Vince McMahon apparently had some serious doubts about WWE’s Saudi Arabia deal before the company ultimately decided to move forward. According to former WWE executive George Barrios, McMahon was so concerned after Jamal Khashoggi’s disappearance that he privately worried WWE could be “risking the company.”
Speaking on My World with Jeff Jarrett, Barrios looked back at how WWE’s relationship with Saudi Arabia developed in 2017 and 2018. At first, he said the country was treated like any other international market WWE was considering for major events. That started changing as discussions continued. What began as a fairly straightforward event deal grew into a much bigger strategic relationship covering the Middle East.
“I would say Saudi Arabia was no different in that we were having them, other than, as we are continuing to have them, the idea of what the deal could be keeps getting bigger. It’s morphing from a country — what I’d call a transactional relationship — to a broader strategic relationship for the entire region in the Middle East.”
Barrios said WWE was also looking at Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 initiative and the possibility of being part of the country’s efforts to open itself up. Internally, he said the deal was complicated, but there wasn’t much debate about whether WWE should actually be doing business there.
Then Jamal Khashoggi disappeared. Barrios said WWE was only weeks away from signing an agreement when that happened, and suddenly companies considering doing business in Saudi Arabia began pulling back. WWE had to seriously reconsider what it was about to do as well.
That led to several private meetings between Barrios, Michelle Wilson and McMahon. According to Barrios, those conversations brought out a much more vulnerable side of McMahon than most people normally got to see.
“I still remember him saying at one point — and I hadn’t internalized this the way he had — he actually said, ‘I feel like we’re risking the company.’ You know, he very seriously goes, ‘I feel like this is risking the company.’”
That comment apparently changed the way Barrios looked at the situation too. McMahon wasn’t simply worried about whether the Saudi deal itself would work. His concern was that WWE could damage everything it had built elsewhere by going through with it.
“And his fear was, I remember him saying, ‘There’s a chance that you unwind all the good you’ve done,’ right? Because at this point, we’re now riding high. We are now rock stars.”
The timing made that concern even bigger. Barrios confirmed WWE’s major television deal with Fox had already been completed, meaning the company was in an extremely strong business position when it suddenly found itself having to weigh the financial upside of Saudi Arabia against the possible hit to its reputation.
WWE didn’t make the decision casually either. Barrios said executives went through different potential outcomes and mapped out what could happen depending on which direction they went, with both money and reputation factoring into those conversations.
“We started talking about and really thinking through the logic thread of what he was saying. And I won’t bore you with that, but there were a lot of, basically, flowcharts showing what potential outcomes could be depending on the paths we took — and not just financial, but reputational.”
Eventually, WWE decided to move forward with the Saudi Arabia relationship. Actually getting the deal signed created another awkward problem, though. By that point, Barrios said people believed they had a much clearer idea of what had happened to Khashoggi, and apparently nobody inside WWE was exactly volunteering for the trip to Riyadh.
“Eventually, we decide that we’re going to move forward, but now the deal’s got to get signed. And I’d be lying if, you know, people are now saying, ‘Well, geez, we kind of think we know what happened with Khashoggi.’ Nobody was raising their hand to fly to Riyadh to get the deal signed.”
WWE ultimately went ahead with the partnership, but Barrios’ story shows just how close the situation came to becoming something much bigger internally. McMahon was usually known for betting heavily on WWE’s biggest moves, but this was one occasion where even he apparently wondered whether the company was putting everything it had built at risk.
Do you think Vince McMahon’s private concerns about WWE’s Saudi Arabia deal change how you look at the company’s decision to ultimately move forward with it? Let us know what you think in the comments.
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