Last year, before Endeavor’s acquisition of WWE was finalized and TKO Group launched, a report came out that WWE was talking to officials in a few states about legalizing gambling on its matches. You know, the ones with scripted outcomes that the company has long called “sports entertainment”.

The reaction, both internally and from state regulators, was that this was a dumb and bad idea. But with sports leagues of all shapes & sizes making money hand over fist partnering with sports books like DraftKings and FanDuel, it’s understandable WWE officials would investigate gambling as a potential revenue stream.

But while that investigation got far enough along that WWE was said to have hired the accounting firm Ernst & Young to secure match results a la Hollywood’s Academy Awards, it didn’t go much further. In his interview with CNBC this week, TKO Chief Operating Officer Mark Shapiro told Alex Sherman that they’ve realized it just doesn’t work for WWE’s business model:

“It’s not happening. We’re not doing that. We’re scripted. Years ago, I ran Dick Clark Productions. We had enough of a challenge keeping the American Music Awards and the Golden Globe Award winners under wraps with an auditor that was there. We’re not going to be asking Triple H/Paul Levesque, who runs our creative, to keep his scripts so under wraps that we can start sports betting. It just doesn’t jive.”

It’s nice when sanity prevails.

Of course, you can still make small value wagers on WWE matches and props at offshore betting sites. But those are proof that gambling on pro wrestling is an untenable idea, as close to show time — when plans are finalized and shared interally — money tends to come in on the performers who are scripted to win their matches.