On Monday, WWE officially announced that they had agreed to be acquired by The Endeavor Group with the idea for WWE and UFC to merge to create a new publicly traded company. It’s expected to be completed later this year.
Puck has an interview with Endeavor COO Mark Shapiro, who noted that until last Saturday, he didn’t know the deal was in the works, and the company put in its bid to acquire the WWE three weeks before it was announced.
Because there will be a merger, layoffs are expected as there will be people at Endeavor in departments that can handle things at certain WWE departments.
“Anything from H.R. to finance to legal to communications production to distribution and marketing,” Shapiro said. “Across every area, you’re going to find cost synergies; you’re going to integrate and ultimately highlight and appoint the best and brightest teams.”
The question for WWE talent is if mass releases are coming, and as exclusively reported by WrestlingNews.co on our Patreon page, some people in WWE are worried about that.
The focus now shifts to WWE looking at its next media rights negotiations as their current TV deals for Raw on USA Network and WWE SmackDown on Fox are up in 2024.
Shapiro previously stated that the game plan for Endeavor is to do what they did with the UFC when they bought the company in 2016 with WWE now.
