Endeavor shares fell on the first day of trading of the year which is being attributed to a video surfacing showing UFC head slapping his wife in a nightclub in Cabo on New Year’s Eve. Shares fell over 5% to $21.20 per share at close of business Tuesday. It was the first day
Endeavor, which owns the UFC, has not issued an official statement about the video of White. Despite a public apology and one from his wife which indicated that they have reconciled after the incident, the scrutiny still lays with White.
In a cringeworthy column, Kevin Iole of Yahoo! Sports lauded White’s good deeds which outweighs one indiscretion. Even though Iole called out White’s violence, his column is an obvious veil to restore some sort of credibility to White.
The interesting issue will be whether TBS will go through with the debut of Dana White’s Power Slap League which is set to air next Wednesday. It’s quite clear that White hosting a slap league only a week or so after he publicly hits his wife would be a foolish PR gaffe. So the question will be whether Endeavor which owns the UFC or Turner which owns TBS, will do anything to address the situation. Moreover, will Disney, which owns ESPN make a statement about White’s video. It reported the news and received a lengthy quote from White.
Or, will all hope that this story will blow away if White lays low for a couple weeks and resurfaces sometime in February? Certainly, if the share price continues to plunge further due to public fervor over White’s actions, we could see some reprimand to satiate shareholders and analysts. But I could foresee Endeavor riding this out in the short term.
Since this is the world of combat sports, its hard to imagine that White will receive any sort of harsh penalty to how much money he has made to the power plays in the industry he created. One need only look to boxing or even in the NFL to find examples of disregard to domestic abuse. White signed off on having Greg Hardy in the UFC despite his sordid past of abuse for which he expressed no regret. So, we should not expect anything to come off what happened on New Year’s Eve and it will be of no surprise that we will tune into White’s Slap League next week and smirk.
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