A few years ago WWE went through a major change when the company was sold to Endeavor. On the corporate side WWE merged with UFC to form a new company called TKO, and it doesn’t sound like the ownership will be changing hands anytime soon.
While speaking with Matt Belloni on The Town, TKO CEO Ari Emanuel addressed a potential sale and made it clear that it’s not going to happen when he said, “No. No, not for sale. Never.”
Emanuel then went on to explain why TKO has no interest in selling WWE when he added, “Why would it be? Here’s the great thing. In 2016, Egon Durban, Mark, myself, Patrick, we saw where sports was going and saw where the streamers were going. At the time, people thought that the value — [that] we were crazy to pay what we did when we bought IMG [or] crazy that we paid the two cheapest acquisitions of all time in the sports space.
As my son Leo says to me, Thursday is baby Friday. With AI, probably Wednesday is going to be the baby Thursday. There’s going to be more free time than ever. If we grow at 3% GDP, we’re going to have more money than we’ve ever had with AI in my opinion, and I agree with that. Take all the bad things that could happen, you’re sitting in a situation that there’s going to be more time for people to consume entertainment or [be] social animals. Go out, go to sporting events, consume sports. Sports is the greatest reality show of all time. Owning sports assets — now people are trying to own teams — we own four leagues. It’s an incredible asset. The value is going up and to the right. Egon Durban, myself — there’s no chance that that’s happening. Zero.”
H/T Fightful