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 how one of the greatest things about the wrestling product is the loyalty of the fans as whichever station or network a company ends up the audience will always find them.
Bischoff said, “One of the great things about the wrestling product, whatever company, your audience will find you. The wrestling audience I think, and I’m not really an expert in this because I’ve never sat down with people that are and read the research, but just have been around shit for a while. I know the NFL has an amazing fanbase, Nascar has a very loyal — I think the Nascar fanbase, in terms of real loyalty is probably more loyal than most NFL fans. Where as Nascar fans are just, they’re addicted to the legend. They get caught up in all of the drive emotions, but I think the Nascar audience, having been around it — I sponsored a Busch car, Kyle Petty for god sakes. I’ve been around it enough, and if I compare a wrestling audience that I’ve been around a couple of times to a Nascar audience where I was in the pits so to speak, I would say the Nascar Audience is almost as loyal as the wrestling audience. I compare the two because I’ve been there and done it. So when a wrestling, whether it’s WWE or AEW, if AEW moves to another network, every single one of the 845,000 average weekly viewers of Dynamite will absolutely know where it’s going and will absolutely follow them, provided that the cable outlet or whatever they’re on is available to them. If not, they’ll seek that out and download or subscribe to it. I don’t think it’s gonna have that big of an effect at all.”
You can check out the complete podcast below.
(H/T to Fightful for transcribing the above quotes)