With the merger of WWE and UFC into a brand new company, the media rights contracts for both entities have gone under the microscope. Both WWE and UFC are scheduled to begin talks for television rights in the coming months, and with a joint effort, one CNBC reporter claims the offers could be “robust”.
“It will be a publicly traded company that is about to embark on a very lucrative media rights deal,” CNBC’s Alex Sherman said of the new company during an appearance on the Sports Media with Richard Deitsch podcast. “The media rights for both WWE and UFC are coming up for renewal, and Endeavor will basically try to put its money where its mouth is. They said yesterday in the press conference that they are great at doing media rights deals. So we’ll see. They’ll have the chance to prove this. In the coming months, they may show the investment world that they are great at doing this, and that will prove their valuation correct.”
When asked about potentially interested parties, Sherman agreed with the insinuation from Deitsch that it would be helpful for WWE and UFC for tech companies like Amazon and Apple to be interested in the rights to drive the price higher, with companies like FOX and NBC remaining committed to continuing their deals.
“I don’t know exactly who’s interested in this…I do think you’re on solid ground by saying that FOX and NBC Universal are both interested. It’s been a good partnership with particularly NBC because NBC also owns the streaming rights to WWE…Ari Emanuel — who’s going to be the CEO of the new company — alluded to the fact that they want to explore a direct-to-consumer thing also.
“So maybe they will slice-and-dice the rights where there’s some exclusive content that’s also on this new direct-to-consumer thing that they embed in addition to the broadcast cable rights…If they’re really going to maximize the value, the more bidders there are, the more they can maximize it, so maybe they feel like this will be another robust auction.”
The “robust auction” is a nod to phrasing utilized by WWE CEO Nick Khan, who uttered the comments while discussing interest in the company from potential buyers.
