More on Vince McMahon’s Return to WWE & Potential Sale of Company

As noted before, WWE announced this past Friday that Vince McMahon has officially returned to the company and will be resuming his role as the Executive Chairman of their Board of Directors. As part of McMahon’s return, WWE is currently pursuing a potential sale of the company to a new owner with the expectation of it taking place by the middle of this year.

Fightful Select reported that their sources stated that the general reaction within WWE over Axios’ recent report about Wall Street being very receptive to McMahon’s return was that this had more to due with the recent talks of a sale by the company and not due to McMahon’s actual return.

In regards to potential buyers, those spoken to reportedly stated that Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund is currently not the front runner to purchase WWE. It was also reported that “very plugged in, influential names” spoken to stated that they currently expect Comcast, parent company of NBC Universal, to become the new owner of WWE.

In regards to Shad and Tony Khan’s interest in purchasing WWE and merging it with AEW, those close to the Khan family reportedly stated that they have not heard of any recent talks regarding this idea but “it makes sense from every perspective to at least throw your name out there, for the very reasons that article even got published. There are a lot of interesting elements, but I wouldn’t think it’s going to happen. Then again, it’s wrestling, and far wilder things have happened.”

In regards to McMahon’s recent return to WWE, those spoken to stated that there have been rumors within the company that McMahon has already sent messages to several departments informing them that they are doing things wrong in his view.

In regards to a potential sale price for WWE, Dave Meltzer reported in this week’s Wrestling Observer Newsletter that while anaylsts currently have WWE valued at a price range of $7.4 billion to $8.2 billion, WWE officials are currently seeking around $8.5 billion for a potential sale. Meltzer reported that this $8.5 billion price tag would not be an issue for Saudi Arabia, Netflix, Disney, Amazon Prime, and others of similar status but would require outside partnership help for Endeavor and the Khan family.

In regards to potential anti-trust monopoly-related issues should the Khan family actually manage to purchase WWE, Meltzer speculated that this likely would not be an issue from the U.S. government due to they did not do anything similar in nature when WWE purchased WCW in 2001 nor when UFC purchased Strikeforce in 2011, which created near monopolies in the wrestling and MMA industries at the time.

In regards to a potential purchase by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, Meltzer speculated that this likely would not lead to sponsors pulling out of WWE even if it went private nor them losing their streaming deal with NBC’s Peacock due to them already willing to do business airing WWE Saudi events.