Subhojeet Mukherjee on June 14, 2024
The WWE Royal Rumble Premium Live Event, held on January 27th, was eagerly awaited for its promised surprises and exceeded expectations, setting numerous records. However, controversy arose when WWE took legal action against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to block the release of the event’s bidding contract. Now it appears that WWE has sent a letter to Ken Paxton explaining their reasons why the site fees for the 2023 Royal Rumble should remain undisclosed.
As previously reported, WWE took legal action by filing a complaint on February 16 to prevent the disclosure of an agreement between WWE and the City of San Antonio. This contract pertains to what the city provided to WWE for hosting the 2023 Royal Rumble event at the Alamodome. WWE argues that the agreement contains proprietary information that qualifies as a trade secret, exempting it from Texas’s public information law.
Initially, city officials received approval from the state Attorney General’s office in April 2023 to withhold the bidding contract from public release. However, this decision was reversed on January 17, 2024. Assistant Attorney General Michelle Garza explained in a letter that WWE failed to provide sufficient evidence proving that the information qualifies as confidential under Texas’s public information law.
Contracts related to events like the Royal Rumble 2023, which take place at venues owned and operated by municipal governments such as the Alamodome, typically fall under public record laws. This means that agreements involving a government entity are subject to public records requests.
WWE’s stance revolves around its assertion that the bidding contract should be exempt from disclosure, citing the inclusion of proprietary information that meets Texas’s broad definition of a trade secret. This definition encompasses a wide range of business, technical, and financial information, regardless of its form or storage method.
Brandon Thurston reports that WWE’s legal representatives have written a letter to the Texas Attorney General, arguing against the release of information regarding the site fee for the Royal Rumble 2023 event. In the letter, WWE’s lawyers contend that Thurston is primarily interested in revealing WWE’s private information rather than promoting transparency from a governmental entity.
On top of that, WWE asserts that the details regarding the site fee are proprietary and constitute a trade secret. They argue that if this information were made public, it could diminish their negotiating leverage in future agreements. It’s important to note that these arguments mirror those presented in WWE’s ongoing lawsuit against the Texas Attorney General over the disclosure of this contractual information.
”WWE’s lawyers wrote a letter to the Texas Attorney General about why the Governor’s Office shouldn’t release information revealing the Royal Rumble 2023 site fee to me, saying that I’m “interested only in uncovering WWE’s private information, not in pursuing transparency from a governing body.” They also claim the information is proprietary and a trade secret, and that their bargaining power will be hurt if I publish the information. This is the same information at issue in WWE’s lawsuit against the Texas AG.”
The Texas Attorney General has also responded to the lawsuit. Nonetheless, we will have to wait and see whether WWE will end up losing the case and the site fees for the 2023 Royal Rumble will become public knowledge.
Why do you feel WWE would go to such a length to prevent the records being shown? Let us know in the comments section below!
June 14, 2024 6:01 am
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