An unholy alliance more than a decade in the making.
UFC has been ON FIRE over the last seven years, according to promotion president Dana White, which checks out since the recurring pay-per-view (PPV) price increases are burning a hole in our collective pockets.
UFC and WWE will now exist as siblings in the Endeavor Group portfolio following today’s announcement that Ari Emanuel and his financial team have purchased the iconic pro wrestling promotion for a whopping $9.3 billion.
Read all the gory details right here.
“This company has been on fire for the last seven years and now that we will be adding WWE to the portfolio, I am excited to take this to another level,” White said. “Vince is a savage in the wrestling space, Ari is a beast at what he does, and then add what we at UFC bring to the table and there is no limit to what this company can accomplish in the next few years.”
WWE currently streams on the Peacock Network.
“We think we have an untapped, scripted and unscripted, opportunity in the intellectual property space,” WWE CEO Nick Khan told OutKick. “Characters like The Undertaker and Andre the Giant. I’m not sure that every comic book fan was familiar with Black Panther. But certainly, every movie fan is now. We want that for our characters. So, if we do it with the right partners, and in the right spirit, we think that we have something that is largely untapped.”
UFC and WWE will operate as separate entities for the time being but future crossovers featuring key talent are expected to continue (like this recent collaboration). WWE is fresh off its annual WrestleMania weekend (more on that here) while UFC is gearing up for the UFC 287 PPV card in Miami (details here).