Raphael Stevens

The WWE-UFC merger will serve as a test of just how potent fans’ collective power can be in the face of corporate behemoths. 
Some hardcore wrestling fans told CNBC they have concerns, but they also acknowledged that fans tend to stick around despite ups and downs.
“When the bombs drop, there’ll be three things left: cockroaches, Twinkies and Vince McMahon,” pro wrestling commentator and podcaster Jimmy Baxter said.

WWE SmackDown World Tour
Joern Pollex | Bongarts | Getty Images

World Wrestling Entertainment and Endeavor-owned UFC are set to merge this year in a deal that will create a sports entertainment behemoth valued at more than $21 billion.
After the deal was announced in early April, WWE shares soared to their highest point in nearly four years. The stock is up more than 50% so far this year.

For wrestling fans, though, the story’s not about those numbers. Rather, the merger’s success hinges on what’s actually happening in the ring — and whether it’s worth their time and money. 
In a landscape where consumers have broad economic and political sway, the merger will serve as a test of just how potent fans’ collective power can be in the face of corporate behemoths. And wrestling fans aren’t afraid to share their opinions.
Some are worried that a return to a pay-per-view model for WWE’s flagship event, WrestleMania, is on the horizon. Last month, it streamed exclusively on NBCUniversal’s Peacock, where it generated the streaming service’s highest weekend usage ever. Though NBCU doesn’t release specific streaming numbers for the event, only the Super Bowl outpaced WrestleMania for the most watched hours of any live event on Peacock, according to the company.
The WWE’s exclusive streaming deal with Peacock, which includes WrestleMania streaming rights, is set to expire in 2026.
WWE declined to comment for this article. In late March, before the UFC deal was announced, WWE CEO Nick Khan said the company keeps fans’ price sensitivity in mind.

“If NBCU came to us and said, ‘Hey, we’ll take you from where you’re at now to five times for Peacock, but we need to charge an upcharge,’ we’d have to take a hard look at that,” Khan told “The Marchand and Ourand Sports Media” podcast. “Most importantly, we don’t want to price out our fans.”
Jerry D’Erasmo, a longtime fan who hosts a wrestling podcast, said he understands why WWE might eventually shift WrestleMania back to pay-per-view. Yet he also thinks it’s one of the few things that could actually turn off swaths of the fan base. He said many fans have told him that they’ll tune in to recap podcasts like his own instead of paying $60 or $70 to watch a pay-per-view.
How WWE will tell its stories and conduct its matches under a new executive regime will also help determine how they spend their money, fans said.

“The biggest concern from a fan’s perspective — not from investors’, but from fans’ — is creative control,” said Matt Courcelle, longtime wrestling aficionado and host of The WWE Podcast.
In this case, there’s an elephant in the room, and its name is Vince McMahon. For many WWE fans, whether they’ll pay up for new streaming or pay-per-view services rests a great deal on whether McMahon, 77, who’s controlled WWE since taking over from his father in 1982, will be involved with creative decisions.
Despite numerous settlements with women who have claimed sexual misconduct by McMahon, including a rape claim, which he denies, he remains at the top of WWE.
“This guy, for better or for worse, has been in control of the biggest wrestling company in the world,” said Jimmy Baxter, a pro wrestling commentator and podcaster in New Jersey. “For that, he was a success story, but along the way, there’s a lot of blood, sweat and tears — and a lot of paid-off women.” 
McMahon isn’t going anywhere, at least not any time soon. He will be the executive chairman of the new combined company, which has yet to be named, alongside Endeavor Chief Executive Ari Emanuel. After 40 years, many fans see him as a permanent fixture, even if he’s not the CEO.
“When the bombs drop, there’ll be three things left: cockroaches, Twinkies and Vince McMahon,” Baxter said.

World Wrestling Entertainment Inc. Chairman Vince McMahon is introduced during the WWE Monday Night Raw show at the Thomas & Mack Center August 24, 2009 in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Ethan Miller | Getty Images

McMahon told CNBC last month he won’t be deeply involved with WWE’s storytelling when WWE and UFC merge — but fans say they need more proof before they’ll accept his statements at face value.
“As much as they want to tell us he’s not ‘in the weeds’ in creative, there’s been a lot of evidence lately that Vince is,” Courcelle said, including rumors he was running the show behind the scenes at Raw after WrestleMania. 
There are other concerns about the content, too.
In late April, a former WWE writer filed a lawsuit against the company, claiming she was fired in retaliation for pushing back against racist pitches in the writer’s room, according to court documents. The complaint lists McMahon and his daughter, Stephanie McMahon, herself a former executive, as defendants, as well as WWE itself and other backstage company employees. 
“We know what Vince McMahon is; we know what he’s brought to the table creatively,” Courcelle said. “Over the last five to 10 years, it hasn’t been the best it could be, from a fan’s perspective.”  
Still, fans keep coming back for more. Anyone who’s forked over thousands of dollars on wrestling events and merchandise over the years won’t immediately stop watching if the new WWE isn’t up to snuff in their eyes. Some longtime hardcore fans aren’t sure where they’ll land quite yet, but they are likely to stick around to see where things go from here. 
“I absolutely love the drama,” Baxter said. “I love watching a crazy old man burn his empire to the ground solely because he can.” 
Disclosure: Peacock is the streaming service of NBCUniversal, the parent company of CNBC. More

Restaurants are increasingly giving their most desirable reservations to big spenders or their most loyal customers.
The strategy echoes the broader push across industries to encourage customers to pay more for a better experience.
SevenRooms co-founder and Chief Product Officer Allison Page said the move toward premium restaurant reservations is in part why it feels so much more competitive to book a table in advance.

The OpenTable website on a mobile phone arranged in Dobbs Ferry, New York, May 1, 2021.
Tiffany Hagler-Geard | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Under pressure from rising costs and still feeling the hangover from pandemic losses, restaurants are embracing reservations that target higher-income diners as more consumers book their tables ahead of time.
The pandemic changed how many people ate out, driving food delivery sales higher and hobbling buffet-style eateries, a segment that was already struggling. But one of the lasting changes to dining behavior has been the increasing popularity of reservations, particularly those made online.

When cities and states rolled back lockdown rules, many implemented new orders for restaurants to help with contact tracing, such as requiring customers to book tables in advance. Even after vaccination requirements disappeared, higher demand for reservations has stuck around. Booking Holdings’ OpenTable reservation service said in 2022 that it connected more than 1 billion people with restaurants every year. That number has climbed to more than 1.5 billion consumers, as of Monday.
“We definitely see that the demand and love of restaurants has been unleashed,” said Hannah Kelly, chief marketing officer of Resy, OpenTable’s main rival.

‘Top customers’

As a result of those pandemic-fueled changes, restaurants and the companies that help them book their tables are targeting big spenders with premium reservation options to drive higher sales. The strategy echoes the broader push across industries to encourage customers to pay more for better experiences, such as they can get by buying airlines’ first-class tickets, Tide’s laundry detergent pods and Apple’s AirPods Pro.
“It’s not just about getting bodies in the door anymore,” SevenRooms co-founder and Chief Product Officer Allison Page told CNBC. “It’s making sure the restaurant is getting the right body in the doors, whether that’s customers that visit frequently or have a higher average spend per cover.”
With backing from Danny Meyer’s Enlightened Hospitality Investments, SevenRooms offers restaurants tools such as online ordering, waitlists and reservations — and then it shares more customer data with them than Resy and OpenTable do to help them target specific diners.

About two-thirds of SevenRooms’ restaurant clients use its software to promote special experiences or sell upgrades when customers book reservations. Page said the move toward premium restaurant reservations can partially explain why it feels like it’s so much more competitive to book a table in advance these days.
“A lot of those reservations are being saved for top customers,” she said.
For example, booking a table at celebrity favorite Carbone in Las Vegas will be nearly impossible for the average diner. But MGM Rewards members who have at least gold status will see more desirable reservations available, thanks to SevenRooms.
Similarly, Resy’s Global Dining Access program offers exclusive reservations at some of the most in-demand restaurants, such as Balthazar and Le Bernardin in New York City. The booking company launched the program in 2021, two years after American Express bought Resy to add more benefits for its cardholders. The exclusive reservations are only for customers with select AmEx cards, including the company’s platinum option, which carries a hefty $695 annual fee.
Resy’s Kelly said the program now has more than 650 restaurants, primarily in the biggest U.S. cities.
Kirk Estopinal, a partner at New Orleans restaurant Cane & Table, said he initially had hesitations about setting aside tables solely for American Express cardholders.
“I kind of don’t like the whole ‘Disney FastPass line’ of restaurant reservations,” he said. “I had some concerns about it, just having people basically pay for access to what should be a democratized situation in my mind.”
But about nine months ago, Cane & Table took the plunge and joined the program. Estopinal said setting aside a few tables for those reservations has given the restaurant some extra wiggle room for walk-ins or allowed diners to linger if the seats weren’t booked ahead of time.
“The whole point is to catch a fish in the end, right? Whether that fish is a walk-in or from the Global Dining Access program,” he said.
Estopinal said he hasn’t seen any metrics that show that Global Dining Access members spend more money than the typical diner, adding that many of Cane & Table’s customers are on vacation and are already willing to spend more on their food and drinks.

Thinking creatively

But reserving tables just for big spenders and loyalty program members isn’t the only way that restaurants are looking to bookings for extra revenue.
SevenRooms’ Page said the company helps restaurants brainstorm different ideas for charging reservation fees. But the key is to make sure that extra money comes with a better experience for the customer. For example, a rooftop bar could charge a fee for bookings made at sunset or the Bellagio Resort in Las Vegas could charge for a table that faces its famous fountains.
Tailor has required customers to make reservations and prepay for their meals when they book tables ever since it opened, in December 2018. The Nashville restaurant pitches itself as a “unique dining experience” with two seatings every night. Reservations on Thursday and Sunday cost $100 per person, while weekend bookings run $125 per head. Tailor also charges a service fee to replace the tipping model.
Vivek Surti, the chef and restaurateur behind the supper club, said the business model makes operating a restaurant much easier. Knowing how many customers will show up every night results in less variability in his cost of goods and cuts down on food waste, helping his overall profit margins.
Since the pandemic, customers have been more willing to prepay for their meals, even as the restaurant’s prices have doubled compared with pre-Covid, Surti said.
“We want to make sure that we provide a great experience, that we’re buying the best possible product that we can, that we’re giving our employees a very good livable wage and salary,” he said. More

The mission for the military’s Los Angeles-based Space Safari team calls for flying a Millennium Space Systems-built satellite on Firefly Aerospace’s Alpha rocket — on remarkably short notice.
The mission’s challenge lies in its unique requirements for the companies, said Lt. Col. MacKenzie Birchenough, leader of the Tactically Responsive Space program within Space Safari.
“They don’t know when they’re going to get the call to launch,” she said.

The Alpha rocket for the Space Force’s Victus Nox mission stands on the launchpad at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California.
Firefly Aerospace

The name says it all: Victus Nox, or, translated from Latin, “conquer the night.”
It’s an experimental test run of national security capabilities in space, and a high-stakes mission for a pair of burgeoning space companies — a crucial chance to prove they can handle the high-speed demands of the U.S. Space Force.

The mission for the military’s Los Angeles-based Space Safari team calls for flying a Millennium Space Systems-built satellite on Firefly Aerospace’s Alpha rocket — on remarkably short notice. For Boeing subsidiary Millennium the mission will be just the 14th satellite it’s flown to date, and for Firefly it’s only the third launch of its rocket.
The challenge of this mission lies in its unique requirements for the companies, Lt. Col. MacKenzie Birchenough, leader of the Tactically Responsive Space program within Space Safari, explained to CNBC.
“They don’t know when they’re going to get the call to launch,” she said. “From their perspective, the things that normally happen over weeks or months are now crunched down to basically minutes and days.”

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Birchenough and the Tactically Responsive Space, or TacRS, program aim to work with spacecraft and rocket builders to create “the capability to quickly respond to on-orbit needs” on “very short timelines.”
Space Force is keen to continue pushing the limits of satellites and rockets with more TacRS missions, with its most recent budget request outlining $60 million over the next two years for the program.

Victus Nox is a “space domain awareness mission,” Birchenough said, which effectively means it’s a satellite intended to track other objects in orbit, as well as predict possible space threats.
“This whole mission is based off what a real-world situation would be like, and making sure that this operational demo is as close to that as we can possibly get,” she said.

The Alpha rocket for the Space Force’s Victus Nox mission stands on the launchpad at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California.
Firefly Aerospace

Firefly CEO Bill Weber acknowledged that, while the space domain is becoming increasingly privatized, “it’s not enough to truly call the commercialization of space ‘responsive.'”
“We don’t have that ability right now for anything other than weapon systems. In space, we do not have the ability within a near-term time frame to respond” to a national security threat or crisis, Weber said.
Space Force selected Firefly and Millennium for the Victus Nox contract in October, setting off a chain of events starting with the build phase. Firefly’s contract for the mission is worth $17.6 million, while Millennium’s contract value was not disclosed.
Next up is the “hot standby” phase, in which Millennium waits to receive a 60-hour window to get the spacecraft from Los Angeles to the launch site at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Then the mission initiates an on-call phase, where the teams are on standby, and finally a launch phase, when Space Force gives the companies 24 hours to get the rocket and satellite off the ground.
Space Safari aims to build upon the success of its most recent responsive demo mission, which flew in June 2021, as well as use the TacRS program to leverage and test more companies.
Birchenough said Space Safari sees this program as a “crawl-walk-run approach,” with initial planning for the next mission underway.
“We’re pushing the limits here and taking some risks,” she added.

Firefly’s opportunity

Firefly originally planned to fly a NASA mission on its third Alpha rocket launch, after the company reached space with its second launch in October. And then Space Safari came knocking, and Weber said his company had enough “flexibility” on the timing of the NASA mission to swap it out for Victus Nox.
Standing at 95 feet tall, Firefly’s Alpha rocket is designed to launch as much as 1,300 kilograms of payload to orbit — at a price of $15 million per launch. That puts Firefly in the medium-lift category of rockets, between small launchers such as Rocket Lab’s Electron and the “heavy” rockets such as SpaceX’s Falcon 9.
Firefly completed a “full-duration static fire” of the Alpha rocket at Vandenberg, and the company is now going through final readiness steps. Victus Nox represents a distinct opportunity for Firefly, both to prove it’s ready to fly national security missions as well to use the launch to streamline its processes and move faster.
“Firefly emerges from this mission set ready to go at a much quicker pace,” Weber said. “When Victus Nox launches, our intention is to go two months after that and on in succession. Alpha will be that predictable schedule, of a one metric ton rocket [flying] every two months.”
Weber said the company currently has customer commitments for seven more flights on Alpha after Victus Nox.

Millennium’s momentum

The Victus Nox satellite undergoes modification work.
Millennium Space

According to Millennium CEO Jason Kim, the Space Safari team came to the company’s production line and said, “Hey, I want one of those spacecraft.”
“The idea there is if you take something that’s off the production line, you don’t have to start from scratch to rapidly deploy a tactically responsive space capability to meet an urgent need or augment capabilities that are already on orbit,” Kim said.
Kim said Millennium modified the Victus Nox satellite in eight months, a significantly shorter timeline than the typical 24- to 36-month process of starting an order from scratch.
The Boeing subsidiary is “very focused” on the national security side of the space market, Kim said, with Victus Nox coming as its latest project to deliver spacecraft “affordably on rapid timelines.”
Millennium has heavily prioritized vertical integration, which Kim said helps the company “control the cost, the schedule and the quality of those components” in the spacecraft it builds.
“We’re learning so much from [Victus Nox], and the Space Force is learning a lot from it,” Kim said.
Once Space Force issues the call to launch, Kim said his team will work with Firefly to fuel and process the spacecraft and integrate it on the rocket. Once the spacecraft is in orbit, Millennium will check it within 48 hours to show it’s working properly and ready for operations.
“It’s this team, this collective team — the Space Force, Millennium Space Systems, Firefly — against the threats, we don’t see it against each other,” said Kim. “We all have a common purpose. And I think that’s gone a long way to the success that we’re showing.” More

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed legislation that effectively voids the development agreements struck by Disney amid a feud with the governor and his allies.
The deals are at the center of the battle between Disney and DeSantis, who is expected to challenge former President Donald Trump in the 2024 GOP primary.
Disney sued DeSantis and the board members last week, alleging a campaign of political retaliation led by the governor. The board countersued days later.

Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks during a news conference in the cabinet room at the close of the 2023 Florida legislative session Friday, May 5, 2023.
Alicia Devine | Tallahassee Democrat via AP

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Friday signed legislation that effectively voids the development agreements Disney struck shortly before the governor chose a new board of supervisors to oversee the company’s Orlando parks.
The development deals are at the center of the latest battle in a yearlong war between Disney, one of Florida’s largest employers, and DeSantis, a Republican who is likely gearing up for a 2024 presidential campaign.

The governor’s office confirmed the bill signing in a press release that contained no other information or remarks on the legislation.
The bill, which passed out of the state’s Republican-majority Legislature just a day earlier, follows a vote by DeSantis’ board members to invalidate the deals, claiming they were struck unlawfully. Disney says the contracts were crafted to help lock in its long-term development plans amid escalating tension with DeSantis and his allies.
Members of both parties, including Trump, have criticized DeSantis’ fight with Disney.
“This feud between DeSantis and Disney is insane,” Linda Stewart, a Democrat who represents Florida’s 13th Senate district, told CNBC. “Every day it seems like there’s another way that they want to try to make things more difficult for Disney, but all they’re doing is costing taxpayers money to hire lawyers to go defend what they are doing.”
Stewart voted against the recent legislation.

Disney sued DeSantis and the board members last week, alleging a campaign of political retaliation led by the governor. The board countersued days later.
Disney declined to comment.
The feud began more than a year ago, after Disney denounced a Republican-backed Florida bill limiting classroom discussion about sexual orientation and gender ideology, branded “Don’t Say Gay” by critics.
Shortly after, DeSantis and his allies moved to dissolve the special tax district that had allowed Walt Disney World to essentially govern its own operations since the 1960s.
The 25,000-acre area, formerly called the Reedy Creek Improvement District, was ultimately kept intact — but it was given a new name, and its five-member board was replaced with figures picked by DeSantis.
In March, the new board accused Disney of crafting 11th-hour deals that undercut its power. Disney says its contacts were forged publicly, and that they don’t undermine the board’s oversight of the district’s operations.
The company’s federal civil lawsuit asks the court to “stop the State of Florida from weaponizing the power of government to punish private business.”
DeSantis signed the bill voiding Disney’s deals on the final day of Florida’s 2023 legislative session. The governor, who was resoundingly reelected in the November midterms, is seen as former President Donald Trump’s top potential rival for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination.
The Legislature, which bears Republican supermajorities in both chambers, churned out bills that helped enact DeSantis’ wide-ranging conservative agenda — with a focus on divisive cultural issues that could resonate in a Republican primary race.
DeSantis has kept up his attacks on Disney, even as the drawn-out fight has led some Republicans to question his strategy.
In addition to voiding the development deals, the Florida Legislature passed a measure that would have the state transportation department conduct inspections of Walt Disney World’s monorails. Stewart said Disney hasn’t had any major safety issues with its monorail system since 2009, when an operator was killed after two of the vehicles collided. She called into question the timing of the new measure.
“It’s so obvious this is about retaliation,” Stewart said.
Earlier this month, the state education board approved an expansion of the classroom bill that kicked off the feud with Disney. More

The stricter new rules “will increase the transparency and integrity” of corporate stock repurchasing overall, said SEC Chairman Gary Gensler.
The regulations will start applying to publicly traded companies in the fourth quarter this year.
The newly adopted SEC rules will compel companies to disclose far more information about stock buybacks than they ever have before.

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Gary Gensler, testifies before the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee during an oversight hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, September 15, 2022.
Evelyn Hockstein | Reuters

WASHINGTON — As investors focused this week on earnings and regional banks, the Securities and Exchange Commission quietly adopted new rules that will require public companies to disclose far more information about stock buybacks than they ever have before.
The new rules “will increase the transparency and integrity” of corporate stock repurchasing overall, and allow investors “to better assess issuer buyback programs,” SEC Chairman Gary Gensler said in a statement about the updated disclosures.

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Gensler also noted the soaring rate at which U.S. corporate buybacks have grown in recent years, from a total of $950 billion worth in 2021, to more than $1.25 trillion worth last year.
This year could be just as big. Google parent Alphabet announced last month that its board had approved $70 billion in stock buybacks this year, matching the amount the company spent repurchasing its own shares in 2022. This week, Apple announced plans to buy back even more stock than Google: $90 billion worth this year, on the heels of a previous $90 billion in 2022.
The new disclosure rules will begin to apply when U.S. corporations report earnings for the fourth quarter of 2023, and to foreign issuers on a slightly longer timeline.

What public companies will need to disclose

A daily log of share repurchase activity, disclosed at the end of each quarter as an exhibit in 10-Q reports and the annual 10-K report.
A description of the rationale behind each buyback, and the goals of that buyback. The issuer will also need to explain the criteria it used to determine how many shares to repurchase.
Whether certain directors or officers of the company bought or sold any of the shares in question within four days before or after the buyback.
More details about company stock trading agreements with their directors and officers, known as 10b5-1 plans. This includes the start and end dates, the total number of shares, and the material terms of these plans.

Approved by a commission vote of 3-2 on Wednesday, the new rules mark the end of a yearslong battle over how much information the public and shareholders have a right to know about the increasingly common practice of companies repurchasing their own shares.
They also reflect a bigger debate nationwide about share buybacks, which typically increase the value of a company’s shares by reducing the total number of shares in the market.

With top executives’ compensation often linked to share price performance metrics, buybacks have emerged in the past decade as a relatively simple, quick means by which to raise a company’s stock price, much simpler in many cases than it is to grow sales, expand operations, or increase profits.
Markets have also seen an increase in the practice of public companies issuing debt in order to buy back their own shares, a practice that some economists believe poses a threat to the long-term health of the U.S. economy.
The changes approved Wednesday represent a softening of the SEC’s initial proposed disclosure rules, which would have required public companies to report trades by corporate insiders on a daily basis. The commission said its final decision was influenced by concerns raised in public comments, that daily reporting would be too expensive and time consuming.
Public interest groups, many of which have become increasingly critical of widespread corporate buybacks, applauded the new rules.
“Stock buybacks have grown substantially in recent years and increasingly they are used to enrich executives instead of re-investing capital to advance a company’s long-term productivity, profitability, and employee welfare,” said Stephen Hall, legal director at the nonprofit Better Markets. “This final rule will certainly increase the quantity, quality, and timeliness of reporting on these controversial transactions.”
But industry advocates called the new rules onerous and unfair, and accused the SEC of trying to deter companies from repurchasing their own shares.
“The commission’s attempt to discourage these commonplace, commonsense transactions via an overly complicated, expensive and unworkable disclosure mandate is … a departure from its mission to enhance capital formation and protect investors,” said Chris Netram, managing vice president of the National Association of Manufacturers.
On Capitol Hill, bipartisan support for stricter buyback disclosure rules has been apparent since the start of the SEC’s rulemaking process, more than a year ago.
Capital markets “provide the means by which companies raise capital and invest it productively for the good of their investors, workers, communities, and, ultimately, our country as a whole,” wrote Sens. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wisc., and Marco Rubio, R-Fla., in a letter to Gensler in 2022.
The explosion of corporate buybacks, they wrote, represented a shift “toward transactions in securities for the purposes of financial engineering over raising capital to invest productively in trade and industry.”
The SEC has repeatedly stated that it does not have a position on whether corporate share buybacks are good or bad, and that the new disclosure rules merely reflect the growing importance of buybacks as a key element of corporate strategy. More