Vince McMahon on selling WWE: 'We're open to anything'

Vince McMahon has said that he would entertain offers for the sale of WWE. Since its inception in 1948, the wrestling entertainment company has largely remained a family-controlled enterprise.

When the WWE chairman was asked if he was willing to sell the business to a large conglomerate in the near future during an earnings call on Thursday, he said: "We're open to anything". The 71-year-old, however, stressed that any takeover bid must be flexible to let WWE "control its own destiny".

"Again we're open to anything but I think that you know controlling your own destiny is so important," McMahon said. (Via Cagesideseats) "And I don't know how much you lose control over that you know by being absorbed or sold or what have you, but again, we're open to anything, we're business people."

"So it's not a question of if the right deal came along, it's one of those things where if it's a deal you couldn't refuse, we're listening," he said. "Otherwise you know we're creating our own content, which is extremely valuable as George said over all platforms and that's important. The old content is king is true, maybe truer today than it's ever been. So we're open for business."

Speaking about the future of the company, McMahon said, "We remain very bullish on our long-term opportunity with our WWE Network and the ability to distribute our content directly to our global audience"

"As far as television ratings are concerned, our brand extension we think continues to work very well. As far as is SmackDown as you know we went to a live format, it's live format is about twice the ratings that were in the same time slot a year ago and is about 16% above what we were doing with SmackDown on a tape basis on Thursday nights on USA," he added.