WWE Hall of Famer and former WCW President Eric Bischoff recently took to his "the 83 Weeks" Podcast, where he talked about what the most important unit of measurement is today to know if a pro wrestling company is or has been successful. According to Bischoff, there is only one thing that matters at the end of the day and it’s not any key demographic or ratings, but how much dollars the company has made or brought in.
Eric Bischoff said:
“Dollars, that’s it.” “It’s just dollars. Everything else is incremental measurements that may suggest or indicate some level of performance or lack thereof. What f***ing difference does it make if you’re dominating 18-49-year-old demos but nobody is buying your ads, who cares? It all comes down to dollars, there’s only one metric. There’s only one measurement that at the end of the day actually matters and that’s dollars.”
“Everything else is just entertainment value or public relations value, or more than anything, it’s clickbait for the online wrestling community to create an engagement and discussion of something that most people who are discussing it have no f***ing clue what they’re talking about. If you’re growing your revenue and growing your profit margin, that’s what it’s all about. All those other little metrics, which is a fun word to use now, that you can use and analyze are nothing more than a little road map to get you to the real road map which is dollars.”
Eric Bischoff also talked about if AEW is hoarding talent that WWE has been releasing similar to what the WCW did in the past.
Eric Bischoff said:
“I don’t know Tony Khan well enough, but let’s talk about history a little bit.” “One of the biggest criticisms that I got from the dirt sheet community was ‘he’s signed too many WWE guys. Got too many people on the roster. Not letting the young talent get a shot because it’s bloated with ex-WWE guys.’ Okay, guess what? Some of that was true and some of that I deserved. Is history repeating itself? I don’t know, maybe? Maybe not? We don’t know what AEW’s strategies are, we don’t know what their plans for growth are… That being said, if there is no strategy and if you’re simply loading up your roster for the sake of building a big roster because having a big roster is your measure of success, then yeah there’s a chance it could backfire.”
“You bring in all these people, it’s great but guess what all those people want? Put money aside, they want to be on television, they want to perform, and live their dream of performing in front of a live audience in a meaningful way. That’s what drives them, that was their dream and reason for getting into the entertainment business, specifically professional wrestling. So if you’re just loading up a roster to say, ‘I’ve got one of the best rosters in the business,’ big f***ing deal. If you’re not using those people to the extent that they feel like they’re getting their part of that dream, then ultimately, you can have a challenge and that challenge can become malignant and dangerous. We don’t know, do we? Let’s see what the future holds. Ask me a year from now, we’ll have a better idea.”
You can check out Eric Bischoff's full comments at this link. H/T to Wrestling Inc. for transcribing the above quotes.
