During a news conference on Tuesday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) was asked to explain a bizarre move: Classifying professional wrestling as an “essential service,” thereby allowing World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) to continue to broadcast live shows from a facility near Orlando, despite the state’s stay-at-home order. His answer didn’t inspire confidence that good public health reasons underpinned the decision.

“Obviously, WWE, there’s no crowd of anything, so it’s a very small amount of people,” DeSantis said, overlooking that WWE announced last week that one staffer recently tested positive for Covid-19, and that putting others in a position where they feel obligated to travel to and from work at the live shows is a risky proposition.

DeSantis went on to make a case that WWE shows will help people who are currently “starved for content.”

“I think people are chomping at the bit,” he said. “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, like, reruns from the early 2000s, watching Tom Brady do the Super Bowl then, which is neat because he’s gonna be in Tampa and I think they have a chance to win a Super Bowl this year. But I think people, to be able to have some light at the tunnel, see that things may get back on a better course — I think from just a psychological perspective I think is a good thing.”

"People have been starved for content ... we're watching, like, reruns from the early 2000s," Gov. Ron DeSantis says of his bizarre decision to classify live pro wrestling shows as an "essential service" during a deadly pandemic pic.twitter.com/rWeCOJKkh2 — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 14, 2020

With over 21,600 confirmed Covid-19 cases and more than 570 deaths as of April 15, Florida is currently one of the nation’s coronavirus hot spots. DeSantis, a former Congress member whose zealous support of President Donald Trump was a key part of his successful 2018 gubernatorial campaign, didn’t help matters by refusing to implement a stay-at-home order until the late date of April 2 — after the virus had already had an opportunity to spread among spring breakers who flocked to the state in March.

DeSantis’s comments about wanting to make his state a welcoming place for a variety of sporting events even amid a pandemic reflects his priorities. But his move in particular to classify WWE as “essential” has the whiff of the swamp Trump talked about draining during his 2016 campaign.

DeSantis helped the McMahons on the same day that a super PAC run by Linda McMahon announced it’s pouring money into Florida

WWE is run by Vince McMahon, husband of Linda McMahon, who served in Trump’s cabinet as his small-business administrator from 2017 until 2019, when she became chair of the pro-Trump super PAC America First Action. After weeks of broadcasting taped shows, Vince quickly took advantage of the DeSantis administration’s April 9 memo classifying his business as “essential” by resuming live broadcasts on Monday night. The plan is to continue with them going forward.

While WWE performers are reportedly unhappy with the change of plans, having the ability to do live shows could be important to the company’s bottom line. As wrestling journalist Dave Meltzer has detailed, WWE has lucrative television deals that require almost all of its shows be broadcast live. DeSantis’s classification of the company as an essential service allows McMahon to avoid jeopardizing those agreements.

In a statement about the resumption, WWE didn’t allude to any financial motives, but instead claimed “[w]e believe it is now more important than ever to provide people with a diversion from these hard times ... [a]s a brand that has been woven into the fabric of society, WWE and its Superstars bring families together and deliver a sense of hope, determination and perseverance.” But there’s no reason WWE couldn’t deliver this “sense of hope” with the same sort of taped shows they’ve been broadcasting for the better part of a month.

The big losers are WWE staffers, who instead of riding out the coronavirus pandemic at home are now faced with having to travel to the Orlando area for live shows on Monday, Wednesday, and/or Friday.

I just heard this too, and a lot of the talent I've reached out to aren't happy about it. https://t.co/AAQn1UiqOg — Sean Ross Sapp of Fightful.com (@SeanRossSapp) April 11, 2020

While it’s true the events are taking place in empty arenas, wrestling obviously requires physical contact — and WWE hasn’t been careful about observing social distancing. One staffer has already tested positive for the virus.

But DeSantis may have had reasons for classifying WWE as “essential” that go beyond content starvation. On April 9, the same day DeSantis’s administration classified Vince McMahon’s business as an essential service, Linda McMahon’s pro-Trump super PAC announced it’ll be spending $18.5 million on advertising in Florida.

“America First is making the Florida and North Carolina reservations because we are confident we can secure inventory at the best possible rates in these crucial battleground states,” a statement from the super PAC said. “We will make further decisions in May.”

“We have to get our sports back”

Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings told reporters that while wrestling wasn’t exempted from the state’s original stay-at-home requirement, the change was made following “some conversation with the governor’s office regarding the governor’s order.” Police officials have even said they tried to shut down WWE’s taped shows before the April 9 memo, because they ran afoul of the state’s stay-at-home order.

It’s possible there is no connection between DeSantis’s classifying WWE as essential and America First Action’s huge Florida ad buy — but if DeSantis has other good reasons to greenlight WWE’s broadcasts, he certainly didn’t provide them during Tuesday’s news conference.

Then again, as is often the case, DeSantis appears to be on the same wavelength as Trump. Hours after his news conference, Trump did one of his own in which he echoed the same sentiments.

“We have to get our sports back,” Trump said. “I’m tired of watching baseball games that are 14 years old.”

Trump also announced that Vince McMahon will be part of a large group of business leaders who will be advising him about how to relax social distancing measures and get the economy back up and running again as soon as possible. But thanks to DeSantis, McMahon may not be feeling as much urgency about that as he did a week ago.

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