Earlier this year Vince McMahon returned to WWE and he made it clear that he was looking to sell the company. The day after WrestleMania 39 it was announced that WWE will be acquired by Endeavor, and WWE will merge with UFC to form one new publicly traded company. The acquisition is closing in as it’s expected to be done by the end of September.
PWInsider is reporting that there’s a sense of doom and gloom in WWE and the feeling among some WWE employees is that if you’re not part of the production team or directly linked to talent you could lose your job soon.
One long time employee pointed out that WWE and UFC won’t need separate travel offices or accounting departments. It was also noted that there are a number of employees who are currently looking for their next job out of fear as they try to get ahead of potential layoffs.
Back in April after the acquisition was announced Nick Khan openly discussed potential cuts and noted that the cuts are expected to be somewhere in the range of $50 million.
“If you look at what Endeavor was able to take out, cost-wise, from UFC in 2016 or shortly after that deal was done, we have the same expectation here. We think 50 (million) is a really conservative number. We have integration teams now, we’re going to get those in shape, I think we’ll have a better sense of it in a month or two. We’re going to be pretty aggressive with them to make sure that, for our shareholders and for our company, our organization is as lean and mean as possible, and we’re going to rely on the Endeavor flywheel to make up the rest.”
Stay tuned for more updates as they become available.
