World Wrestling Leisure Inc. Chairman Vince McMahon seems within the ring throughout the WWE Monday Night time Uncooked present on the Thomas & Mack Middle August 24, 2009 in Las Vegas, Nevada.
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World Wrestling Leisure and Endeavor’s UFC introduced final month they might merge later this yr. Now we all know the title of the mixed firm.
The brand new operation shall be referred to as TKO Group Holdings, a spokesperson for Endeavor confirmed Tuesday. As beforehand introduced, it’ll commerce on the New York Inventory Change below the ticker TKO. The title is a reference to the skilled preventing time period “technical knockout.”
With the deal, Endeavor and WWE hope to create a sports activities leisure large valued at greater than $20 billion.
Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel will even be the CEO of TKO Group, whereas Vince McMahon, WWE’s controlling shareholder and longtime boss, will function govt chairman of the brand new firm. Endeavor will personal a 51% stake, whereas WWE shareholders will get the remaining 49%.
Emanuel has mentioned he intends to run “the identical playbook” with WWE that Endeavor did with UFC, whose income surged 20% from 2021 to 2022.
“Now we have a monitor file of success with media rights,” Emanuel mentioned final month. “WWE has related scale to UFC. Within the universe of belongings at this scale, the chance is uncommon and finite.”
The deal is slated to shut within the second half of the yr. UFC and WWE will retain their respective names as a part of TKO Group.
Regardless of WWE being scripted and UFC that includes genuine fights, the 2 organizations share a lot in widespread by way of their fight sports activities content material and cultures.
“That is going to be UFC 2.0,” Emanuel mentioned in an interview that aired final month on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Avenue.”