A US judge rejected World Wrestling Entertainment’s effort to dismiss a Major League Wrestling’s antitrust lawsuit that accused it of monopolizing the marketplace for skilled wrestling media rights.
In a choice on Thursday, US District Judge Edward Davila in San Jose, Calif., said MLW Media had presented enough “circumstantial” evidence that WWE uses its dominance to maintain rivals from accessing various distributors and arenas.
MLW said Stamford, Conn.-based WWE commands about 92% of revenue from US media rights for professional wrestling, versus 6% for All Elite Wrestling and lower than 2% for everybody else.
The Mamaroneck, NY-based plaintiff also cited WWE’s exclusive rights agreements with Fox and Comcast’s NBCUniversal, which run major cable networks, and said WWE blocks rivals from NBC’s streaming platform Peacock.
MLW sufficiently alleged that WWE’s activities “had a considerable effect in foreclosing competitors from the skilled wrestling media rights market,” Davila wrote.
WWE and its lawyers didn’t immediately respond on Friday to requests for comment.
Marc Kasowitz, a lawyer for MLW, in an announcement said the corporate looked forward to recovering “substantial” damages for WWE’s “a few years of egregious anticompetitive behavior.”
The lawsuit began in January 2022.
In looking for a dismissal, WWE had said wrestling promoters “have all of the tools needed to succeed” and that MLW could join with other channels and platforms, including those run by Amazon, CBS, Disney, Netflix and Warner Bros Discovery.
