buyers.