Vince McMahon, WWE futures unclear

STAMFORD — WWE founder Vince McMahon has stepped down from the company, in the wake of a lawsuit filed last week by a former employee who accused him of sexual abuse. If that scenario sounds familiar, it is because McMahon announced his retirement a year-and-a-half ago amid a company investigation into alleged misconduct.

But this time, the departure of the 78-year-old McMahon appears more definitive. He no longer wields the power that allowed him to orchestrate his return a year ago to the Stamford-based sports-entertainment business. And after a momentous past year, which was highlighted by WWE’s merger with mixed martial arts organization UFC and new deals for WWE’s two flagship weekly shows, the new parent company, TKO Group Holdings, appears well-positioned to move forward without WWE’s patriarch.

“TKO, through WWE, is subject to public opinion because WWE is a consumer-facing company,” Robert Bird, a professor of business law at the University of Connecticut, said in an interview this week. “I think they’ve made the right decision.”

Ongoing controversy

McMahon resigned Jan. 26 from his roles as executive chairman and a member of TKO’s board of directors, one day after former WWE employee, Janel Grant, filed a lawsuit in federal court in Connecticut that accused him and John Laurinaitis, a former WWE executive, of sexually assaulting and trafficking her.

McMahon denied the lawsuit’s allegations, but said in a written statement that he decided to resign, “out of respect for the WWE Universe, the extraordinary TKO business,” and all those, “who helped make WWE into the global leader it is today.”

It is unclear the extent to which TKO executives or board members might have pressured McMahon to resign, over concerns that his continued presence at the company might have alienated media partners, sponsors and fans. On Jan. 23, the company announced a 10-year deal worth $5 billion for Netflix to become next year the new home of Raw, one of WWE’s flagship weekly shows. Last September, the company announced an agreement with NBCUniversal for WWE’s other main weekly program, SmackDown, to return in October to the USA Network cable channel.

“It’s certainly possible that Vince McMahon and the TKO board of directors communicated with one another,” Bird said. “And the board might have said, ‘It’s time to go.’”

Under a similar cloud of controversy, in July 2022, McMahon announced his retirement as WWE’s CEO and chairman. At that point, WWE’s board had launched an investigation of his alleged misconduct after The Wall Street Journal reported that McMahon agreed to pay four women a total of more than $12 million over the past 16 years to keep secret allegations of sexual misconduct and infidelity. Grant, who was one of the women, left WWE in 2022 after signing a non-disclosure agreement that totaled $3 million, but McMahon has only paid $1 million, according to her lawsuit filed last week.

McMahon’s retirement was short-lived, as he used his status as WWE’s controlling shareholder in January 2023 to return to the board of directors as executive chairman, a process that also involved him bringing back two former WWE co-presidents to serve on the board and removing three board members. Two other board members resigned because they opposed McMahon’s return.

TKO’s power structure appears, however, to prevent McMahon from forcing his way back into the company again. When the WWE-UFC merger was completed last September, UFC’s parent company, Beverly Hills, Calif.based Endeavor Group Holdings, held a 51 percent controlling interest in TKO, while existing WWE shareholders held a 49 percent interest. Last November, TKO announced that McMahon would sell about $670 million of his stock in the company.

Amid the turmoil in his career, McMahon and his wife, Linda McMahon, with whom he built WWE into an international business, appear to still be living in Connecticut. Last year, they sold their condominium at Park Tower in downtown Stamford, but public records indicate they remain Greenwich residents. Both are registered Republicans in Greenwich, according to the voter-registration database on the Secretary of the State’s website.

Linda McMahon ran unsuccessfully as a Republican for a U.S. Senate seat for Connecticut in 2010 and 2012. She was later appointed to Donald Trump’s cabinet, serving as the head of the Small Business Administration while he was president.

Just as it did after McMahon’s retirement a year and a half ago, the WWE juggernaut has kept running in the days since his resignation. Among the latest milestones, more than 48,000 people last Saturday attended this year’s edition of one of the company’s marquee events, Royal Rumble. The turnout set an attendance record at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Fla.

“I don’t foresee much of a change in the day-to-day broadcast life at WWE. There have been other hands managing wrestling’s creative content for a while now, and ultimately that is what fans care about the most,” Josh Shuart, director of sports management at Sacred Heart University’s Jack Welch College of Business & Technology, said in an email. “High levels of fandom remain for live events (in person and broadcast). And media interest in the programming and content continues, which bodes well for future media rights deals for the organization.”

Among the key figures at WWE is Chief Content Officer Paul “Triple H” Levesque, who was one of the most-successful performers in WWE history. Levesque is married to Stephanie McMahon, the daughter of Vince McMahon and a former WWE executive who served as co-CEO and chairwoman from July 2022 until her resignation in January 2023.

Levesque works alongside WWE President and TKO board member Nick Khan, who served as WWE’s co-CEO and sole CEO between McMahon’s retirement and the completion of the WWEUFC merger.

Three days before Vince McMahon’s resignation, TKO bolstered its leadership team by appointing Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson to its board of directors. Part of the agreement was that Johnson retain all rights to his now-famous nickname. Before he became one of the world’s biggest movie stars, Johnson made his name as one of the larger-thanlife figures of WWE’s “Attitude Era” during the late 1990s and early 2000s. Levesque was another of the top stars during that period.

In explaining his reasons for joining the board, Johnson cited his confidence in TKO CEO Ariel Emanuel. Long before the WWE-UFC merger, Emanuel had established himself as one of the leading executives in the entertainment industry. In 1995, he co-founded the television-focused Endeavor Talent Agency. In 2009, it merged with the William Morris Agency, to create WME. In 2014, WME acquired IMG to create WME | IMG, which is now known as Endeavor.

“At my core, I’m a builder who builds for and serves the people, and Ari is building something truly game-changing,” Johnson, who last week visited WWE’s headquarters in downtown Stamford, said in a statement. “I’m very motivated to help continue to globally expand our TKO, WWE and UFC businesses as the worldwide leaders in sports and entertainment — while proudly representing so many phenomenal athletes and performers who show up every day, putting in the hard work with their own two hands to make their dreams come true and deliver for our audiences. I’ve been there, I’m still there, and this is for them.”