Both Vince McMahon and Ari Emanuel have publicly stated that it was Ari who made it clear that he wanted McMahon to remain with WWE following Endeavor’s acquisition of the company to merge it with the UFC to create the TKO Holdings Group.
The Endeavor and TKO CEO was present at Bloomberg’s Screentime conference. As previously reported, Emanuel noted that there’s plenty of interest in the rights to Monday Night Raw as their existing deal with the USA Network will expire next year.
The USA Network is not expected to keep Raw and NXT after inking a deal to have SmackDown return. Emanuel noted that there’s plenty of interest in Raw’s media rights.
While speaking at the conference, Emanuel shared his belief that the TKO stock price took a hit for a few different reasons, including the Saudi Arabia investment in the PFL, reports of NBCU being out of the mix for Raw’s rights, and McMahon, who is still being investigated by the feds over the hush money scandal.
“I would say to you there’s plenty of interest in Raw right now. I know people are like, ‘NBC is out of the mix,’ and that’s why it went down. I think there’s three things that happened. One the reasons the stock is down is they thought Raw was the best package. I saw a 40 percent increase which was in line with expectations… Two, the P.F.L. situation and three, probably Vince (McMahon) in our deal, wanted to be able to put, at any point in time, his stock. He’s 78 years old. He’s been working at this for decades and decades so, I think those three back-to-back issues…”
H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcription
