When the merger of WWE and UFC to create a new, publicly traded company is finalized later this year, parent company Endeavor is likely to lay people off as a cost-cutting measure — just not in-ring performers.
That was the message delivered by current WWE CEO Nick Khan, who will stay on as WWE president in the new entity, in his recent conversation with Lightshed Partners (registration required). Khan said that the goal would be to save at least $50 million in costs, something that would require the integration teams to be “pretty aggressive” when addressing how the new company would look (h/t TJR Wrestling for the transcription).
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 organisation is as lean and mean as possible, and we’re going to rely on the Endeavor flywheel to make up the rest.
The probability of extensive behind-the-scenes layoffs was raised by Wrestling Observer’s Dave Meltzer earlier this week when he stopped by our Under the Ring podcast. But Meltzer also predicted there would be little noticeable effect on weekly WWE programming, and that’s something Khan also addressed.
Notably, he suggested that there wouldn’t be roster cuts as the merger went forward — or at least none mandated by Endeavor, leaving any personnel decisions about the actual wrestlers up to Paul “Triple H” Levesque and Kevin Dunn.
The most important thing is to leave the product untouched. Untouched, meaning, if Triple H and Kevin Dunn want to evolve it, great, but in terms of cutbacks there, that’s not what we’re looking to do.
No name has been announced yet for the combined WWE-UFC company, though it will likely trade under the stock ticker symbol ‘TKO.’ Barring any unforeseen developments, the merger is expected to be formally completed later this year.