Nick Khan: Vince McMahon’s WWE Return Was For A Transaction, Not A Side Door Back

September 13, 2023

Nick Khan reiterates that Endeavor wanted Vince McMahon to stay.

During a recent appearance on The Bill Simmons Podcast, WWE President Nick Khan addressed how Vince McMahon returned to WWE to pursue a sale of the company.

“Vince came back in January of this year, 2023,” Nick Khan recalled. “He and I had a conversation where I asked him — and at the time it was a private conversation, he’s certainly comfortable with me sharing the contents of it. I said, ‘Hey, give it to me straight. Are you looking to transact? Or is this sort of a side door back into your company?’ And he said, ‘No, I’m looking to transact. If there are real offers there for marketing value of the company, we’re gonna do a deal.’

“We engaged in a fulsome process with Raine as Vince’s banker and a company called Moelis as WWE’s banker. We wanted to maintain church and state and get the controlling shareholder point of view and the company point of view,” Khan added. “So we engaged in the process. It was robust. We had multiple offers, and at the end of the day, Vince gets to decide as the controlling shareholder. It just so happened to be that Vince and WWE both felt that this was the best transaction for the shareholders and for the longevity for the company. And boom, here we are.”

Not A Factor

Nick Khan felt the same way as McMahon, but noted that no offers were contingent on McMahon staying involved with the company.

“I don’t think that was a factor in this,” Nick Khan said. “I think Vince approached it as, ‘Hey, I wanna make sure every shareholder is treated the same way I am treated,’ and it was the Endeavor folks who asked him to stay in once the process was well underway, and bids were already in, and all of those things. So it already felt like it was going this way. Again, once multiple bids were in and they made the gracious offer, he accepted that position as Executive Chairman of the new company.”