WrestleMania in London is a nice idea.
But how will the actual execution of the idea play out?
Eric Bischoff focused on this, and the difficulties WWE may face in doing so, during the latest installment of his “Strictly Business” podcast.
“I certainly could see it happening,” he said. “I can’t imagine what the staff, the team over at WWE are thinking in terms of having to produce a WrestleMania overseas. The logistics are tough. You have all the travel involved, you’re working with a lot of vendors you’ve never worked with before.”
Bischoff continued, “When it happens, it’s going to be a big challenge and of course you have the obvious one right, you want to be in prime time. You want to make sure that the live event is available to the largest sector of your audience, which is the domestic U.S, so they can watch it live and not have to stay up until 2 o’clock in the morning in order to do it. That’s the biggest issue, and again the costs. Everything is more expensive when you do it overseas, the logistics side of that… I wouldn’t want to be on that team, let’s put it that way.”
He would go on to talk about how he has seen the “dead” stare in workers eyes backstage at WrestleMania events, and he can’t imagine the added stress of presenting the annual classic from an international destination will add.
“I’d go to WrestleMania and I’d be backstage, and they would ask me to do something on camera. But, if you’re backstage the day before or two days before WrestleMania and you look at the eyes of the people that are there to work, whether it’s the production team or the logistics, by the second day they’re like the walking dead. So adding the stress of doing it internationally on top of that, mind boggling to me. But again, there are some seasoned vets there. They’ve been doing it in Saudi Arabia, but it’s not as big in scope as WrestleMania. That’s a different animal.”
Check out the complete podcast at Spotify.com. H/T to Fightful.com for transcribing the above quotes.
