Fans are not the only ones questioning WWE’s move to try to get legalized betting on match results approved in the United States.
On Wednesday, Alex Sherman of CNBC reported WWE is in talks with regulators in the states of Colorado and Michigan about legalized betting on “high-profile matches.” The company is working with EY (Ernst & Young) to secure the secrecy of match results to show the regulators that betting would not be impacted by results leaking before the matches happen.
Obviously, a lot of changes will have to happen should this goes through as it impacts anyone who would know the finishes of the matches. A few years ago, someone in WWE would leak the results of PPV matches with nearly 100% accuracy on social media shortly before events would start. To prevent that from happening again, WWE will have to keep a lot of people – wrestlers, agents, and even the creative team – out of the loop regarding match finishes ahead of time until right before an event takes place.
While speaking on Wrestling Observer Radio, Dave Meltzer talked about the changes that would have to take place and noted that people are rolling their eyes at the idea.
“I don’t know if the people who are wanting to do this to get in with DraftKings and get sponsorship money, while at the same time kind of like screwing up the booking aspect of wrestling, really understand wrestling. Because they come from different…wrestling doesn’t really fit into the sports thing, there’s so many aspects that do, but most don’t,” Meltzer stated. “Just the vibes that I’ve gotten from people are just kinda like rolling their eyes, and just thinking it’s really…it’s not a good thing, but it still might happen. It may be one of those changes, and maybe they feel that this will raise the price (value of the company as they explore the possibility of a sale), because now there’s gambling and they can tell the people who they are selling it to that ‘we are going to have a big increase in popularity because gambling will now be allowed on these things’. Andy perhaps the buyers might be fooled…and maybe they may think that that’s the case. It’s uncharted water, it may make it more popular in some ways. But they can’t do predictable finishes 70% of the time, not all the time.”
Meltzer added that if it goes through then it will mess up how the business operates both for wrestlers and those in charge of creative.
“It really screws the main event talent a lot because they’re not gonna know where they’re going, and it screws the booker because he’s gonna have to book in a logical manner and an illogical manner at certain points in time to keep from being predictable so there you go.”
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