H Jenkins on October 31, 2018
WWE Crown Jewel is going down this Friday in Saudi Arabia in spite of a ton of backlash from fans and the media. John Oliver even took another expert shot at WWE this week on his show Last Week Tonight to match his huge focus on WWE a couple weeks ago on his HBO show. So WWE knew they were in for a PR nightmare even before they decided to carry on with the event.
But as WWE Superstars arrive in Saudi Arabia for the event, it looks like the company is going to carry on with their 10-year deal with the Saudis regardless. In fact, WWE saw this negativity coming and knew there was no way around a big stock market hit either way.
Brad Shepard reports that a source in WWE opened up to him and said the following about the Crown Jewel event in regards to what they knew it would do to impact the company.
“Both canceling or confirming Crown Jewel was going to be a stock hit and that’s how they saw it. Keep in mind, people have been in Saudi Arabia building the set and prepping for the show for a couple weeks.”
“You were damned regardless and the stock was going down either way. There are a lot of other factors as well – ticket sales were down, merchandise sales were down and TV ratings were down. These things caught up with them a bit and then you throw in the Saudi drama.”
WWE stock was almost to $100 a share and then it started sliding big time — ironically it didn’t slide down until after so many WWE execs unloaded a ton of stock. So it looks like the company certainly knew something was going to happen and their stocks weren’t going to be that high for long. Hopefully, it will rebound once the Fox Sports deal is finalized and comes into affect — but you never know what can happen in WWE.
October 31, 2018 8:28 am
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