There's no way Vince McMahon gets booted from WWE. Don't be stupid.
Just think about it for five god damned minutes.
So, I came across this Tweet a little bit ago…
Now, I have yet to listen to their podcast - I only just heard about them today, as a matter of fact (please note that me saying I don’t know who you are is hardly an insult to you.) And, if I thought this situation could actually “bring Vince down,” I’d actually agree - it would be pretty amusing, as much as something like this could be considered “amusing.”
So, I’m not taking issue with what these guys said. But, it did get me thinking.
Are there people out there that really think Vince McMahon is going to be punished in any significant way by the WWE board of directors over this? Seriously?
OK, so here’s the deal. The Wall Street Journal published a piece reporting that the WWE Board of Directors was investigating a claim that Vince McMahon paid around $3 million bucks to cover up an affair with a former employee.
You would imagine the board would need to consider a few things:
If true, did McMahon use company money to make the payment?
If true, will this impact the company financially in any significant negative way?
If true, did McMahon break any actual laws by doing so?
First off, number one seems pretty unlikely. I’m not his accountant, but I’m pretty confident that Vince McMahon probably has at least three million bucks. And using company money for something like this (well, for anything not company-related, actually) is not only a sure-fire way to get in trouble but usually leaves a paper trail that makes doing so even more likely.
As far as number three goes, well, that doesn’t seem the case. Provided the alleged affair was consensual and any NDAs signed were legit (and I’ll concede here that this could possibly be a sticking point), this pretty much seems like a non-issue.
Don’t get me wrong: I get the concept of abuse of power in situations like this. I’m fairly sure that what allegedly happened here was morally and ethically wrong. The WWE board isn’t going to care about that. What they’re really trying to find out is “does this whole situation make Vince McMahon a liability?”
And thaaaaaaaaat brings us back to numero dos. The board of directors of a publically traded company is concerned with one thing: making the company’s shareholders money. If the answers to #1 and #3 are “no”, there is… *ahem*… no chance in hell that #2 is “yes.”
Vince McMahon coming across as a slimeball in the public eye has never, not once, ever cost WWE money. People didn’t stop watching the product because of the steroid trials or the sex scandals. Yeah, they did stop watching, but those reasons had more to do with the product itself than what McMahon was doing outside of it.
Of course, as the saying WWE likes to say all the time goes, anything can happen in WWE - even behind-the-scenes. But, I mean… come on.
Here’s a quote from Fightful reporter and Guy Who Knows What He’s Talking About Sean Ross Sapp (from the Toronto Star):
“The company is in solid financial standing given so many guaranteed revenue streams including its domestic television rights deals with NBC Universal and FOX, the U.S. streaming rights of its WWE Network licensed to Peacock, and its international agreement with Saudi Arabia. I don’t think it will affect the company from a creative or financial aspect at all, if sponsors or networks apply pressure, that could apply but it’s not likely.”
But, hey… I could be wrong.
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