Jim Cornette Discusses the Evolution of Wrestling Over the Past 70 Years

On his Jim Cornette Experience, Jim Cornette recently shared his thoughts on a variety of topics.

During the podcast, Cornette examined the business over seven decades and discussed the key changes, particularly in terms of revenue:

“Well, somebody was just saying that, you know, these numbers are getting up to the point where if, you know, Bill’s network is going to pay a billion dollars to some organization to carry their programming for three or four years, and they can buy the organization and own everything forward and backward for three or four times that why the f*ck not, at this point. These numbers are insane.

“I was talking to a media person the other day, who is a younger person and had no idea that television stations didn’t pay wrestling promotions in the territory days anything. Well, you know, Memphis got 1500 bucks a week and the production in the studio. Most promotions didn’t get paid, they didn’t get paid since back in the days of network television in the early 50s. So that was non-existent, they subsisted on ticket sales, merchandising was nil.

“Now it’s completely reversed, where you get more money from the television stations, networks than you do for anything else. And there’s fewer people than ever buying tickets, but they spend more on merchandise per head. So it’s completely turned upside down.”

(h/t to TJRWrestling for the transcription)