Analyst Looks At The Number One Focus Of WWE Investors At The Moment

According to LightShed's Brandon Ross, Vince McMahon's retirement was a "game changer."

In an interview with Brandon Thurston and Jesse Collings from Wrestlenomics, Ross said that McMahon's retirement "not just from management, but from that tight creative control that he's had over the business since the beginning of time," has caught the eye of investors, though he feels the creative changes could be more akin to window dressing in the eyes of WWE shareholders and Wall Street traders.

"Analysts and investors don't really care that much about the creative," Ross continued, noting that most investors are "not really fans that are going to notice that change in creative."

The LightShed partner and analyst thinks that investors are more interested in the "big picture existential questions surrounding WWE" in the wake of former-chairman and CEO Vince McMahon retiring in disgrace amidst investigations into a series of hush money payments McMahon made to former female employees, alleging harassment, misconduct and abuse at the hands of McMahon and former-Head of Talent Relations John Laurinaitis. Now that McMahon is gone, Ross believes there's one thing on investors minds: a potential sale, saying it "has been the number one focus of investors since the allegations against Vince came out."

"WWE has always been a pretty small company," Ross said. "There's a ton of larger entities that are looking for content, and especially live content, and so they'd be a very natural acquisition target for a number of companies." The analyst believes that the question of "does WWE want to sell or not?" has actually always boiled down to "does the McMahon family want to sell or not?" and the removal of the McMahon patriarch adds a new twist to that question. One company that he says would be a good fit, assuming the financials are worked out? Endeavor, parent company of the UFC.