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Florida Governor on Granting WWE ‘Essential Business’ Status, Wants to See Sports & Events Return

April 14, 2020 | Posted by Jeremy Thomas
Ron DeSantis State of Florida official portrait of governor Ron DeSantis

Much has been made about WWE being granted “essential business” status by the state of Florida, and governor Ron DeSantis discussed why in his latest press briefing. As previously reported, WWE was deemed an essential business on April 9th which allowed it to continue operating in the face of DeSantis’ stay-at-home Executive Order. The move has drawn considerable attention, especially when it was reported today that the Linda McMahon-run Trump super PAC pledged to commit $18.5 million in spending to the state on the same day.

When asked about the classification, DeSantis said it was being done on a “case-by-case basis” and talked about how he would like to see more sports and events open up if it can be done safely. His comments and the full video are below:

On WWE being granted an ability to operate as an essential business: “So as people — you know, Disney asked to have some of the gardening people be able to go, because they have all of the millions of dollars worth of stuff there and it would just go bad, and then we said, ‘Okay, is there going to be social distancing?’ ‘Yeah, people are gonna go out, work themselves.’ Obviously, WWE there’s no crowd or anything so it’s a very, very small number of people. So we just kind of look at it on a case-by-case basis. We haven’t had a huge amount of requests, I mean. So I think a lot of this will just be, you know, what do we look like in May with some of this, rather than being able to do stuff now.”

On wanting to see sports and events return: “The one thing though I do support is, I think that we do need to support like, content. Especially like sports and events. And we’re not gonna have crowds there; I get that. But if we can do like, if NASCAR does a race and can televise it without having large crowds, I think that’s a good thing. I’d like to see Woods and Mickelson do the golf or whatever. Because that’s social distance. You wouldn’t have a gallery there, you wouldn’t have crowds. But to put that on TV, I think people have been starved for content.

“I mean, we haven’t had a lot of new content since the beginning of March. Here we are the middle of April and if people are, you know, being told to stay closer to the house, it sure does help to have some fresh things to be able to do. And I think people are chomping at the bit. I mean, if you think about it, we’ve never had a period like this in modern American history where you’ve had such little new content, particularly in the sporting realm. I mean, people are watching — we’re watching reruns from the early 2000s, watching Tom Brady do the Super Bowl then … but I think people, to be able to have some light at the end of the tunnel, see that things may make it back on a better course. I think from just a psychological perspective I think, it’s a good thing.”

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit NBC 6 South Florida with a h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription.

article topics :

WWE, Jeremy Thomas