83 Weeks with Eric Bischoff - Strictly Business #11: Brian Bedol

Episode Date: January 20, 2023

This week on Strictly business Eric and Jon are joined by Brian Bedol Brian Bedol is an American entrepreneur and media executive. He is the founder and CEO of Bedrocket Media Ventures, a digital media company that acquires, develops, and distributes content across various platforms. Bedol is also the co-founder of Classic Sports Network, which was later rebranded as ESPN Classic. He was ALSO the founder and CEO of Fusient Media Ventures, a sports and entertainment company that was trying to purchase WCW in 2001. Special thanks to this week's sponsor! Jimmy's Seafood-Free 2-day nationwide shipping on orders over $125 (excluding steamed crabs and fresh items) use the promo code: WRESTLEBIZ FOLLOW ALL OF OUR SOCIAL MEDIA at https://83weekslinks.com/ Stop throwing your money on rent! Get into a house with NO MONEY DOWN and roughly the same monthly payment at SaveWithConrad.com Get early, ad-free access to more than a dozen of your favorite wrestling podcasts, starting at just $9 over on AdFreeShows.com. That's less than 15 cents an episode each month! You can also listen to them directly through Apple Podcasts or your other regular podcast apps! AdFreeShows.com also has thousands of hours worth of bonus content including popular series like Title Chase, Eric Fires Back, Conversations with Conrad, Mike Chioda's Mailbag, and many more! Plus, live, interactive virtual chats with your favorite podcasts hosts and wrestling legends. All that and much more! Sign up today at AdFreeShows.com! Get all of your Strictly Business merchandise at https://boxofgimmicks.com/collections/83-weeks Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How's it going, everyone? It's time for another edition of Strictly Business with Eric Bischoff, presented to you exclusively by the podcast, Heat Network, and ad-free shows.com. I, of course, am John Alba, joined as I am every single week here on Strictly Business with the man of the hour himself, Mr. Eric Bischoff. Eric, we are a day late on this, but I think with the amount of efforts that we've put in with the previous few episodes, I think we earned a little bit of a mulligan on this one. Wouldn't you agree with that? Well, of course, but not only that, we've got a really special guest that I'm really excited about. And we're going to try to keep this show to under an hour today. And I'm just going to get right into it. Let's do it. Brian Bidall first met Brian and his partner, Steve Greenberg, back when Fusion Media Ventures, the company was attempting to acquire WCW from Turner Broadcasting. And what an amazing experience that was.

And I, you know, I couldn't wait to get Brian on strictly business because I can't think of anybody better that I know that I could call to talk about what's going on in the world of media today. Brian created in his partner created the Classic Sports Network, Classic Sports TV sold them to ESPN, CBS, and went on to do any number of things in the media space. So without any further delay, Brian, how in the heck are you? I'm doing great. It's great to see you, Eric. It's been a long time. It's been too long. I mentioned right before we went on the air here on the stream that I actually had to get out a calculator to figure out how long it's been i couldn't do the math my head you haven't changed a bit well you think you you'd be surprised well brian with your background um you know i

kind of gave everybody a brief review of it but i just touched on it um you got classic sports network when when did you and your partner steve wake up one day and go hey you know what if we out and got a bunch of sports content that nobody's doing anything with, we could create our television network. How do that happen? You know, I was, I had worked at MTV and then went over and was working and programming at Nickelodeon and was assigned to be part of the team that was figuring out what to do when Nickelodeon went 24 hours. And so that became Nick at night. And, uh, You know, as we were building Nick at Night, you know, MTV was famous for having its environmental experience. It was sort of the first TV network that was a place, not just a bunch of shows.

We tried to do the same thing with Nickelodeon with Nick at night. And as we were building Nick at night, we said, let's, you know, go and have some old commercials and old interviews. And I kept pitching the idea of having old sporting events on Nick at Night. And the powers it be said, I like the old commercials. I like the old interviews, but who wants to watch used sports? And so, you know, I realized that that was never, so Nick and Knight went, got going. I went and I worked for a couple of years. And it, you know, kept thinking as Nick at Night became successful, I kept thinking about, you know,

there should be, you know, a Nick at Night of Sports. I was actually on an airplane, I was working on the management team of Six Flags at the time, going out to visit Magic Mountain in L.A. And the old Olympic documentary, 16 Days of Glory, was showing on the plane. And I don't know if you remember it, but, you know, it was, I think Bud Greenspan was a producer. You know, bald guy used to put his, you know, glasses up on his forehead when he was on the Tonight Show. So you're right there. You guys are good.

And, you know, as the film ended, I looked around the cabin and there wasn't a dry eye in the airplane. Everybody had tears streaming on their face, myself included. You know, I just said to myself, I said, this used sports thing isn't so bad. And, you know, so really the Genesis was a naked night of sports. And what about the process? When you guys decided, okay, we're going to go out in license this footage that nobody thought had any value. How did you, like, where does that begin? How do you go about that?

Well, you know, a lot of, I went in a lot of circles and through, you know, knocked on a lot of doors that wouldn't open. I think I, you know, had diluted myself into thinking that it would be sort of easy when we actually, at six flags, we stayed. something I think called the Sports Illustrated Sports Festival where we licensed a whole bunch of old sports rights from the major leagues. And I think, you know, in my head, I was almost piloting classic sports. And I built some relationships at the leagues and thought, you know, I can just go back to the same people and rent, you know, and license a whole library. And it turned out it wasn't so easy. And, you know, the breakthrough for me was I was looking for a sports rights attorney and a mutual friend introduced me to Steve Greenberg, who, you know, I wasn't

wanted to do a lot of research. I didn't know at the time that his dad was Hank Greenberg and he was the deputy commissioner of baseball. I thought he was an attorney, took him to lunch. He basically said, you know, how can I help you? I said, I'm looking for a sports rights attorney. He said, I'm a reformed attorney. I'm not an attorney. But, you know, we'll go Dutch and tell me what you want. And by the end of that lunch, he was answering, he was, he was, you know, finish, we were finishing each other's sentences. I realized how much more he knew about what we needed to do than I knew. And I was the one who would put it together. And I went home and said to my wife, you know, I had lunch today with his guy who would be the perfect partner. And she said,

I didn't know that you were looking for a partner. And I didn't, I said, I didn't know how badly I needed a partner. That's awesome. You know, and he was, he had all the, you know, because of his stature and his, you know, relationships with the sports leagues. And he was in the process of leaving Major League Baseball. The strike was starting. And he was going to go run the Mets. I convinced him to work with me for a couple of months until the strike was over.

And by then he was hooked. So, you know, I got very lucky. Brian, what I recognize here is you saw that there was a desire for nostalgia content. And I feel like that's something that is very hot in today's television climate. Nostalgia is a huge thing. It's a huge element of professional wrestling, which our show is ultimately based around. Why did you figure that nostalgia would be something that there would be serious stutors for or that there would be an audience for? Well, you know, it's a great question. I would say that, you know, at the heart of it was that experience on the airplane and just looking

at the emotional impact it had in sports at the time, you know, other than, you know, an occasional clip or a rain delay that would have an old game or an NFL film that was on Sunday morning. The only way you could really get your feel of that goose bump inducing nostalgia was at a Hall of Fame. And I grew up in Cleveland and used to go to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. And, yeah, I just, I loved it. And, you know, when, And, you know, so from the, the emotional aspect, it was all about storytelling and sports at the time was about the live game. And, you know, you didn't have to look far to see the success of, you know, things like Turner Classic movies and American Movie Classics and Nick at night. And so, you know, I just, you know, said to myself that, you know, the two key drivers on the business side of the growth of cable at the time were movies and sports.

sports, if there were all of these nostalgic movie channels, why shouldn't there be, you know, what we then positioned as a Hall of Fame in your living room? And it was really about just capturing those, those goosebumps moments. Man, that's fascinating. And after a period of time, you launch your own classic sports network, correct? You launch your own channel. We launched our own channel. You know, we thought it would be easy and everything else. You know, I think, you know, when I said to my wife that I was going to do it, you know, we didn't have a lot of money in the bank at the time. We had a new baby. And, you know, I think I, you know, said if it's not, you know, we're not on the air in six months, I'll go get a real job.

And I think I got six-month renewals for about two and a half years. And, you know, but ultimately, you know, it really. It was funny because our customer was a cable operator. If you think about it, our customer wasn't the consumer. It wasn't the sports fan. It was a cable operator. The cable operator was a gatekeeper that would then take it to the consumer. So it wasn't about ratings.

It was about convincing the cable operators that this was a network that would appeal within the context of their lineup. And, you know, I wouldn't say it was an easy sell because, you know, they weren't looking for more channels. And, you know, they again, sort of looked at it as who wants to see a game that you already know the score of. But we had a really great sales video and we would show it to the cable operators and they'd get goosebumps. And, you know, the response was often, well, I'd watch it all the time. But I don't know if my customers were, would. We had to say, well, you are your customer. If you would watch it all the time, maybe your customers would too.

And from the business side, it was really, you know, I hate to say it, but, you know, what we were selling was cheap sports. You know, at the time, ESPN was probably 75 cents or a dollar, a subscriber. And I think we started at a nickel or 10 cents. So, you know, our pitch was, you know, how could you say no to Muhammad Ali and Joe Namath and, you know, all of the great legends of Ted Williams, all of the great legends of sports for 10% of what you're paying for the other stuff. And so it was really, you know, in many ways it was filling out their lineup in a cost effective way and something that, you know, we were able to leverage very well

promotionally because we could get, you know, these legends to show up for autograph signings and other promotional appearances. So it was really, in many ways, a marketing vehicle for the cable operators as much as, if not more, than thinking it was going to get ratings. That's so brilliant. And we could talk about an hour, at least, about the transition from classic sports to ESPN and then similarly CBS. But I really do want to shift gears here.

kind of dig into a little bit from your perspective and your experience, what's going on with WWE. Have you had a chance to follow what's going on very closely? You know, I would say as a student of media and as student of business, I've followed it. And, you know, as your listeners probably know, you and I tried to buy WCW, you know, many years ago. So, You know, I grew up as, you know, Bruno San Martino is a huge fan of wrestling when I was a kid. And when you approached me about WCW, you know, as crazy as it seemed, I just, you know, was so excited about it. And so I think, you know, it's one of those things that while I don't actively follow, you know, haven't been following WWE over the last, you know, five or ten years, I certainly have been a way. of the ups and downs of the business,

the growth of UFC, an MMA, and what's, I would say, broadly going on with the situation right now. But there would have to be some kind of a deal between us and Jimmy's seafoods because there is no better seafood in the world than Jimmy's famous. I mean, effing famous seafood.

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I've had family members take advantage. of this deal. It was absolutely fantastic. I even got to get in on some of the fun, which always benefits me in a good way. So wrestle biz, W-R-E-S-T-L-E-B-I-Z. Just plug that code in at Jimmy's Famous Seafood.com and take care of yourself. Eat good. I promise you it will be worth your time. And we thank Jimmy's Famous Seafood for sponsoring strictly business every single week. So as someone who's, as you just mentioned, you're in tune with the general media landscape as far as those types of entities are concerned. What do you think is the appeal for a potential buyer or a potential media rights partner

with a company like WWE? Well, you know, I would say that it's related to the explosion and the value of sports rights globally. And that is with all of the fragmentation and all of the choice on streaming and the elimination of gatekeepers in many ways and just the ubiquity of choice that that WWE and you know sports in general are sort of you know the the last battleground and the last way that traditional media even even emerging media companies are guaranteed of growing of delivering a big audience at a single time.

You know, Netflix may deliver, you know, enormous audiences, but it's not everyone watching at the same time like you have with live sports. So it's really, you know, the last of water cooler style programming. Hey, guys, Double J. Jeff Jarrett. Need to call a timeout real quick here. I wanted to tell your listeners what I've been telling, world listeners for a while now. It's about all the incredible things happening over on

at-free shows.com. We're joined by wrestling royalty as David Crockett takes us month by month through Jim Crockett promotions booking logs. David and Conrad dive into the towns, matches and money of JCP in January 1985 on the book. Charlotte is really the home of Jim Crockett promotions, is it not? It is. Yes. It's the home. The thing is, the Greensboro, was always the home of Starcade. And, you know, the bigger matches we would take to Greensboro. The main reason is over the whole area, we had more population and road systems going to Greensboro than we did Charlotte.

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I feel the same way. You know, I've met a lot of great people through here, and, you know, we all have something in common, and that's our love of wrestling and our inability to just let it go. You know, we all have this sensational thirst and quest for more. and we want to learn more and be more involved. And I think it's cool that we all really, for lack of a better word, share a passion like that. And as a result, man, we can have a lot of fun together.

Hey, that's just a small taste of what ad free shows has waiting for you, including a brand new perk, getting to join in on the live recordings of the shows with four levels to choose from see for yourself while ad free shows is the best value in wrestling today. sign up now at at freeshows.com that's right sign up today at at freeshows.com right when you were looking closely at wcw and the wrestling business in general as it relates to advertisers did you come across the kind of natural hesitation for advertising agencies when it comes to wrestling because while it's live and it brings all those benefits to it it's kind of a weird category unto itself you know it's not a sitcom but it kind of is it's not a sitcom but it's not

not sports, but it kind of is. It's not drama, but it kind of is. And that kind of is category is sometimes difficult for advertisers. Did you experience that? 20 years ago, absolutely. You know, I think that advertisers have, you know, maybe out of need become more liberal in the way they look at programming. I think that at first they couldn't get comfortable with MMA. And I think you see a lot of advertisers now who realize that they need to be comfortable with what their audience is comfortable with. And, you know, listen, in the, you know, what I would describe is the tribal and politically volatile world that we live in today, something like wrestling is the least of advertisers' problems. So, you know, I've been.

It's, you know, when you look at the environment, it's so different and so, you know, just, just, you know, full of, of real conflict, not scripted conflict, that, that, you know, something like, like, you know, WWE, in my opinion, is much easier to digest for a sponsor today than it would, than it was 20 years ago. With so many options, why choose Arizona State University? For me, the only online option was ASU because of the quality. Their faculty was really involved with their students and care about your personal journey. The dedication to my personal development from my professors, that's been extremely valuable to me. Earn your degree from the nation's most innovative university. Online. That's a degree better. Explore more than 350-plus undergraduate, graduate, and certificate programs at ASUonline.

www.asu.edu. All right, so let's get, and this is what our list is, including me, by the way, are really fascinated in right now, is we know that WWE is for sale. Assuming somebody comes along. I was hoping you were having beyond to say, should we buy it? You know, I almost as a joke about two weeks ago, when that news first, I kid you not, Brian, I almost sent you a text, but I was afraid. you know, because you lose humor in a text, right?

I was expecting one. Brian's going to get this text and he's going to think I'm serious. I don't want him to think I'm not. I was expecting you to write and say maybe they'll spin off WCW. There you go. I've had a couple people reach out and ask if that's possible. But in the process, how does one become a qualified bidder for a public company? What does that process look like?

It's not like buying a car of a Barrett-Jackson auto auction. You know, it's having very deep pockets yourself and access to capital. And, you know, I think that, you know, one of the smart things they did was hire Rain, the investment bank, who is as qualified as they get at a process like this. And, you know, so you hire the right. right, you know, seller's agent. It's like, you know, selling your home, you need to hire the right agent or else you aren't going to get the people walking in the door. You know, so, so Rain is, is the right seller's agent and they have relationships with, I would say, you know,

if not every single one of the most likely buyers, you know, 99 out of 100 of them. how does rain work with jp morgan um you know i can't tell you because i don't know the the details of and and by the way you may know something that i don't because i read that that w wwe had hired rain to represent them and are you saying that that j p morgan because i don't know what j p morgan's role is in the deal. Is there different information that J.P. Morgan is, is representing WWE? And John, correct me if I'm wrong here, but I think the initial press release identified WWE as being represented by JP Morgan. It's, as you can see there, producer Steve pulled it up. It's advisory during the course of the

sale. See if you can pull up anything about RAIN, R-A-I-N-E, because, you know, within the last few days, I remember seeing something that said that the W.W. had brought in rain. Does he see anything on that? Yeah, we read that one as well. And perhaps they're consulting together. Well, right. And perhaps, you know, when you've got a sale this size, so here's, here's rain. you know when you've got a you know five to ten billion dollar transaction you have multiple people working on it i would say that that you know again not knowing the roles of the individual firms in the deal you know i think that that rain has great experience at selling deals like this and access to capital obviously you know j p morgan does too

It may be that J.P. Morgan is advising the board, you know, there's a, you know, bit of a dance that goes on between, you know, especially in a complicated situation like this, between the deal that Vince wants might want to do and the deal that the quote unquote shareholders want to do because he's got this super majority vote. that gives him more control and to avoid shareholder lawsuits, my guess is, is that there will be a firm that brings in the buyer, and then there will be an independent analysis of the value of the bid. Okay. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah, that's fast. Okay, so it is almost like an intermediary in that sense.

And again, I don't know in this particular case. you know who's doing what but in a deal like this you know they're already you know we've already heard about i think it was a Detroit teachers that have said that they were the Detroit Teachers pension fund that said that they were going to sue you know i think that that you know a deal like this gets you know particularly complicated when you've got an active um chairman and CEO who is a super majority, has super majority vote, but minority ownership. One of the questions that I've been dying to ask someone like you is how unique is it? We're talking about the super majority voting shares.

How unique is it for someone to be able to initially, you know, take the company public, do an IPO. And then when you look under the hood, if you're an institutional investor, for example, how unique is it that you can have a, A shares, B shares being the voting shares, and you've got one guy that has the majority, there's a super majority shareholder. Is that unusual or not? You know, I would say that it isn't unique. It's not particularly common, but it's not uncommon. And especially in a situation where you've got a chairman and CEO who is so identifiable with a firm, often it's, you know, it happens in the case of a founder. So, for example, Mark Zuckerberg with Facebook, you know, has supermajority vote.

on what's now called meta. Warren Buffett has a supermajority vote on Berkshire Hathaway. So I think that it's not absolutely unheard of to have a well-known chairman who's very identified with a business, be able to negotiate or, or convince investors that he or she should have a super majority. And what's been so fascinating about this process, too, Brian, is that Vince, in order to acquire the position of the executive chair, once again, he's changed the bylaws multiple times that allowed him to take over that spot.

And I just want to, because you probably aren't necessarily familiar with the inner workings of this. So Vince is actually no longer the CEO as things stand. Nick Kahn is in fact the CEO. Oh, okay. And Nick is the, I mean, Vince is the chairman. And Vince is the executive chair. So. And that's interesting, too, because I've been waiting since I heard you were going to join us to ask you about Nick Con.

Because Nick Con is this just prolific figure in the sports media world, especially. And he's going to be an integral part of not just a potential sale, but also media rights negotiation. What kind of perspective from inside the industry from your perspective can you offer about Nick Con and what role he? could play in a situation like this. Well, you know, listen, I think he's done a great job with the asset. I think he's well respected. I think that he's viewed as a, you know, very smart business person. So, you know, I think that, you know, you've got the controversial background, especially, you know, I would say, you know, in recent history with,

Vince, this is a very interesting and complicated deal. And, you know, when I think that, you know, you're going to see lots of rumors, lots of ups and downs and lots of leaks along the way as to what's happening that may be true or may be misdirect. I mean, remember, these, you know, this company is, is better at scripting entertainment than any other, you know, than anybody maybe but Disney. And maybe in this area, they're better.

So I wouldn't be surprised to see the sale process have some twists and turns of the script in the same way. Fascinating. And Brian, you mentioned a few moments ago, the complexity of a deal like this. I know every situation is different, but just like from 33,000 feet looking down, what would you estimate the timeline would be

from someone like you to come in and put in a bid until you actually close the sale? What's a typical due diligence look like? Well, there are multiple pieces because it's not just due diligence. there also are anti-trust approval, governmental approvals. I mean, there are when you're a public company, really in any transaction, you have to get a series of approvals,

some that happen quickly and almost automatically, some that take time. But a deal like this needs to be disclosed. You're a public company, so you're really in service to the shareholders. And, you know, this is, you know, months, not days or weeks. Now, it doesn't mean that something doesn't get announced quickly. But, you know, it's, you know, a couple to many months until closing.

And, you know, this is going to be probably when you consider just sort of I remember when we looked at just WCW, you know, you've got so many contracts and you've got so many media rights deals and so forth that, you know, there will be teams of people working on this, but, you know, this isn't a simple deal to get closed in a couple of days. Hey, real quick, I want to give a shout out to James up in Stoneville, North Carolina. He's a friend of the show. Hell, he's a friend of the family now. We were able to go ahead and help his family recently save more than $1,200.

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What are you waiting for? Find out how much money you can save for free at save with conrad.com. What if, and this has been my bet, now I don't have any inside information. I don't hold a nickel's worth of WWE stock. This is just entertainment. me. I'm fascinated by it actually. Obsessed with it probably. Just a little bit. But my bet has been that Vince is going to take it private. Would that process be a faster process? Well, you still need to have the shareholders approve of price. So even if it goes private, you still have to go through

the process of this independent analysis, effectively a fairness analysis, that it's not just a good deal for Vince, but it's a good deal for the shareholders. And, you know, when that's where it gets really complicated with Vince holding the supermajority or the supermajority vote, is that what might be good for him might not be the best deal for the rest of the shareholders. So, you know, so, you know, it may be a little bit quicker, but not

much quicker. Interesting. So, Brian, when you factor in, and this kind of relates to what you were talking about with the classic stuff, too, that was all content-based. You were trying to market nostalgic content in the sports setting. When you throw in the fact that

WWE goes far beyond content and there's intellectual properties, there's characters. How much value does that add for a prospective bidder or someone negotiating a media rights deal? You know, I think that it adds a lot. You know, I think that, you know, the nature of a bidder for a property like this is, you know, especially when you're paying, you know, they're going to end up paying 20, 30% above today's stock price, I would imagine just, you know, that's the kind of premium a business like this would demand. And so, you know, I think that bidders are sitting around not saying how can we conduct business as usual, but rather how can we grow this business and what can we do with it that hasn't been done. And so they're looking at the

intellectual property, they're looking probably at, you know, what characters can we make movies out of? What characters can we make different kinds of TV shows out of, or, you know, conversations like that, which is not we're going to do this business as usual. It's if we're going to pay this much money, how do we squeeze more value out of it? And, you know, that's why, you know, and I, I don't, you know, doubt what you're saying, Eric, about Vince trying to put together a private deal to take it private. But as a public company, you know, they're required to evaluate or consider all bids or all legitimate bids. And if there is, you know, a media company somewhere in the world that is going to bid, you know, 10% higher than what Vince is going to bid to

take it private. It's hard for him not to match that price. So, you know, we'll be interesting to see what happens, you know, if that happens when the price is announced, if other bidders basically, you know, try to outbid him. One of the things that I learned last week, as I dug deep into the rabbit hole I've been in for a week, I was curious about who sets the terms and conditions of an acquisition. And I would have to assume, based on Vince's position and controlling stock and so forth, that it's really up to him and the board to set the terms and conditions. wouldn't the terms and conditions also affect what that stock is worth or what a potential deal is worth?

In other words, if Vince, let's say his, what we know of his personality is that he likes to be in control. It's kind of what got him to the dance, right? Can't be critical of it. But if the terms of conditions of that acquisition are such that it's just too difficult for a likely target, like Comcast. Do the people that ascertain the fairness of that deal for shareholders, do they take that into consideration? Do they have to take that into consideration? You know, I think that they generally are purely financially driven,

that a shareholder owns a share of stock that is worth X. and the board is obligated in a situation like this to take the best offer, the most valuable offer for the shares of stock. So where the terms and conditions come into the evaluation is if one bidder, is an all-cash bidder and another bidder is depending on raising $3 billion of debt, just using that as an example. The likelihood of closing the all-cash bidder is going to be greater than likely. So one could theoretically argue that an all-cash bid of, you know, you know, X is worth more than a cash in debt and a not yet committed debt bid of, you know, X plus one. So the terms and conditions are relevant there. But if, for example, Vince tries to make a condition of the deal, him being executive chairman, you know, that's where,

it gets really complicated in that, you know, he obviously as having the super majority vote can say no to a deal, but if a deal is demonstrably better by a bidder that, you know, may not want him to be the executive chairman, you get into some, you know, pretty touchy areas. But, you know, I think that you're going to end up seeing this be, you know, it's unlikely it's going to be an unfriendly deal. He's got so many relationships, so many media deals with so many companies. And I think there are so many different potential buyers in different scenarios that, you know, my guess is, is that even if it's just for the storyline that, they're going to want Vince to somehow remain involved. And so, you know, I think that the likelihood of an unfriendly bidder who tries to pry it away from a deal that Vince has negotiated, you know, I think is relatively low.

So then with that said, you're talking about potentially friendly bidders, maybe entities that WVE has existing relationships. with already like a Comcast, like a Fox or, and I'm even going to put this as a media entity, Disney, even though WW doesn't really have any existing relationships with, wouldn't there be so much more incentive for one of them to really go all in on a bid for ownership here? Because then that's content, that's IP that you own for eternity or as long as you'd like to. And you also have international properties attached to as well. All those three that I just mentioned, Comcast, Fox, Disney, they all have. have their own broadcast deals and they'd be able to work with it in any way that they'd want to.

So wouldn't that say from your perspective that those are the entities that would go more all in on something like this? So, you know, it's a great question. And I would say that, you know, yes with an asterisk. And the asterisk is that a property like wrestling or like MMA is not like the other kids. You've got complicated personalities. You have concentrated ownership. You have talent with big and complicated contracts. You have controversial storylines. So while it may be more acceptable you know, to sponsors than it was 20 years ago, and it may be, you know, certainly more acceptable

you know, you know, to big media companies to own it than it was, you know, 10 or 20 years ago. I still think there may be conversations or most likely there are conversations going on in boardrooms of those media companies saying, you know, we'd love to own this, but. and, you know, and, and I think that, you know, it doesn't mean that there isn't a big money buyer out there, but, you know, I've heard it compared to, for example, you know, Disney buying Marvel. It's, in my opinion, it's not like, you know, you buy it once, but, you know, you buy it once, but, you know, the characters in the Marvel Library, you know, don't walk off the set. That's the beauty of owning a property like Marvel, that, you know, you've got big, complicated, controversial personalities, you know, property like WWE, that, you know, just may or may not be

the taste of the complication of some of the big media. companies. Producer Steve just popped that up. It's amazing. 13 years ago, Disney purchases Marvel for $4 billion. And remember how big a number that seemed at the time?

It's insane. That's insane. Wow. I mean, you know, what was it that Google bought YouTube for and everyone said that's the craziest deal ever? I think it was, you know, $2 billion or something. And everyone said, that's insane.

I mean, you know, that's the value of media and, and, you know, what you're seeing here is, you know, this is going to be an $8 billion deal. Who would have ever thought that WWE was an $8 billion property? I mean, you know, what was it, you know, five years ago? They had a couple hundred billion dollars in rights fees that, you know, have now, are now, you know, double what they were five years ago. I mean, you know, especially at a time with all of the new streaming services and the disruption in cable and the, you know, reduction of the number of cable households, I think the perception was that the value of rights like this would go down. And I think that there are a lot of people who are surprised by the continued explosion of these rights values. Brian, you know, you look at WWE as a business model. Back when you and I were looking at WCW, it was basically television rights, which were negligible in Turner's case, obviously, because they own the company.

But you had your pay-per-view, you had licensing, and you had merchandising. There were essentially four corners of that table. It's certainly more complex now, and in the case of WWE, much larger in scope. But streaming, WWE has done a great, or they went in. to OTT early on. A lot of people thought, you know, there were people in the industry that thought that that would be the nail in the coffin of WWE because Vince was investing too much money in streaming and streaming was something that had yet to be really proven out. Now, of course, they've got a very powerful streaming platform. Does that streaming platform

make, in other words, of the WWE revenue streams, does the streaming platform have a premium value to a potential suitor because of the growth in that area? Well, yes. And I think that the genius of the move to have his own platform was that it gave him leverage in all of his negotiations, that he had a credible place to basically say, if you don't hit my deal. If you don't hit my number, I've got somewhere that I'm going to put this asset. And so I think that owning your own distribution is invaluable. And, you know, so I think that, that, you know, undoubtedly the value of his own streaming service is one of the reasons that they're as valuable as they are as an asset.

What do you think is going to happen between linear television and streaming? We know the impact that it's had to date, but if you could look into your, Brian Bidal, it's crystal ball. What do you think, what does the landscape look like in five years? I wish I had that crystal ball. I'd be buying in something. selling stocks right and left. So, you know, I think that the, you know, the number of cable subscribers will continue.

I don't think it's any great revelation that I think that cable will continue to decline. I think the cable operators who were obviously in the broadband business, are you know well positioned in that you know broadband cable is now utility i think um more and you know excuse me i think that that uh clearly streaming is a dominant and growing part of the media appetite and i would say in five years um I wouldn't be surprised to see every major property have streaming as its most valuable right source and traditional television as its secondary right source. And to build off that, I heard a very interesting argument from, I can't remember where it was.

It was definitely another show where they were saying that it would almost be beneficial for WWE to wait one more media rights cycle. before selling because their theory was the next media rights cycle will be the last of the big cable television deals before we start to see that integration where streaming becomes the main source of income. Do you see any merit in an argument like that? You know, I think that if you're a buyer, you like to think that there's undeveloped real estate. You like to think that you're the one who's going to do that next deal. So I actually think it's the opposite. I think that whoever the buyer is is thinking about the value that they're going to be able to create in the next right cycle.

And so I think that buying it with a right cycle coming up, as opposed to buying it where the rights are locked. You know, when you buy it where the rights are locked for, you know, six, eight, ten years, I think that what you're doing is you're basically buying in a sense of bond because you know what the return is going to be. When you buy it with a right cycle, you know, sort of ahead of you, you know in your in your in your vision if you will i think that you're able to um fantasize about what a great negotiator you are and how much you're going to get for the rights and uh be willing

to pay more good friend of well a friend of ours i don't know if you still talk to him or not i haven't seen him in years peter guber told me once that selling potential is a lot easier than performance. It's a great way of putting it, and it's absolutely right. So I think that, you know, I think that, you know, now is probably the right time to sell. And Vince is, you know, in his late 70s, he's a young late 70s, but he's in his late 70s. And, you know, I just think that, that, you know, he's only going to live another 30 or 40 years. Now's the time to take the money and go have some fun.

Brian, we so much appreciate having you on them. Before we let you go, I would be remiss if I didn't ask you if you had any thoughts or observations on the Discovery, Warner Brothers. merger? You know, I think, you know, David Zaslov is a great operator. I think that he's a take no prisoners operator. And he's, you know, clearly come in and basically has said, you know, I want this business to throw off more cash. I mean, it's what he did at Discovery.

And it's clearly his strategy at Warner. I think in an industry, that's used to, especially on the streaming side, sort of bottomless pit investing, nobody likes to see it because it means eliminating jobs. It means, you know, not producing as much content. It means distributing content. And it means, I would say, milking the asset more than investing in it for for a period of time um but you know i i think he proved a discovery what a good operator he is this is a much more complicated business um so i wouldn't bet against him uh you know but it's it's it's hard to say you know you you you don't um you know the what what's a saying

you don't save your way to prosperity you know i think that there needs to be investment in the business. The question is going to be, where does he choose to invest? Well, Brian, absolutely fascinating talking to you. And by the way, I don't know if you know this or not, but years after you and I, you know, concluded our business with Turner Broadcasting, I met this young lady by the name of Elizabeth Rosenthal and she was she was Hulk Hogan's PR person and she launched her own business and Elizabeth and I said we became very good friends and we stayed in touch and she was so excited when she was launching her own PR firm and and she mentioned that you're related I just thought

I never I never knew I knew she had the relationship with with Hulk but I never knew that you met her. Yeah, she's fantastic. I think she's built a really great business. Well, please, if you see her, talk to her or just shoot her out, please give her my best. I see her at least every Thanksgiving. We work together a lot, you know, because I was close to Hulk at the time, and then we became friends after and stayed in touch for a long, long time. I haven't talked to her in a couple years, but she's a really smart, really smart lady. And I'm happy to hear she's successful because she deserved it. Well, it's great to see you and let's do it before another 23 years goes by.

You got a deal. You got an open invite to come on Strictly Business whenever you like, Brian. I promise you. There's so much we didn't even get into that definitely would love to chat you up about in the future. But thank you so much for hopping on with us. Seriously, this has been fantastic. Thanks for having me. It was lots of fun.

Be well, my friend. Ladies and gentlemen, this has been Strictly Business. We'll be back with you next Thursday. Have a great week.