UFC Parent Company Endeavor buys WWE

By Michael Davis

It’s April 3rd, 2023, the day after the biggest weekend event in sports entertainment: WrestleMania. The wrestling universe should be buzzing about one of the best WrestleManias in history finishing with Roman Reigns retaining the Undisputed WWE Universal Championship against Cody Rhodes. Instead, the entire world’s eyes are on an unimaginable sentence: Vince McMahon sells WWE.

WWE was bought this morning by Endeavor, the company that runs UFC, for $9.3 billion, according to ESPN and multiple reports.

According to the initial reports, Endeavor is creating a $21.4 billion sports entertainment publicly traded company housing the UFC and WWE brands. Endeavor takes a 51% controlling interest of the company, while the remaining 49% will be those who currently hold WWE stock.

Endeavor’s CEO Ari Emanuel will lead this new company. Dana White remains the president of UFC, Nick Khan the present of WWE, and of course, Vince McMahon is still the executive chairman of WWE.

This was the highest grossing WrestleMania in history, according to Triple H in his press conference last night. The current Chief Content Officer was asked about the sale last night and declined to comment, deflecting all the attention on this weekend’s WrestleMania from Hollywood.

Despite The Game’s efforts, and a historic event which only develops the story being told, this is the buzz this morning. How does this affect the on-screen product moving forward? What about WWE’s relationship with Peacock? Will fans still receive essentially-free premium live events on their streaming service? Will there be a wave of talent releases, or incoming talent? What about the crossovers between WWE and UFC?

In a lot of ways, it still remains unclear what this means for the WWE moving forward. The highly anticipated “Raw after Mania” just became a lot more must-see.

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