Professional wrestling may be my passion, but I pay the
mortgage with a company called Tellabs. Tellabs has been one of
the leaders in the telecommunications boom…in fact; we were
one of the top 10 performing stocks of the 90s, along with
household names such as Microsoft, Dell, and Cisco Systems. As
part of that role, Tellabs does a lot of accounting to our
stockholders, and catering to the analysts who can make or break
your short- and long-term stock performance. Regardless of what
the bottom line looks like, often times it only takes one
analyst downgrading your company to put you in a Wall Street
hole that can be difficult to climb out from.
The World Wrestling Federation has to do the same activities
that Tellabs, Microsoft, or any other publicly traded company
does. However, it is unique in its product, and how it presents
itself. Specifically, the product features the McMahon family,
and its trials and tribulations. Vince
McMahon wants a divorce on TV, and admitted to a history
chasing tail and childhood abuse in Playboy. The TV storyline
has Stephanie McMahon
siding with her father, achieving new levels of royal bitchdom
in the face of continuing harassment from Steve Austin.
Her husband and daughter’s actions have pushed Linda
McMahon, or so it is said, into a nervous breakdown, a
condition requiring heavy sedation. All of this is hyped in
front of thousands of fans in arenas every week, and a
television audience numbering in the millions. It’s all well
and good for professional wrestling. This kind of thing has been
part of the business, in some ways, since it went from an
emphasis on contests to performance.
In the business world, however, these are the same Vince,
Stephanie and Linda McMahon that interact with business
partners, analysts and investors on a daily basis. At the time
of this writing (Ed. note: the last week of December
2000), WWF stock is down approximately $4 from its initial
public offering (IPO), $9 from its post-IPO high. Live shows
aren’t selling out as quickly as they used to, if at all, and
TV ratings are down since the move from USA to TNN. The number
of questions surrounding the XFL with one month before its debut
are vast, ranging from the quality of on-field product, to
sustained ticket sales, to whether the league has a chance of
living up to NBC’s expected 5.0 rating. In a world where many
companies’ stocks are plummeting because they aren’t
sustaining 30-40% growth year after year, the WWF needs all the
positives they can muster to keep people interested in them not
only as fans, but also as investors.
So why on earth would they choose to keep going on national
TV twice a week and tell the world that their CEO has lost her
grip on reality, and that her immediate family put her there?
Linda can be the brilliant businesswoman that she is during the
workweek, but are the investment professionals smart enough to
keep the image of her presented on Raw
and Smackdown out of their heads? This is a brave new world. The lines
of reality in professional wrestling have always been blurred as
much as possible. That’s what makes it great, in my opinion,
what makes it worth watching. If a match is performed so that
you know its “fake” (for lack of a better word), or an angle
is totally incoherent, it ruins the delicate balance that it
takes to truly succeed. That balance has historically been
between a promotion and its fans. Outsiders, especially people
interested in financial rather than entertainment value, have
been entered into it… until now.
In the age of Sports Entertainment, it’s easy to say
“this is no different than keeping a soap opera actor’s
personal life separate from what’s happening to their
character.” There’s an important distinction to be made, one
that keeps my wife a loyal fan of General Hospital while
driving her away from Monday Night Raw.
That difference is: Susan
Lucci can present herself in endorsements as Susan Lucci,
while Erica Kane is going through marital problems, lesbian daughters, and
strife of all shapes and sizes on TV. Linda McMahon is on TV
playing, well, Linda McMahon.
Wrestling fans may be able to suspend disbelief and make that
separation. Is it worth the risk with the value of your company,
your entire business, to force Wall Street to successfully make
that same separation? Listen, I think the latest McMahon saga
will turn out to be a good storyline. There’s lots of good
stories that can be told without making the company figurehead
look like evil incarnate, and its CEO a quivering mass of
neurosis.
