The Exchanges

Q We just did a... Does your audience still have an affinity for live? Are they still...

A Oh, one, 1000%. So, our, our biggest events, our PLEs, we just did a, a game-changing announcement where we're, we're moving them over to ESPN, here starting up, and you know, nobody does large-scale build to events like ESPN does, so that will be massive for us. Um, you know, we've always sort of been in the forefront of that when, When Wrestlemania started, it was, um, closed circuit, you know, we, we pioneered closed circuit entertainment where you would go to a theater and watch the broadcast. We pioneered, uh, pay-per-view industry. When streaming was just coming into play, we were one of the first movers into, we had our own WWE network, so when it, it was kind of Netflix and us, um, we then realized that over time, that's going to be a tech war. That we're not suited for. It's not what we do. We pulled out of that. We went over to Peacock. Um, we're now on Netflix. We're on ESPN. You know, we're across the board.

AI assessment note: “Oh, one, 1000%.”

Q Yeah, it's more fun. And then Stone Cold Steve Austin came along and he kind of was a heel, but all of a sudden everyone's like rooting for him. Like what happened there? And like, did something change in American society or did the product get more sophisticated?

A I think people became more savvy to how the world really works. Nobody's perfect. And I, I don't think there's anybody that is Well, I shouldn't say anybody. There's certainly people that are just evil in the world, but, um, you know, most people, the average person, there are people that are really good, but somewhere in there, there's some stuff that maybe isn't, um, and, and vice versa on that. I think I have a saying in what I do right now, as long as the bad guy, the heel, is justified somewhere in his mind that what he is doing is right, that leads to the best heel, right? Because if 90% of the world disagrees with you, but you believe, no, you're all wrong, I see this and it is right, you can, you can run down that road. You're not just trying to be the, you know, the Curl your mustache, bad guy heel, tying people to the railroad tracks. It's real. You feel it, and it's real, and it's why you want to get to that place. Right or wrong for most people. So the, the shades of gray. I don't know that we necessarily lead society, WWE. I wouldn't want to think that, but I think we reflect it.

AI assessment note: “I don't know that we necessarily lead society, WWE... but I think we reflect it.”

Q Can you just bring us behind the scenes in this negotiation? Cause you guys just signed a huge licensing deal. Maybe you want to tell folks the size of it, but how did you bid people against each other and what were the different things that different folks wanted?

A Well, the, the, the beautiful thing about us is with the amount of content we do, we're 52 weeks a year live. So when you, when you talk about a content company that puts out entertainment, we are live Monday nights, uh, two to three hours, depending on, on the, on the evening on Netflix, Tuesday nights, two hours on CW, Friday nights, two hours, and half the year is three hours on USA. Uh, you know, once a month, a three hour plus PLE, uh, Saturday night's main event quarterly or more per year. That's, that's all live. That's all content that we're putting out on a regular basis. Um, to go back to the live event experience, our live event, you know, our ticketing, our live event experience numbers are off the chart, and that's global. We were just in Paris. Um, we did the stadium in Paris. Uh, we did Lyon, France on a Friday night, a PLE on a Sunday night in a stadium in Paris, France, where we had 30, Plus thousand there. And then we did, uh, Monday Night Raw from Paris in that same stadium with a little over 20,000 there for TV the next night. Came straight back to the U.S. So it's, it's every single week that amount of live content.

AI assessment note: “the beautiful thing about us is with the amount of content we do”

Q How many people are cut out for this type of work?

A Well, it's, it's a difficult thing. One of my tasks now in my job is finding that next generation of stars, right? So, you know, we have a robust program through college athletics, through an NIL program, through a lot of different avenues where we find talent, but the, the key to it really is, comes down to charisma and, um, you know, your innate ability to connect with people. It's one of the things about WWE that I think Is remarkable is it's, it is a kind of a combination of everything, right? The athleticism, the showmanship, the charisma that you have to have, the, um, the media skills that we teach from day one coming in the door, all of it. When you leave WWE, whether you've been there for a long time or, you know, if you've been, had any level of success, you are so well suited to do just about anything In life, because I, I truly feel like for a lot of people, sometimes can be a lot less about all the things you know and how good you are at them as the charisma to get people to listen to you. And then if you put the right people around you, you can have all the things that you need, but people will follow that leadership, right? So even when it comes to politics, it's amazing to me when I walked through the White House, um, over the last few months, I've been there quite a few times. How many people in the White House are huge fans?

AI assessment note: “the key to it really is, comes down to charisma”