Hey Buddy, want to buy WWE?

In the last few days, there's been two pieces looking at $WWE and who would hypothetically be interested enough to purchase the whole company.

• WhatCulture: 5 Companies that Would Want to Buy WWE by Chris Harrington
• Bloomberg: WWE Free-for-All Awaits If Founder Sets Sale: Real M&A by Tara Lachapelle

In the wake of Thursday's nutty stock spike & rumors, I became interested in the idea of what companies could conceivably integrate WWE.  In the end, my list of about dozen different types of entities was boiled down into five categories: (1) Mass Media Companies, (2) Internet Companies, (3) Crazy Billionaire, (4) Private Money/Sports Equity and (5) Live Event Promoter.

It's interesting to look at Lachapelle's list which includes: Comcast (Mass Media), MSG Square Garden Co. (Private Money/Sports Equity), AMC Media (Mass Media), Disney/Pixar (Mass Media) and Live Nation (Live Event Promoter).  At least I was able to come up with the same ideas as the big market analysts.

Of course, it's all a moot point since Vince McMahon controls over 90% of the voting rights for WWE through Class B shares which are exclusive to the McMahon Family and their Family trusts. VKM would have to want to sell, which seems highly unlikely based on history.

Also some good analysis by JDW over at ProWrestlingOnly discussing the enormous profit margins that Marvel, Pixar and LucasFilms had compared to WWE.  Honestly, this is all fun speculation, but it's not relevant.  WWE's lever of growth the past few years  has been TV Rights, and if they were acquired by a television company, that would just be passing money from left hand to right hand.  The agent of change for those companies is improving their advertising revenue from the shows.