Report: Potential Reason Comcast Didn't Purchase WWE Revealed

Four months after the organisation was put up for sale, WWE was sold to Endeavor on Monday, April 3 and the pro wrestling promotion will merge with UFC under a new parent company later this year. The merger puts WWE's value at $9.3 billion and Vince McMahon will remain involved as the Executive Chairman of the new parent company. The 77-year-old is also reportedly in charge of WWE creative once again after being heavily involved with the Raw after WrestleMania 39 taping.

While Endeavor were the company who purchased WWE, many expected Comcast to be interested in buying WWE due to the company's media rights deals for Monday Night Raw on USA and WWE premium live events on Peacock. Reports have noted that Comcast wasn't as interested in buying WWE as many expected, though.

Speaking about the situation to POST Wrestling, CNBC's Alex Sherman gave his thoughts on why Comcast did not aggressively pursue a purchase of WWE.

"One may be McMahon and his future involvement. I don't really know how that would fit. Comcast is by and large a conservative cable company at heart, the idea of adding McMahon to the mix may not have worked. But I think the bigger idea about why that was not a fit was Comcast probably has one big shot here from a merger perspective. This is not a great time for media mergers in the sense that the general valuation of the big media companies has come down quite a bit from what it was in January of last year or before. The year 2022, we saw a major devaluing of all of the large media companies," Sherman said.

"So the idea that it would spring for a $9 billion acquisition here, Comcast has a couple of other things I think that it needs to figure out what it wants to do with any dry powder that it has. Maybe it wants to buy Hulu from Disney - the 66% of Hulu that Disney owns which [Disney CEO] Bob Iger has come out and said he would potentially be willing to sell. That would be a $20 billion deal if it happened. And, of course, everybody speculates that a year from now perhaps NBCUniversal and Warner Bros. Discovery would come together to make a bigger company and perhaps that's what [Comcast CEO] Brian Roberts wants to do. So in the list of priorities of those three deals, I would put WWE as a long third."

Since the deal was announced, Endeavor have revealed they plan to "run the UFC playbook" with WWE. Find out more here.