McMahon discusses competition, MMA as a competitor?

As part of Bloomberg TV's "Enterprise" series, WWE's business model was profiled Wednesday night in a set of interviews with CEO Vince McMahon, top executives Triple H and Stephanie McMahon, and CFO George Barrios.

Specifically related to WWE's business in the present and future, the following statements were made to Bloomberg's Melissa Long, who hosted the interviews.

-- When asked about competition, Vince McMahon quipped, "We have competitors?" He then added there's "no direct competitors. None." Asked a follow-up question about any historical competitors, McMahon said, "Ted Turner and Time-Warner couldn't compete with us with their vast resources.

"This is a unique business and a lot people who totally understand it understand the broader aspects of entertainment. We don't consider ourselves a wrestling company; we're an entertainment company. The basis of what we do is so unique, however, in terms of the characters we create and some of their differences are resolved in the ring in a physical way."

Asked if MMA is a competitor, McMahon offered his standard response about not seeing MMA as a competitor, then offered a fallacy-based statement that one is sport and one is entertainment, as if "sport" and "entertainment" are mutually exclusive.

"Mixed martial arts is not a competitor of ours at all," McMahon said. "They're a sport, we're entertainment. Two completely different points of views and philosophies."

-- WWE TV Network plans were discussed throughout the 30-minute feature on WWE. McMahon said, "It's something we've been thinking about for years, but now is the right time for us to roll it out and we'll roll it out next year."

Asked why it's the right timing, McMahon said, "Because of where we are programming-wise and popularity. And we just completed out first successful reality show (Tough Enough). There are so many different shows we're capable now of producing that we weren't before. We know how to capitalize on these personalities that would make up these television shows."

WWE CFO George Barrios added his thoughts on the Network being a "game-changing" development for WWE, which is similar to what he said in WWE's previous conference call with investors.

"We've talked for over a year on possibility of WWE TV Network," Barrios added before discussing why it's taken that long to get the Network off the ground. "There's a lot of complexity and stakeholders. There are the networks themselves, potential other content providers, and then there's internal work that needs to be done."