WWE Hall of Famer and former WCW President Eric Bischoff took to an episode of his Strictly Business podcast, where he talked about a number of topics including the challenges of AEW holding their Worlds End PPV Event on December 30th.
Bischoff said, “It’s a tough time. You know, it’s going to be interesting to see how that unfolds. First of all, you know, success in terms of ticket sales for big venues aside from Wembley. But here, domestically in the United States has not been a pretty picture. So Nassau Coliseum is a big building. I’ll be really interested to see how well they do with tickets in that building. It was an interesting choice, but as far as the time of year goes, it’s tough, man. There’s so much going on. You’re coming right off of Christmas. The economy is not good. People spend a lot of money over the holidays between travel and obviously, you know, purchasing gifts and all the things that go along with the holidays. And then you’ve got New Year’s Eve right there coming up. And it’s just it’s all the competition that’s available. So it’s going to be an interesting experiment. And you know this is now their eighth pay per view I believe. Yes. Eighth pay-per-view. That’s and I’m really fascinated with what impact that’s going to have on the television product because adding and looking, I was the first one to do it. I went from four to 6 to 8 to 10 to 12 in a very short period of time. And I did it because that was the only real revenue stream that I had 100% control of, and I needed to make the money for WCW. My goal, my goal, my mandate from above was to turn this thing around and make it profitable, or we’re going to pull the plug. And the only thing I could do was increase the number of pay-per-views. And subsequently, WWE followed in that path and started doing the same thing I was doing. But that also puts more pressure on your television. Because a pay-per-view, when you only have four of them a year, they’re there. They’re an event all by itself, in and of itself. The fact that you’re doing a pay-per-view makes it an event, and you don’t have quite as much pressure on your storylines and your arcs and your character evolutions within those arcs. You’re simply putting on a big event, and people get excited about the prospect to a degree. But as you add more pay-per-views, it becomes increasingly difficult when you don’t have. Disciplined, structured story and build arcs leading to those pay-per-views. If your stories are random and inconsistent, and they’re not structured properly, and you’re not building to a crescendo right around the time of that pay-per-view, and you’re adding more and more pay-per-views you’re going to see. You’re going to see an impact on the television show. The question is whether or not it’s going to be positive. Evolution of the creative for television, or if it’s going to be the same kind of random. It’s the kind of storytelling that we’ve seen over the last couple of years. Yeah. See, maybe, maybe this pressure will force them to start thinking differently about how they approach story and creativity.”
You can check out the complete podcast in the video below.
