WWE Hall of Famer and former WCW President Eric Bischoff took to an episode of his 83 Weeks podcast, where he talked about a number of topics including WWE’s decision to book fewer matches at their Premium Live Events.
Bischoff said, “It is a shift. It could be an experiment. You know, you can’t keep doing the same thing year after year after year, week after week after week, month after month after month. You have to try and mix things up to see what fits better and how the audiences evolve because the audiences do evolve and their desires and expectations evolve over time. Perhaps we’re going to see a scenario where you’re going to get more and shorter matches on television, but take your top matches and give them time to tell a great story or two to further a great story that you’re getting bits and pieces of it on TV. Still, now you’re going to get the theater version, if you will, on pay-per-view, or whatever they’re called. I can’t keep track, but I like it. It could be an experiment, or it could be how we’re going to do things in the future. We’ll find out. I think a lot of it, too, has to do with the talent that you’re focusing on. Not everybody can go out there and have a high level. A 20-minute match that really tells a, you know, you guys are physically capable of going out there and wrestling for 20 minutes. That is not the same thing as telling an amazing story over 20 minutes physically. So I don’t know. We’ll see. I like it. I like the idea of it. Audience fatigue is an issue. And I think sometimes cramming too much into longer three and four-hour pay per views. The audience just gets tired by the time of it. You’re just emotionally, even if it’s great, you’re kind of spent. And by the time you get to the good stuff, you’ve already burned up a lot of emotion and energy over the course of two and a half or three hours. So this might be a way to make people feel like they’re actually getting more for the money, even though they’re getting less matches.”
You can check out Bischoff’s complete podcast below.
