Vince’s stock, Raw’s future, MLW settlement addressed in TKO financial report and call

Yesterday (Feb. 27), WWE parent company TKO Group released their final 2023 financial report and held their quarterly earnings call to discuss them with investors.

The full report can be found here. If you’re interested in detailed and informed analysis and discussion of what it contains… you’re not gonna find that here. Those of us with some business background did our best to summarize things when the reports were focused solely on WWE. Now that they’re part of a merged entity with UFC, it’s a much bigger undertaking. We’d suggest subscribing to Wrestlenomics, which will also give you access to a recording of last night’s earnings call with TKO executives Ari Emanuel, Mark Shapiro & Andrew Schleimer, and WWE president Nick Khan.

But that doesn’t mean there wasn’t interesting information from the reports and call that we can share…

• WWE’s 2023 revenue was $1.326 billion, up from $1.292 billion in 2022. The growth is attributed to increased live event, media rights, and sponsorship revenue, while being offset somewhat by decreased revenue from consumer product licensing due to the cost of moving from in-house sales to Fanatics and a decline in the collectibles market.
• The section on costs related to “certain litigation matters” includes “a $20.0 million charge related to the settlement of an antitrust lawsuit at WWE.” A related SEC filing spells out that this was the amount paid to MLW in December to settle the suit it filed against WWE in January, 2022.
• TKO CFO Andrew Schleimer reiterated that “site fees” such as the one Perth, Australia paid to bring Elimination Chamber there last weekend, are a key growth area for the company.
• Schleimer also addressed the three month gap between the end of USA Network’s current deal for Raw and the start of Netflix’s. It’s TKO’s intention to “renew our license or find an alternate provider to carry Raw in the U.S. for the 90-day period from October 1, 2024 through December 31, 2024”, but acknowledges that failing to do so would negatively impact their 2024 earnings. Endeavor president Mark Shapiro added that they feel “pretty positive” that “Raw will be aired in the fourth quarter”, and that they’re seeking the best platform for the brand.
• In response to a question on if the company would be willing to purchase a large amount of stock from a shareholder, Shapiro said he assumed the question was about Vince McMahon, who resigned as TKO’s executive chairman last month after being named in a sex trafficking lawsuit by former WWE employee Janel Grant. Shapiro said they aren’t in talks with McMahon and have no insight on what he plans to do with his approximately 20 million shares of TKO. The SEC filings again document the risk McMahon and his legal issues pose to the company, but otherwise this was the only mention of him or the situation.
• Nick Khan said he believes the Netflix deal will help WWE achieve its goal of having “a global localized product“. Shapiro said that while the Netflix deal does give them international rights to WWE content, that doesn’t preclude them from “creating new content and events and programming on a global basis”. Netflix would just have “first look rights” to license any new international offerings from WWE.