Credit: Marc Middleton
We noted a few weeks ago, via The Wrestling Observer Newsletter, that WWE’s VP of Venue Merchandising & Operations Alan Rebhun was let go after WrestleMania XXX due to major concessions problems at the event in New Orleans, including a large sum of money that went missing at the end of the weekend.
New details were provided to me last week and apparently what happened during WrestleMania XXX weekend was just a small part of WWE’s concessions problems while Rebhun was working for the company.
The company Rebhun hired to do concessions at WrestleMania XXX was Alan Fey’s Gameday. Fey was previously responsible for the bankruptcy of another similar company named XP Events back in 2010. We noted that the concessions contract was signed off on by “WWE officials higher than Rebhun” but he kept the Fey connection a secret beforehand. When WWE executive Rich Hering and WWE’s legal team found out about this, they looked for the signed concessions contract and found that Rebhun had written & signed a contract with Fey without WWE’s knowledge or without the contract being written by WWE legal, which is against company protocol.
It was reported by The Observer that the concessions company contracted for WrestleMania had licenses for several NBA, NFL, NHL and MLB teams. Most of those team licenses were carryovers from XP Events after they were told, “if you want to get the money owed to you from our bankruptcy, you’ll need to sign Gameday.” The company was recently dropped by the Phoenix Suns, the Dallas Mavericks, Phoenix Coyotes, Dallas Stars and the Arizona Diamondbacks after all complained of poorly managed merchandise sales. Their reputation was known through the concessions industry and by Rebhun, but kept from WWE officials higher than Rebhun. Also, when people in WWE under Rebhun ran credit checks on Gameday, the results of those checks were squashed until WWE’s legal team ran their own checks.
Regarding a deposit being short $5,000, Hering demanded that all money earned at each WrestleMania XXX week event be immediately collected by company officials, namely Rebhun. This demand came after a heated argument between Rebhun and Hering. Usually trusted vending companies pay WWE within 21 days of an event but because of the situation, Hering wanted it collected immediately. Rebhun skipped the first night that he was supposed to collect the money and left the task to an inexperienced office accounting employee. When Fey gave the accounting employee the money, the accountant gave Fey a receipt for said amount of cash. However, when the money was officially counted it was $5,000 less than what Fey said was there. Because Fey had a receipt for what was “supposed” to be there, he claimed he knew nothing about being short $5,000.
Rebhun also hired a company that was a branch of a company called Countrywide. They were the company that took photos of fans in front of green screens and made it appear that they were posing with a WWE Superstar. This company owed WWE around $85,000 before WrestleMania XXX and were roughly 6 months late on payments. This was all covered up by Rebhun. WWE’s legal team investigated this matter and found that once again Rebhun wrote a contract without their knowledge. The main problem with that contract was the time period of when payment was due was written as “in a timely manner” instead of giving a specific deadline. Countrywide claimed that 6 months late on payment was a timely manner to them. WWE’s legal team ran credit checks on Countrywide and found that they did not fit into the levels of acceptance set by WWE.
We will have more details on Rebhun’s actions during WrestleMania XXX weekend later this week.
