Showbiz Stocks 2022: WWE Wins Wall Street Battle Royale As Disney, Others Bite The Dust
deadline.comU.S. stocks just wrapped their worst year since 2008 with media and tech leading the downward spiral. Streaming got messy, linear TV declined, a theatrical recovery sputtered, inflation, interest rates, unemployment and geopolitics turned ugly, recession jitters hit advertising, and M&A mostly ground to a halt.
When it didn’t, it probably should have (i.e., Elon Musk’s tortured $44 billion takeover of Twitter). “It’s a very complicated environment, and largely unprecedented,” said Moody’s SVP Neil Begley.
The SmackDown did have a winner: Sports entertainment engine WWE ended the year with a gain of 38%. The runner up — big broadcaster and new CW owner Nexstar, which rose 16%.
These were rare exceptions in a year of carnage for players big and small across all areas of entertainment. Disney, the only media stock in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, down 44%, didn’t just have a bad year, it had its worst year since 1974.
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