Vince McMahon Had Been Planning April Layoffs Prior To WrestleMania

In April, WWE laid off a massive amount of employees and furloughed others to help offset losses due to the Coronavirus pandemic. However, according to a report on ESPN related to the XFL, it has been revealed that McMahon had been planning the layoffs for at least a couple of weeks.

This means he definitely knew the lay-offs were coming prior to WrestleMania 36.

“The WWE managed to resume content production amid the pandemic, airing a fanless but well-received WrestleMania 36 on April 4-5. McMahon was already working on plans for a series of WWE layoffs, furloughs and other cost-cutting moves designed to stabilize the company for an extended period of lower revenues. They were announced April 15. And according to Forbes magazine, McMahon’s net worth has dropped by $1 billion, from $2.9 billion to $1.9 billion, in the past year.”

Ouch. 1 billion less. Of course, to lose a billion dollars and still be worth two is a problem I’d like to have.

The article goes in-depth into the closure of the XFL and how it was related to WWE.

“I consider the end of the XFL as we knew it to be tangentially pandemic,” said an XFL employee who requested anonymity in order to be candid. “It wasn’t necessarily the national economy but our owner’s economy that played into it. The WWE stock dropped, there were some executives that left and you start getting worried a little bit. And then the pandemic hit the WWE stock, as well.”

While Vince McMahon has lost money mostly related to restarting the XFL, WWE has been able to stay in the green due to cost-cutting measures mentioned above and massive TV deals.

The company’s standing just makes the cuts that much harder to swallow given the fact that wrestlers don’t have as many options with fewer companies running shows.

Hopefully, we’ll see some more shows resuming and wrestlers showing up in IMPACT, AEW, and other places.

• Lay-offs
• xfl
• Vince McMahon
• wwe

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