Report: WWE Staff "Doom & Gloom", Job Losses Expected
WWE employees worried for their jobs ahead of Endeavor takeover closing.
A sense of "doom and gloom" has enveloped staff ahead of WWE's acquisition by Endeavor closing, which will see the wrestling juggernaut merge with MMA leaders the UFC.
PWInsider Elite reports that WWE employees expect job cuts when Endeavor's newco, TKO Holdings Group, merges the WWE and UFC. Travel, accounting, and other office roles that aren't directly linked to production or working with talent are anticipated to be those in line for the chopping block.
Endeavor expects to formally complete its acquisition of WWE by late September. The move was announced in April, three months after Vince McMahon's return to the WWE Board of Directors as Executive Chairman. The 77-year-old will retain that job title once the deal closes.
PWInsider notes that the extent of any potential job cuts isn't known. Despite this, some WWE office workers are quietly looking for new jobs rather than facing redundancy.
In April, WWE CEO Nick Khan, on LightShed Live, claimed that he expected Endeavor's post-takeover cost-cutting to be "pretty aggressive" in order to make the organisation as "lean and mean as possible":-
“If you look at what Endeavor was able to take out cost-wise from UFC in 2016 or shortly after that deal was done, we have the same expectation here. We think 50 (million dollars a year) is a really, really conservative number. We have integration teams that are being formed now. We’re gonna get those in shape. I think we’ll have a better sense of it in a month or two, but we’re gonna be pretty aggressive with them to make sure that for our shareholders, for our company, our organization is as lean and mean as possible. And we’re gonna rely on that Endeavor flywheel to make up the rest.”