Anticipation is building as news regarding AEW’s TV deal is expected to drop soon. Early reports suggest that they are set to secure approximately $170 million annually over the next four years from Warner Bros. Discovery. With that, AEW would secure its position as the second most profitable wrestling company in history, trailing only behind WWE.
In the most recent episode of the “Wise Choices” podcast, Eric Bischoff discussed the potential television deal between AEW and WBD.
“People suggested, ‘Oh, this deal is going to make them profitable.’ How do we know that? Has anybody looked at AEW’s expenses? Does anybody know what the talent budget is for AEW? I’ve never seen that. Does anybody know how much it costs AEW to actually produce a show? I’ve never seen anybody talk about that. That’s called cost of goods. If you’re making birdhouses and you sell a birdhouse for 10 bucks, but you’ve got $20 worth of material in the birdhouse, it doesn’t matter if it’s the highest priced birdhouse in the farm and garden store, you’re still losing money. So until we have a legitimate picture of the profit and loss and expenses that are associated with producing a show, I’m not so quick to jump on the, ‘Oh, it’s going to make them profitable’ bandwagon. I think that’s just a lot of internet wrestling community hyperbole that everybody seems to just accept without ever wondering or asking the question, ‘But what about the expenses?’”
“I’m estimating, it’s just an estimate. I don’t have any inside information and I’m not suggesting that I’m right. I could be dead wrong, but based on my experience and based on what I do know and have heard anecdotally, I’d be shocked, pleasantly shocked, but shocked if the AEW talent budget isn’t close to or exceeds $100 million a year. Well, how do you account for that, because you can’t produce $170 million a year worth of television without talent. That’s a direct cost of goods. You have travel, cost of goods. You have arena rental, cost of goods. You’ve got a lot of expenses that go into producing a show. At 170 million a year, you’re looking at five hours a week. You’re probably somewhere in the neighborhood of about $600,000 an episode. Now, granted, some of the episodes are going to be more expensive to produce than others, just given the production value that I’ve seen so far.”
“Here’s what I do know. I do know over 20 years ago when I was producing Nitro for WCW and Turner Broadcasting, the physical cost of production, excluding talent, I’m not accounting for talent, just the physical cost of production, excluding airfare, excluding a lot of other things that go along with producing a show, just the physical cost of being there was in excess of $275,000 an episode. That’s 20 years ago. So that number is probably pretty close to $450,000 today, and that’s without talent, that’s without travel, that’s without insurance and that’s without a lot of other things. So $600,000 an episode sounds like a lot of money until you start loading expenses on top of it.”
“I hope they’re profitable. That would be great. It gives them breathing room to perhaps figure out how to actually produce a show and figure out what the audience really wants, because based on current performance and year over year, just black and white numbers, go to Wrestlenomics. You don’t have to believe me. They’re down a sh*t ton in terms of audience, like 25, 30, 38% in some cases, year over year. So you know, it’s good news because now they’ve got some time to figure things out, but it’s not like all of a sudden the shows are going to get better because they’ve got a new TV deal. So it’ll be interesting to see what happens over the next year or two years.”
You can check out the complete podcast below:
(h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription)
