Step into the ring. Motley for money starts now.

I'm Dylan Lewis sitting in for Chris Hill and I'm joined by Jim Gilley's Jim. How's it going?

I'm pretty good, Dylan.

I was delighted to have you on today's show because this is so firmly in your lane, the topic that we're going to be talking about today.

WrestleMania was this past weekend but the big news in wrestling this week is that the WWE, the world wrestling entertainment group is combining with Endeavor-owned UFC.

And this is one of those things that I think you've been kind of watching and saying could happen for quite some time.

Yeah, I mean, we've recommended WWE in both Hidden Gems Canada where I'm lead advisor as well as Stock Advisor Canada where I contribute and where our colleague Nick Cypill also contributes.

And both Nick and I have been quite outspoken I think that we thought WWE was going to be acquired. And it's sort of is, but it also sort of isn't.

It's an interesting deal and the we'll get into the terms in a minute, the overall value of the deal, 21 billion, it brings together leaders in wrestling and in the business of entertainment.

It puts a sticker price on WWE of roughly $9.3 billion. Jim, you mentioned that you'd felt like this was a property that would get acquired at some point.

Why does partnering up with UFC here make sense? What do these two dancing partners see in each other?

Sure, well, I'm going to first caution that the deal value of 21 billion, the value of 12-1 billion, they've slapped on UFC and the value of 9-3 billion on WWE.

Those are guidelines more than hard and fast rules, they're not, you know, those are numbers they've decided to throw on to make the deal work from a tax perspective and to merge these things together.

The cynical part of me, which is larger than I'd like to admit, says this deal makes sense because it's the best way for Vince McMahon who is the controlling shareholder of WWE.

He's got about just under 40% of the shares and just around 80% of the vote. This is a way for him to stay involved, frankly, because he's going to be the new executive chairman of the combined company as opposed to just selling for a bag of money, which is, which was kind of what we were hoping for because this is an all stock deal.

The true value of the company is going to be whatever the market says, it's going to be once all the dust settles. Now that said, I think this is a very good deal for pretty much everyone involved.

I'm not sure it's because of the companies being put together so much as the ecosystem they happen to find themselves in, which is very advantageous for the style of business that both of these companies do.

And that can probably be summarized in two words and that would be media rights.

It's one of the large themes of streaming over the last five to 10 years. And yeah, they are incredibly differentiated in what they offer UFC and WWE.

And is this just two people that are two groups that are really good at a specific kind of entertainment getting together and saying we think we're better as a bundle here?

To a certain degree, yes, I think as the ecosystem, the streaming ecosystem has been developing, as you say over the past half decade, decade.

What we've learned is as people have been court cutters and cable companies have struggled and I don't couldn't tell you last time I watched network television, but I will pay for my sports package because I want to see sports live.

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