Yes but the new Japan deal that happened in the mid 90’s was funded by North Korea. Would if a deal like this would happen today, would fans be as outrage by new Japan for doing a show in North Korea?
In the end, everything in entertainment is propaganda. It doesn’t mean that people’s should be outrage by some of the stuff that happens in the world, but in the end, I don’t feel like fans outrage over certain stuff that happens in the world should dictate what a company should or shouldn’t do. Sometimes, morals has to take a back seat to business. Just look at what happening next week in Saudi Arabia, the have a huge financial summit where pretty much every big company, except uber and virgin, are going to even with what happened. The United nations and the u.s representative are going to this thing. So in the end, the world isn’t controlled by peoples with morals, it’s control with money and will always be controlled by money.
WWE has a contract with them and they won’t break it because that would mean being in breach of contract and it would cost them a lot more money that what do they would lose with fans cancelling the network for a few weeks. So while I get why fans are outrage or uncomfortable with this, I also get why the WWE is not cancelling the show. They know that the outrage from a part of the WWE universe will die down, the story surrounding them is already dead since it’s being all about Trump supporting the Saudi government for the last few days and with NXT war games coming up, all the fans that are mad at wwe and will skip the show, will comeback just so they don’t miss the NXT special, so they are ready to take the lost for a few weeks if that means that they can continue to stay out of a legal problem that will cost them a lot more and could even be dangerous for them if the Saudi government wants it to be,
The WWE could easily back out of this deal and still have the best year ever financially. The Saudi deal pales in comparison to the Fox deal. The worst that would happen is short term they would take a hit on stick price, three months at the most, boo hoo.
No, the worst that could happen is that they get sued for breach of contract since they already signed the deal with Saudi Arabia which would cost them millions of dollars plus the stock would go down. So the deal with FOX wouldn’t move the needle in the end.
Like I mention before, it’s easier for then to continue with this event and take a hit on the fan base for a few weeks then go into a legal battle over this which would hurt the bottom line and put the company in danger.
The big difference between the WWE/SA deal & an oil deal involving SA is that the oil deal isn’t accompanied by a tacit endorsement of SA’ s government & their policies/practices.
And in terms of the temporary “outrage”, I don’t understand why some are applying that word to this situation in a negative context…We SHOULD be outraged at the suppression of free press & the death of an American journalist for doing his job. If you want to compartmentalize that and just enjoy the show, that’s fine…But let’s not trivialize or normalize what happened. The deal was already a bad look in terms of the women or folks like Zayn, but this is much worse.
The issue for the Fed is that they signed a bad deal from a morality/PR standpoint. Yes there will come a day when the murder of this reporter is old news…But there will always be something that comes up with the SA government. Getting into bed with a government is always risky, and while the WWE is certainly not condoning their actions, by taking that check & promoting the regime, they do become complicit in a propaganda machine.
I won’t be watching, but I don’t begrudge those who will…Let’s just be real about the quagmire the company (Vince) has gotten themselves into. It’s one that’s unnecessary and could’ve been avoided (and one the might not have signed had the Fox deal gone down a year earlier).
I would be incredibly surprised if there wasn’t a sitpulation in the contract that allows the WWE to pull out in case of an international incident without litigation. If they didn’t include that in there, that’s incredibly short sighted in behalf of their legal team.
On WOR Meltzer stated that the WWE is only epexcting to profit $2-3 million for this particular event. They likely could cancel just this event because of the optics and keep the deal going for when this blows over. They aren’t. It will be another propaganda show, and It’s gonna hurt their image.
i didn’t but that’s normally how contract works especially big money contract like this one. Unless like somebody wrote they had a escape clause inserted in the contract where they could back out if a international incident would happen then they are pretty much fuck because they sign the deal and if they don’t respect what’s in the contract for any reason, then whoever in charge of the deal on the saudi side can pretty much sues them for breach of contract.
I guess my point is that it’s all speculation as to what is written on the contract, and to make statements otherwise is folly.
But, as I stated earlier in the thread, this will eventually blow over, just like all bad PR WWE gets, they will move on like they always do and not be harmed by it in the long run.
Absolutely! And I’ll point out that even the US government had the fortitude to pull out of the Davos in the Desert conference. The Treasury Secretary is no longer going. As of last hour the last US based business for the conference, Fox Business, pulled out. The WWE is now alone on this one.
Is anybody else as big of a asshole as me and are more outraged by the Saudi shows just generally ruining the overall WWE product than any of the political or morale reasons?
I’m not going to get on my high horse and act like I care about what happens in Saudi Arabia or any of the Middle East for that matter. If they just did a random untelevised house show that didn’t effect RAW or SD I would could careless. But if they are practically going to be some of the monthly PPVs now where they go on at 4 AM on a Friday and must include wrestlers in their 50s being on my TV every week then fuck Saudi Arabia.
It looks like it’s doing something else.