The day after WrestleMania 39, it was confirmed that WWE 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.
The deal is expected to close in the second half of 2023. The power structure in WWE and UFC will stay the same: Nick Khan will remain as WWE President and Dana White will remain UFC President. Vince McMahon will be the new company’s executive chairman, and Ari Emanuel will be the CEO.
Shortly after the deal was announced, there has been concern regarding talent releases and employee layoffs. Endeavor COO Mark Shapiro stated that employee layoffs would happen as the company already has people in departments that can handle things at certain WWE departments. The same thing happened when they acquired the UFC.
The name of the merged publicly traded company that will combine the UFC and WWE has been revealed as CNBC’s Alex Sherman reports it will be called TKO Group Holdings.
This makes sense because when the merger was first announced, it was noted that the new public merged company would trade under the TKO ticker.
