Just days after World Wrestling Entertainment debuted to impressive viewership numbers on Netflix, the founder and former head honcho of the company, Vince McMahon, cast a bit of a pall on all the good news.
McMahon, the controversial 79-year-old former WWE president and head of creative, is grappling with a number of concurrent and salacious legal scandals, but one of them, at least, appears to be over.
It’s just going to cost him $1.7 million, according to Deadline.
The outlet reported that McMahon “is paying more than $1.7 million to settle charges from the [U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission] alleging he failed to disclose hush money payments to two women.”
Citing the SEC, Deadline noted that this settlement stems from an incident “related to settlement agreements signed by McMahon in 2019 and 2022 on behalf of himself and the WWE without disclosing the agreements to WWE’s board or top legal and financial execs.”
The SEC argued that the lack of disclosure created “material misstatements” in the WWE’s financial filings.
Deadline continued: “The settlement agreements signed by McMahon were designed to keep women from going public with sexual assault allegations or filing any legal complaints.
“One settlement agreement obligated McMahon to pay a former employee $3 million in exchange for the former employee’s agreement to not disclose her relationship with McMahon and her release of potential claims against the WWE and McMahon.
“The second agreement obligated McMahon to pay a former WWE independent contractor $7.5 million.”
McMahon’s $1.7 million payout will roughly be divvied up as such: “a $400,000 civil penalty for violating the Securities Exchange Act” and a reimbursement to the WWE for $1,330,915.90.
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As most settlements typically go, McMahon is neither confirming nor denying the SEC’s findings.
The aforementioned $3 million payment was to former WWE employee Janel Grant, whose lawsuit against McMahon and the WWE ultimately led to McMahon’s ignominious ouster from the very company he founded.
The Grant lawsuit opened up a horrific can of worms, with some truly disturbing allegations being levied against McMahon.
(You can read more about those allegations here and here, but be warned, they are graphic.)
McMahon is also grappling with a different sexual abuse lawsuit, this one allegedly involving former WWE “ring boys.”
Despite all these legal scandals, the company most closely associated with McMahon appears to be chugging along just fine.
Not only did the WWE recently undergo a massive multimedia merger with the UFC, the company’s flagship show, “WWE Monday Night Raw,” just ditched traditional cable (and thus “Raw’s” previous claim of being the “longest-running episodic cable television show in history”) to make the jump to streaming.
This past Monday, the WWE made its ballyhooed Netflix debut to some incredible viewership numbers, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
That outlet reported that “Raw” debuted on Netflix in 2.6 million homes — not a bad total for Netflix given the $5 billion investment.
The Reporter noted that 2.6 million households is “more than double the household average that the three-hour show drew on USA Network.”
Worldwide, “Raw” reportedly drew in 4.9 million views.
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