WWE has filed a lawsuit against Texas’ Attorney General seeking to prevent their “proprietary information” about bidding for the 2023 Royal Rumble pay-per-view event from being released.
Wrestlenomics is reporting that WWE filed suit on February 16 regarding their agreement with the City of San Antonio to bring the 2023 Royal Rumble pay-per-view event there.
The lawsuit was filed after Wrestlenomics and Intelligence Options, LLC requested records from the city after the Royal Rumble to report on ticket sales for the event including what the city provided to the wrestling promotion in exchange for bringing the event to the Alamodome.
WWE has claimed that the agreement is a trade secret containing proprietary information that it fits within an exemption in Texas’ public information law.
City officials were granted an exemption from the Attorney General’s office allowing them to withhold the information, but instead, the Attorney General reversed course on January 17, 2024.
Assistant Attorney General Michelle Garza noted in the revised decision that “WWE has failed to provide specific factual evidence demonstrating the information at issue is confidential under” Texas’ public information law.
WWE has a practice of receiving site fees from government entities for major events. For instance, WWE received over $1.5 million in subsidies from the Puerto Rico government to host Backlash and SmackDown in the territory last year.
TKO’s Mark Shapiro also stated in December that WWE was receiving $16 million for events in Australia, which likely includes Elimination Chamber: Perth.
It is to be noted that the bidding contract is eligible for a records request because the Alamodome is owned and operated by San Antonio’s city government. Similarly, the contract between the city and WWE is a public record for the same reason.
WWE argues that the contract should be exempt from all public record requests as it contains trade secrets, which are described in the public information laws as (with some conditions) “all forms and types of information, including business, scientific, technical, economic, or engineering information, and any formula, design, prototype, pattern, plan, compilation, program device, program, code, device, method, technique, process, procedure, financial data, or list of actual or potential customers or suppliers, whether tangible or intangible and whether or however stored, compiled, or memorialized physically, electronically, graphically, photographically”.
WWE is seeking a judgment and injunction to prevent the release of the bidding contract.
WWE Senior Vice President of Communications Chris Legentil said in the suit,
“If this information was made publicly available and Brandon Thurston was permitted to publicize our financial information and negotiated terms on Wrestlenomics, WWE would lose our bargaining power in negotiating all of our live events and much of the value of a bidding process for venues.”
