Episode 445: WWE's International Power Play

Hey, Eric, let's talk a little bit about Crown Jewel.

You know a thing or two about travel problems-

[laughs]

...

in doing international events with the US State Department.

And now there is an advisory against traveling to Riyadh.

And of course, over the weekend, we saw all kinds of activity, and not the good kind.

There's some violence taking place, and WWE has a PLE there on November 7th.

Supposed to happen in six weeks.

I can't imagine that everybody is not scrambling on the WWE side of things and trying to work with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to figure out, what the heck are we gonna do? Now, I know there's been advisories out there before about, hey, you shouldn't do this, you shouldn't do that, that sort of thing.

But when we start to see attacks happening six weeks ahead of time, I think everybody starts to say, "Okay, this is no longer a potential issue.

This is a real issue." And WWE, specifically TKO, man, they're such a huge company worth shit tons of money.

I'm sure they've got a plan B and a plan C and a plan D.

But talk to me about what you think this could mean.

Obviously, the, the, the plain black and white of it is, hey, if it's safe, they'll go, and if it's not, they won't.

But what does the backup plan have to look like, Eric? Because there's more to it than that, right?

Yeah, I mean, first of all, right now, Saudi Arabia, at least according to that post, was a level three.

When I went to Moscow a couple weeks ago, uh, Russia was level four.

And the real issues-- And, and we experienced, we experienced the issue, uh, on our arrival into Moscow.

We ended up in a holding pattern, uh, of about 90 minutes or so, maybe a little longer.

And the reason for that, and, and I-- and b- because I used to be a pilot, and I can, you know, kind of follow along and figure out what's going to happen before it actually happens in terms of navigation, right? If you have that electric map.

I'm lo- I'm looking at the, the flight pattern or the holding pattern, um, that this, this jet was on, and it was very, very irregular.

It just-- Usually when you, when you fly a pattern, like in a holding pattern, it's a fi- it, it's a circle, right? Or, you know, maybe a figure of eight, whatever it is, oval.

Um, this one was just random.

It was like a kid with a crayon.