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Pastimes : Professional Wrestling, WWF and WCW Stocks -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: MoneyBaggs who wrote (41)	5/24/1999 9:36:00 PM
From: Jonathan Lebed	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 48

Buy this stock or else--pro wrestling may go public NEW YORK, May 20 (Reuters) - Now that the World Wrestling Federation has seized a statehouse with Minnesota Gov. Jesse "The Body" Ventura, it is heading for Wall Street with a possible initial public offering. World Wrestling Federation owner Vince McMahon is planning to take the company public in a deal expected to put a value on WWF of at least $750 million, according to a report in Daily Variety. WWF is understood to have hired Bear Stearns as lead underwriter on the stock offering. Bear Stearns declined to comment and a WWF official was not immediately available. WWF, a unit of privately held Titan Sports Inc., competes against Time Warner Inc.'s <TWX.N> WCW. McMahon is the owner of the business, which includes magazines, the Internet site wwf.com and licenses for a variety of toys and video games. The World Wrestling Federation started out as a regional outfit based in the Northeast, owned by McMahon's father. McMahon hitched pro wrestling to cable television, which gave him a national platform. He bought Capitol Wrestling Corp. from his father in 1982. Pro wrestling combines soap opera-like plots that hook viewers every week, the slapstick of "The Three Stooges," the pumped up physiques of bodybuilding, and sex appeal of stars like former woman's champion Sable, who has recently posed in Playboy magazine. This mix has managed to keep professional wrestling in the top viewership ratings in cable television, particularly among men and boys. The TV popularity builds up pay-per-view television events and helps sell out athletic arenas across the country. Wrestling has evolved in the past 20 years away from straightforward narratives about battles between good guys and bad guys and "shaved head matches," where the loser gets his head shaved. Presently, story lines involve "casket matches" where the loser gets thrown into a coffin and new antiheros like Stone Cold Steve Austin, who often guzzles a beer in the ring. McMahon has become one of the WWF's stars, first as a commentator conducting interviews with the wrestlers and later as "Mr. McMahon," a corporate boss that surrounds himself with wrestlers as his bodyguards. McMahon has managed to bring his family into the act, creating story lines about struggles over control of the business. Shane McMahon, his son who has aligned himself with the Undertaker, formed the evil Corporate Ministry which is trying to take control of the company from his father. The Corporate Ministry was behind the kidnapping of Shane's sister, Stephanie. "It is probably a good time (for an IPO). The popularity of WWF is at a peak," said Steven Tuen, an analyst at IPO Value Monitor. However, he noted that, historically, buying into a sports franchise has not been profitable. But then again, wrestling is technically not a sport. 19:52 05-20-99