WWE’s lawyers wrote a letter to the Texas Attorney General asking the AG to approve withholding the Alamodome contract that would reveal details related to the site fee for Royal Rumble 2023 in San Antonio.
This is in response to my public records request to the Texas Governor’s office. WWE is already suing the Texas AG over its ruling in January in response to my request to the City of San Antonio that the contract must be released to Wrestlenomics.
WWE’s representatives from Holland & Knight LLP wrote a letter to the Texas AG’s Open Records Division Chief Tamara Smith, dated May 31. Texas’s public information law requires a copy of such third-party letters to be sent to the requestor (Sec. 552.305(d)). I received a copy on Monday evening, ten days after the letter was sent, due to an apparent oversight in which an email intended to reach me didn’t include my email address.
WWE is arguing the information in the contract is proprietary, a trade secret — the same exceptions it argued for why information related to Wrestlemania 38 in 2022 shouldn’t be released to me. But the San Antonio request, WWE says, qualifies for an extra exception: common law privacy which protects from publication information that is “intimate and embarrassing”.
Lawyers provided the following reason for why the contract isn’t of legitimate public concern: “The requestor in this case is interested only in uncovering WWE’s private information, not in pursuing transparency from a governing body.”
If the AG doesn’t find that the common law privacy applies, and the document is to be released, WWE asked that the proprietary information in the contract be redacted.
“However, in the alternative [if the AG rules common law privacy doesn’t apply], WWE proposes releasing a copy of the production with WWE’s confidential information redacted.” WWE’s attorneys wrote to the AG Open Records Division. “Redacting WWE’s specific proprietary information protects WWE’s interests as a private third-party while still providing the requestor with the documents he seeks.”
WWE articulated its reasons for why the Alamodome contract meets the common law privacy exemption.
“The terms represent crucial negotiated information that would expose WWE in future negotiations with other parties and reveal closely held financial information about a private company,” the company’s attorneys wrote.
WWE also noted that I didn’t intervene in the company’s lawsuit against the AG over the earlier ruling.
I sent a letter to Open Records Division Chief Tamara Smith on Tuesday which is embedded below, outlining my intentions and reasons why I believe it’s in the public interest for the information at issue to be published.
Despite WWE’s efforts to exempt these details from disclosure, citing trade secrets and proprietary information, the Texas Attorney General’s Office ruled in January that the information must be released and that WWE failed to provide sufficient evidence to demonstrate the contract met the exemptions raised, which sprung WWE’s lawsuit.
Contrary to the statement in WWE’s letter, I am interested in reporting on the details of WWE’s dealings with San Antonio and other government entities because it’s in the public interest. I’m interested in pursuing transparency to ensure taxpayers can assess if their money was well-spent and to aid future negotiations involving public funds for private events. WWE’s financial strength and strategy to secure site fees further cause a need for transparency to ensure fair pricing for WWE live event site fees and to prevent excessive charges to taxpayers.
Brandon Thurston has written about wrestling business since 2015. He’s also worked as an independent wrestler and trainer.
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