83 Weeks with Eric Bischoff - Strictly Business #12: Wrestling Round up

Episode Date: January 27, 2023

This week on Strictly Business, Jon and Eric just kind of "Shoot the breeze" and talk about the trending topics of the day. 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

I'm feeling a little moody, bluesy on Strictly Business here, presented to you exclusively by podcast Heat and ad-free shows.com. I, of course, am John Alba strumming consistently. Put that guitar down. Can you imagine somebody's driving down a road? All of a sudden, they hear that open, and they think, that is. the worst show open music I've ever heard. You know, I was inspired, Eric, because

I saw on the Twitter machine this past week, I saw a clip from you playing guitar on impact many, many moons ago. And I was genuinely impressed because after what you just told me a few minutes ago, that that

was one of the first songs you ever even learned how to play on guitar. It was impressive, man. Yeah, I taught myself. I, you know, I watched a couple videos on YouTube and learn some basic chords and started to listen to flamenco music and i've always loved you know acoustic guitar spanish guitar flamenco music in particular so i just started watching a couple of those videos and you know i have a ear for music and and it was easy for me to teach myself uh i knew we were going to do that segment a couple weeks in advance i thought okay i'll just

i'll just learn how to do it and i and i did it was awesome that's really impressive because it takes people years to even get a grip here's the truth the truth is i've tried throughout my entire life probably no fewer than a dozen times at one point or another throughout my life to learn how to play guitar and i have no musical abilities whatsoever really i have a not a tin ear i have cast iron for an ear look at that that's a stiff upper lip right there no that was me doing and Elvis is what that was i like it that was that was right after the sold out pay per view i was was at sunny hono's house in mason city iowa shout out to sunny james sorensen member of afry shows that went over to japan and traveled with sunny and his wife to watch stings last match against

buddha but no i was at sunny's house and uh it was after that paper view and probably had a cocktail or two and i broke into my famous sunny i broke into my film famous elvis impersonation and Sonny still has that guitar. Wow. To this day, he's a pack rat. I love that. Did you see the Elvis movie? Yeah, I did.

You like it? Yeah, I did. I thought it was great. He was an excellent Elvis. There's no doubt about that. Welcome to Strictly Business, everyone. We're just shoeing the breeze here on this week's episode. Man, we've been talking about such heavy stuff the past few weeks.

It's nice to just decompress a little bit, Eric. How's everything been going out in Wyoming there? dude i miss all that heavy crazy shit man it's slow it was to the point where i couldn't afford to put my phone down i had to stay in top of stuff hey david kelly how are you david kelly's with us live along with kickflip demon a couple other folks here from man free shows are with us live thanks for joining us y'all appreciate that um where was i no man i got addicted to all that big news flying across my social media constantly 24-7 and watching all the useful idiots chime in

and their opinions and their predictions and their inside information. But I did miss, I do miss it, man. It's slow. I don't like it slow. Well, fast. As we went on the air today, your friend Mike Johnson over at PW Insider

reported that Vince is back at Titan Towers. So a return to normalcy of some sort there with Vince back at Tyon Towers. They're moving just across the road pretty soon, actually, I think, to new office buildings there. Does that say anything to you that the man's back in charge there? Nope. I'd be more surprised if he, well, I don't know that he's back in charge. He would automatically, people jump into the conclusion that's right back to the way it used to be. Look, you know, in the position that Vince is in right now.

He could be meeting with the board. Could be. Right? He could be meeting with key executives within WWE that are not part of the board. And they're all there. Easier for him to show up there than for them to all jump in their car in the middle of the day and go meet him somewhere. I'm not reading anything into it. I'd be more surprised if he wasn't showing up quite honestly.

I know he's got that big dinosaur skull in his office. I've seen that. It's a pretty impressive office setup that Vince McMahon has. Again, we are live on YouTube right now. streaming this episode of Strictly Business and it will be available wherever you get your podcast. Hey, special thanks to Brian Bidall last week, who I just thought was fantastic. I could have chatted with Brian for two more hours, Eric.

What did you think of our conversation with him? It was so great. You know, I haven't had a conversation with Brian since the WCW sale fell through and he called me when I was sitting on a beach in Hawaii to give me the bad news. So it was great catching up with Brian. But again, man, he's so smart. And we were a little bit under the gun. some time restraint, so we weren't able to get as granular and into the weeds as I like to.

But man, it was fun. He's such a smart guy. He's accomplished so much in the world. Go check that episode out now. If you haven't in the archives, 83 weeks.com, make sure you're subscribed to 83 weeks on Spotify, Apple, wherever you get your podcast, because that's how you're going to get access to strictly business in the process. I want to jump in on that. I want to push that a little harder and make people understand.

And, you know, we not only struggle, and I don't say, I shouldn't say struggle, we endeavor to put out the highest quality shows that we can over on 83 weeks as well as here on Strictly Business. And we fight every day to make it as good as it could be because it's fun and we enjoy it. However, we need some help from you guys because this is all about algorithms, right? It's all about rankings because the more people are talking about. or subscribing or liking or giving us five-star ratings, the quicker we move to the top, the more advertisers start to look at us, the better everybody's life becomes.

So do us a favor, subscribe to 83 weeks. Give us that five-star rating, make some comments, make some noise, tell your friends, retweet this shit. Come on now. I'm going to turn this into a juggernaut. That's right. Well, this is going to be a juggernaut of a show. we got a bunch of different topics we're going to hit on here i want to tee you up on this first

eric i thought i don't know how much of it you got to see but i i know you tweeted briefly about it too i thought a w and tony con just did such a classy job with the j briscoe tribute and really trying to push warner media and warner brother's discovery rather to feature mark briscoe in the way they did where he main evented against j lethal on dynamite this past week i thought it was a really classy effort from Tony Conn and company. And I want to give them some flowers on that. Did you see any of that or maybe any of the chatter on social media about it? I didn't watch the episode.

I certainly did see some of the clips in a lot of the coverage and everything that was on social media. I saw that this morning early. And yeah, hats off, man. It was a good thing for the fans. It was a great thing for the family. It's something that, you know, Jay's kids will be able to. at some point in their lives go back and watch and be grateful for so yeah kudos all the way around

it was a really really well done event and it was on top of some big news that a w actually announced today eric and i'm not even sure if you've seen this yet it came out about an hour or so before we hit record here and that was a w announced a deal with de zone and disone group has announced that it secured exclusive broadcast rights to A.W in a multi-year agreement that will bring premium matches and entertainment to DeZone subscribers in 42 markets across Europe and Asia. And that's going to include Dynamite, Rampage, Battle of the Belts, Paperviews, Dark Elevation, and Dark. And it is going to be available in, by my count here, it looks like more than 20 countries. So AEW, expanding its spheres of influence, getting an big international deal like that,

Eric, about four years into this company's existence, your initial reaction to something like that? Well, there's a lot we don't know, right? Just on the surface, my first reaction is good for them because there's no way it's a bad thing. How much of a good thing it is depends on a couple things. For example, you made reference to Dayzone or DayZan or whatever. it is being available in 20 different countries. Okay, that sounds really good in a headline.

But how many people actually watch it? There's a lot of things that are available here in the United States on cable television. Nobody watches because it's obscure and it's amongst 200 other things that people would prefer to watch. So it's, you know, in terms of how good it is, a lot of that will determine how many people actually watch that network in those 20 countries where it's available. Because, hell, there's a bunch of Mercedes I'd like to drive someday available at the Mercedes dealership about two hours north of here. But just because it's available doesn't mean I'm going to buy one. And just because that cable outlet is available in 20 different countries, doesn't mean anybody watches it, or it could mean that a lot of people watch it.

We don't know. The other variable in that opportunity lies in how much money do they get paid for it. Is it a lot of money? Is it a little bit of money? Even if it's a little bit of money, that doesn't make it a bad thing, right? because now you're expanding your digital universe. Those people are going to hear all about AEW.com or whatever their website is. However many people watch in those 20 different countries where it's available,

some of them are going to become familiar with the AEW brand and the characters in it. None of that is a bad thing. It's just a question of how good of a thing it is. And the last variable is how is AEW going to monitor. monetize that opportunity beyond whatever license fee they're getting. Are they going to tour in any of those countries? Because if they're going to tour in those countries, even if they're not making a lot of money in a license fee, it can be a great opportunity.

So there's too many things we don't know to be able to ascertain whether it's a great opportunity, a good opportunity, or a, eh, we'll find out. T&A used to do the same thing. Every time Dixie Carter had an opportunity to put out a headline in social media, TNA announces groundbreaking wrestling opportunity. We're getting distribution in one of the largest cable platforms in Tanzania. Okay. Now, a deal in the UK with a major player that has major penetration in audience.

That's a different headline. But just being available doesn't necessarily equate to opportunity or even revenue. Producer Steve, forwarding us, DeZone has 15 million paying subscribers across 225 countries and territories. But again, that's streaming. And that's actually what I was going to piggyback on here. You know, you're getting a streaming deal rather than a traditional cable deal. We know that the property status is changing. across the entire spectrum.

Streaming is something that is becoming much more popular. We talked about that last week right here in the archives on Strictly Business. Does that stand out to you in any way that they're going with an international streaming service as opposed to trying to ink individual cable deals with these potential cable outlets? You know, I'd have to give that some more thought and get some more information. But to me, look, I said when I first heard about AEW and their initial negotiations, with Turner. And I was incorrect, by the way, because I, you know,

absolutely I can't imagine Turner wanting to get back into wrestling business again. Well, I said that without really thinking too much about it, didn't realize that just about every Turner executive inside of Turner today wasn't anywhere near Turner broadcasting back with WCWZ. It's a whole new, it's a whole new team of people, new world, new goals. Everything is different. But one of my points early on was, and I still think I was kind of right about it.

Was it if I was, and again, this is going back for four and a half years, if I was Tony Kahn, I would be putting all my focus and crafting a great vision for streaming as opposed to cable or terrestrial television because streaming is the future. Now, in that same context, I think that if there's a streaming platform as big as apparently

Dayzon is sounds like nothing but a good thing to me how good a thing we don't know what's that deal look like we don't know but it can't be bad it can only be various shades of good or maybe great

we just don't know let's take a time out right now and tell everybody what I'm doing in my real life save with Conrad dot com. That's how I spend my days helping people save money. And I would love to help you save some cash as well. We routinely help our podcast listeners save five, six, seven, even eight hundred bucks a month. It's not uncommon for us to help families save more than a thousand dollars a month. But how much money can you save? It's free to find out right now at save withconrad.com.

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Enimales, number 65084, equal housing lender. Seriously, check out our reviews on our A plus rating with the BBB at Conradreviews. Or get yourself a quick quote right now at save with conrad. or call us toll free 888 4250105 or email me directly conrad at save with conrad dot com now let's get back to the show but also a follow up on your previous question about streaming the one thing i did find interesting that i just learned in talking to you as you read that press release to me because i didn't look at it was that it's an exclusive streaming deal internationally eliminates potential value to any domestic streaming play, doesn't it?

I mean, we heard a lot about discovery and their streaming platform and all the opportunity that that could possibly bring to AEW. Well, does, this is a question, not a statement, but does AEW signing an exclusive deal for international streaming distribution? make that less of an attractive opportunity for discovery. Is discovery only streaming domestically or is Discovery's goal to stream internationally? I don't know, man. It's interesting.

When you said the word exclusive, man, a hair stood up on the back of my neck because that can be a good thing if there's a lot of dollars attached to it. It can also prevent you from moving forward in another deal that could be costly down the road so it all depends well i want to fire back on that because fight does have a deal with a w where fight streams a w content in the uk i believe through its a w plus platform so i think the term exclusive might be being used a little liberal there perhaps broadly in the press release there maybe it's exclusive in those territories that it's referring to and it's a little kabuki-ish.

A little bookish, I got you on that. That's a little. AW, not just on our minds because of something like this, but this has actually been a conversation you and I have been having in the last couple weeks, and we hinted at a few weeks ago on Strictly Business, but that was with what's been going on with the show that follows AW Dynamite on TBS, and that is PowerSlapped. Dana White's brand new promotion that has been extremely controversial, has

generated a lot of negative headlines in terms of actual reception. You see that one from Deadspitten. Dana White's Power Slap is the worst thing I've ever seen. Chris Nowinski, a former WWE talent, of course, was very, very critical of what he perceived to be lack of safety procedures with the individuals involved in the program. However, viewership has been pretty steady. the first episode drew 969,000 viewers on the back of AW Dynamite. So it did piggyback successfully off of that. Do you think that the negative reception to the programming so far,

Eric, could cause some carryover stink per se onto dynamite? I'm going to get back to that because that's a great question weird. But let's go back to PowerSlapp. I didn't see the ratings. What were the ratings again for PowerSlape? A week ago on the first episode, it drew a 0.31 with an estimated audience of 9669,000. What was the lead in? What was- Oh, wait, actually, my apologies.

I'm totally misreading. That is my apologies. I misread that. That was what A-E-W did, 969,000. A-W is the lead in the power slap. Power slap pulled just 295,000. Ooh, that's a whole different conversation. I apologize.

I misread that on my notes there. Ooh, doggie. And that was the first episode. So $295,000 that it pulled. And yeah, not great indication there. It drew a 0.10 in the 18 to 49 demographic. So weak ratings to start there. Plus, critically, Eric, people very much speaking out against us.

It was extremely violent. It was almost barbaric. I was watching it. This is my opinion here. It was barbaric. And in this era where we are supposed to be conscious of concussions and be aware of that stuff, This just seemed like a disaster, man. Did it?

Total disaster. People used to say the same thing about UFC. It's human cockfighting. It's dangerous. People are going to die. Elbows to the head, knees to the face. Blood all over the place. Ground and pound.

When MMA, now granted, when UFC first emerged, it was a different product than it is today. Dana White, the frittas, potatoes, potatoes, tomatoes, tomatoes, whatever. Did a great job building that brand and mainstreaming it and getting licensed in, you know, different states and so forth. But that was a long-term effort. And people gradually became comfortable with the product, including corporate sponsors,

like Budweiser, for example, or whatever beer company and a lot of others. look to me it was and i couldn't watch a whole episode i did drop in on some it's just i can't watch it and it's just not and it's not be it's just too like i i'd see that stuff pop up on you know social media all the time and i'd watch it go yeah i don't know it's just doesn't make good tv you look unless you care about the people that are slapping hell out of each other unless there's a story involved unless you do something like you know the voice does where you learn about you know the individuals and their backgrounds and their goals and their challenges and their puppies and your girlfriends or their husbands or whatever

unless you hear something that makes you care now you're just watching two guys slap each other no grand it's a hell of a slap but i can't see it working and you're Your original question was, I think, to paraphrase it, do I see any backlash? This is a stretch, okay, admittedly. But it's also based on some experience. You have to understand the culture of network executives. For the most part, the lifespan. of a network executive.

I'm talking about people in the programming department, right? Senior programming. They have a lifespan of about two years in any one company. It's a revolving door. And as a result of that,

most of them are job scared. In addition to the fact that, I mean, most cable outlets now, certainly television networks, everybody's job scared, right? Because the advertising industry is tanking for traditional television cable and terrestrial television. It's a tough world out there. That's why budgets are getting cut. That's why you're seeing companies merge because they're trying to find a way to survive in this world of streaming

that's eating their lunch. So between the fact that program executives have a tendency to be kind of gypsies in the world of television anyway and just move around a lot, now add to the fact that they're all job scared for a lot of different reasons when you have something like power slap get the kind of reaction advert negative reaction that it got it it it it it it it could be some collateral damage you can have someone and i'm not suggesting this is going to happen or is happening but it's an example of what could happen because i've seen similar things happened before my very eyes. When you have the kind of backlash, for example, from Chris Nguinsky, that's not a little

bit of backlash. Chris Nguyenwinsky in his world is a very influential person. And the people that follow Chris and believe in the same things Chris Nguinsky does when it comes to CTE are going to be very vocal about it. And when that filters up and you have some network executive looking at a list of all of the negative responses to it, there can be, you know what? We don't need this kind of a headache with any of this content. We're going to go to a more traditional content that isn't as controversial, that we can make as much or possibly more money off of. Again, I hope that doesn't happen because it would really be unfair.

but it's the mentality, it's the culture. You have to understand how job scares and therefore risk averse, not adverse, because adverse suggests an adversarial or combative relationship. Adverse merely suggests an avoidance or dislike. And I think in this case, that was good. Averse works better than adverse because it's not a battle like with, Dave Meltzer and grammar, that's a battle.

Dave's been losing that one for 30 years. But network executives are averse. They don't like, and they avoid risk. And the backlash from PowerSlapp, depending on how certain executives feel about AEW, could have a negative impact. I hope it doesn't, but it could. Because one of the reasons I got out of television

is because you couldn't get a network executive to make a commitment about anything, even after they bought your show. Well, especially with all the moving pieces in Warner Brothers Discovery right now, it's every other day you hear about someone departing the company or deciding to do something different than the original plan with the piece of content. It's rapidly changing. You made a point about UFC, how back in the day they used to say, oh, it's barbaric and all that.

one thing that kind of saved that image was a direction but b they regulated it more and it became more mixed martial arts based and elements of jihitsu and other forms of martial arts that made it more competition based rather than just close fist fighting let's beat the hell out of each other and i don't know how you do that with this type of form of content maybe there is a way too and maybe that would save its perception just a little bit but i don't know man and and it is not necessarily fair because it's not like a w is asking for that as the programming afterwards but you did say if i recall a few weeks ago on this episode or all of this stuff went south that you did see that there could be an upside to having dana white's name

after your television program and that could potentially increase maybe the last quarter hour of your show. No, I don't think I said that because if I did, I wasn't clear in the point I was trying to make because I didn't see that happening. I think the point that I do remember making is that it's a good thing to have a show like Power Slap that is there specifically to try to bolster your testosterone. So you've got two hours of AEW and you've got an hour of Power Slap. Now, assuming that Power Slap could hold even 50 or 60 percent, of the audience, at that time of night, that's not an easy thing to do. No, it is not.

But if they could hold 50 to 60 percent of that audience, it would be a way for the people that tune in to AEW to get even more satisfaction on TBS. So anytime you have a network, and this is the point I think I was trying to make, was that any time you have a network that's looking at a two-hour time period in prime time and going, okay, we like this. We want to build upon this. How do we create shoulder programming before and after that fits that demo? Okay.

The fact that somebody's thinking that way and speaking that way publicly, which I think they have, Warner Brothers, is a good thing, right? Because if they didn't value the AEW content, they wouldn't be trying to build stuff around it. they'd be trying to replace it. So that's why I thought it was a good thing. But because of the negative impact, I think the odds of the fallout from Power Slap negatively affecting AEW are slim, but they do exist because of what I spoke about earlier. Well, I apologize.

If I put words in your mouth there, that's never something I like to do here. Hey, I'd babble all the time. So I could have said it to remember it. So it's not on you, brother. Hey, guys, Tony, Shivani. I need to call the timeout real quick. I wanted to tell your listeners what I've been telling what happened when listeners for a while now about all the cool things happening over on ad-free shows.com.

On a brand new edition of Insiders, Gary Juster sits down with Conrad to discuss his decades spent behind the scenes in AWA, NWA, WCW, and R-O-H. I don't think it was a battle with Eric so much on TV versus house shows. It was a matter of if they're not making money, we've got to figure out, you know, something else, you know, we just can't let it bleed like that. We go one-on-one with WWE Hall of Famer Teddy Long as he joins Mike Keota for a special edition of Monday Mailbag. And so I'm tired, man. I'm really tired, but I don't want to let Mike drive, but I already know, you know, I already

know how he drives. So anyway, I just couldn't take it no further. So I said, Mike, you know, agree, you know, take us in. So I got in, like Mike started driving, I guess, man, I went right to sleep. I was tired. So I guess maybe 10 minutes into that ride, all of a sudden I wake up. We're like in a tailspin. Royal Rumble season is here, and we watch back the most memorable rumble of all time, featuring the most iconic robe of all time alongside the nature boy himself. I mean, there was only one of Olivia Walker. She was classic. But I just, out of nowhere,

I just decided to pick that color in black. You know, it's a deal. I've never had a great physique and you know that black makes you look leaner. So black on black, black boots. So I went to, I went to black a lot after about 40, age of 41. That's very simple, honest answer. That's just a small taste of what we've got waiting for you with four levels to choose from. See for yourself by Edfrey Shows is the best value in wrestling today. Sign up now at atfreyshows.com. I liked I liked the little call. back to some of your Twitter action this past week. You've been making a lot of headlines this week. I'll give you that. I know it's been a little contentious there with your

pal, good old Dave. Oh, I'm having a blast, man. I'm having, I'm having so much fun I have to contain myself. You know, I just, I'm just so grateful that he's been exposed for the fraud that he is. It's just unfortunate. It's taken this so long because he's done a lot of damage to the wrestling industry. People don't realize that. I had somebody asked me, Why do you care so much? I don't get what people like you care. Well, that's because if you've never been in the industry, and I mean in it, I don't mean tangentially, peripherally,

or I know a guy who works there. I'm talking about making you a living, especially at a more senior management level or as a talent. There's no way you can possibly know the kind of damage a guy like Meltzer can do by creating the nonsense narratives he does or criticizing people or body shaming people. Yeah, if you're not in that business, if you're not the one, you know, on the receiving end of it, of course, it seems like it's no big deal. But if you're in senior management of those businesses, you know how much damage it's done.

And I'm thrilled to death to do a public service by helping to expose Dave Meltzer and his little freaky buddy Elvarez for the parasites that they really are. I can't believe people pay 12 bucks a month to get that or week or whatever 12 bucks a month to get that. I mean, why would you pay for information that's clearly fraudulent? Proven smoking gun, fingerprints, hand in a cookie jar is a fraud. And I, whatever, I'm just glad he got exposed. Hats off to David Bixen Span and Rustling Inc. I think one of the things people pay for the content for more now than I think. It's less to break news.

I think back in the day, that was probably more of the priority of, who am I getting the scoops? I think a lot of it is more. Dave, to his credit, is a wrestling historian. He knows a lot about the industry and the history of the industry. And with the newsletter, especially in long form, I know you and Conrad have had similar conversations about this. He's very good at documenting that kind of stuff.

And like Jay Briscoe's passing this past week, he wrote a fantastic obituary because he's very good at documentation and putting into context historical items. I think that's one of the reasons why Dave has had a really successful retention rate. I do think, as we've discussed ad nauseum on this podcast, people are recognizing that there are some really reputable names out there in wrestling reporting these days. And those are the people that are gaining a lot of traction,

like the Sean Ross Saps, like the Mike Johnson, etc. So just my thought on that, Eric, the documentation and the historical aspect of it is probably what more people are paying for at this point. But it's it was a pretty eye-opening report from David Bixen Spann. There's no doubt about that. And Dave did on his podcast. He did offer a retraction on it. But offer a retraction.

How about a freaking apology? He did apologize. He did apologize as well. For, for getting, how did he phrase it? He said he reported. He got hoaxed. No, you weren't the victim. You weren't the victim of a hoax.

You were the victim, Dave, of your own sloppiness and lack of integrity. Because if you would do anything remotely close to what a journalist does, which is how you like to promote yourself, Dave, there's no way you could have been hoaxed. You were in a victim. It was an apology. That was a baby face. I'm a victim statement. Which to me was a bigger reflection of what kind of a gutless punk he really is than the fact that he's lazy.

I mean, look, you got caught with his hand in a cookie jar, period. End of conversation. How about to the people that have been spending $10 or $12 a month because they think you're giving them information that they can't get anywhere else because you've got such great sources? How about offering them their money back? How about offering anybody that wants to cancel their subscription six months free? because you've been proven to be a fraud and then rebuilding your credibility. And by the way, let's go back to Dave's abilities as a historian. I absolutely agree with you.

He should stay in that lane. If he stayed in that lane and quit trying to pretend that he was an expert based on the information that he gets from his inside sources, which I argue is the reason most people subscribe. Because people, especially, you know, intense wrestling fans, they want to feel like they know more than everybody else. They want to know the inside. They want to know the scoops. They want to know the dirt.

And that's what that's the reason that Dave gets retention. Because that need to feel like you know something. And I'm the same way. I recognize that instinct to myself. If there's something that's out there that's, interesting. I want to know more than everybody else. I want to be informed. I have an intellectual curiosity about things that I find interesting. And that's a common thing amongst people, especially fans. They want to feel like they know more than the average wrestling fan. Some of them,

the smaller percentage of them, need that to feel superior. Right? And that's what drives Dave's subscription. My point is, you don't know jack shit if you follow him. Because Dave is, you know, I refer to him as a useful idiot. I would encourage anybody that posts anything about Dave. If you're going to tag him or use his at symbol, also use hashtag useful idiot. Because that's what Dave is. Dave is a vessel that people have used for years to feed information to because everyone knows he won't verify it he won't double check it he'll repeat whatever if you're if you're a talent and you pick up the phone and say look they like you know you got to keep keep his quiet but here's what's going on because that that individual individual talent knows that they will go oh my gosh

he's giving me inside information and he likes me and i'm on the inside well that inside information could be a rib it could be somebody trying to stir up a narrative or a conversation that somehow benefits them in their agenda, it could be somebody that's just angry at somebody else and wants it out there in the public and they know they can't do it, but they can get Dave to do it because that's what Dave does, as we've seen with his fingerprints all over the fraud that he calls a newsletter. He doesn't call it an opinion letter. He doesn't call it an historical document that focuses on the history of professional which I wish he did. I would subscribe if he did. That's not what he does. He cons people.

It was really quick to call other people in wrestling business a con artist when he, in fact, himself has been conning people out of $12 a month for a long time. So in your apology, Dave, I would suggest that you also offer people to get their annual subscription refunded to them because you defrauded them by convincing them that you were something that you're not. well i don't want to turn this into anymore then you shouldn't have brought it up no well i was just pointing at your definitions as you were making very clear in the prior point uh we do have a couple more things i want to hit on but you know me brother you bring up day that's like starting up a chainsaw and just wanting it to be quiet well you said you said hand in the cookie jar

my hand got caught too eric but it wasn't in the cookie jar instead my hand had got caught reaching for some crab cakes because our friends at Jimmy's famous seafood are just coming through weekend and week out for all of our strictly business fans. You go to jimmy's famous seafood.com and they're going to ship free two-day nationwide shipping on orders over $125 excluding steamed crabs and fresh items. And all you got to do is use the promo code wrestle biz. And what am I talking about here? I'm talking about the absolute tippy top, very best Maryland crab.

crab cakes in the world. And not just that. They got soups, chowders, oysters, signature steaks, desserts, gluten-free items. They've got all these specialty, famous gift boxes as well, including the tailgate bundle. Eric, we are just one week of action away from the Super Bowl. You could get your hands on some wings, some ribs, crab dip, crab cake mix. I know you're salivating when I just rattle all these things off. How good is this stuff, Eric? It, you know, it's amazing. It's amazing. That's all I can say. You really have to sample it.

And if you're going to throw a Super Bowl party, first of all, the team at Jimmy's, I've been there a few times now. There's so much a part of the community of Baltimore. They love the Ravens. They love their football. They've got food trucks that are all over the place. You know, they have tailgate parties when the Ravens are. I mean, this is a football wrestling family.

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Use that promo code, wrestlebiz. Get free two-day nationwide shipping on orders over $125. is the best stuff in the world I got from my sister and her husband. They loved it. They said they were so happy to chow down watching the NFL playoffs. You can do that too. And if you've been following us for the past few weeks, you may have even put your order in already for the Royal Rumble coming up.

And I wouldn't blame you because if I was watching the Royal Rumble, one of my favorite events of the year in wrestling, chowing down on some jumbo lump crab cakes. Oh, man, I'm salivating just thinking about Eric. This is the good stuff. Jimmy's famous seafood.com promo code wrestle biz. And we thank them for sponsoring strictly. I see somebody my name of David Kelly over at every show joining us live here that a few minutes

ago posted, it feels like Eric hates me. David, why would you say that? I don't understand that. I've got nothing but love for the people that are a part of the ad free shows family or listen to strictly business on the podcast or on YouTube. Whatever impression I gave you, unless when I said, Dave, it feels like I'm speaking to you. That might be exactly.

That makes sense. Okay, now I get it. Now that I'm apologizing for hurting this guy's feelings, she's just overly sensitive. You got hoaxed, Derek. You got a- Change your name. Change your name.

I would. If my name was Dave, I would change it. Oh, my goodness. Well, I mentioned the Royal Rumble, Eric. That's coming to us this week from the Alamo Dome. And that's a big, big business show for WWE. They've really changed their business strategy.

in the last few years with Nick Con at the helm, focusing on a lot more stadium shows, those larger gates, and they obviously visually and aesthetically just look so much larger than life. I wanted to pick your brain on the logistics of bouncing through venues and how do you determine what kind of venue to run in a specific market? It's not like San Antonio is the hottest market in the world, but the Alamo Dome is a pretty historic sports venue in the United States. you are a guy who WCW was running small TV studio tapings,

and then all of a sudden you're running the Georgia Dome just a few years later. What is that process like in determining what size venues you run in each market? It's a big question. First of all, you know, here's where I would start. I would start at the very end and work my way backwards. The very end is the venue is called the Alamo Dome. If you're going to have a battle, is there any place? better? Is there any arena in America, the world that is branded better for a wrestling

pay-per-view than the Allodome, Almodo. I mean, that's perfect branding, right? That's number one. Number two, you know, we've produced events in the Almodo dome before. What makes big arenas attractive room, space, production areas behind, not just the arena and the capacity and the seating and configuration. That's all very, very important. But WWE is a massive television production, like probably five times bigger than the biggest nitro production or pay-per-view that I've ever produced. Yeah, five, maybe conservative. And that just eats up a lot of space you've got a massive staff you've got a massive amount of talent you've got staging all you know you need i've been in buildings like madison square garden

now madison square garden is bad even though it's older um because they have often you know they have a press office upstairs that writers can use and things like that but man i've i've been in even with wwe when i was there i've been in venues where you're stacking writers on top of prop people on top of the makeup team. I mean, there's no room for anybody to work. And that's a real challenge. It makes an already stressful job even more stressful. So one of the benefits of going to a big venue is just the logistics of it in the space.

The other, of course, is how strong is your product in that specific market? Now, there's a lot of markets in and around the United States that aren't necessarily major television markets, but are strong wrestling markets. And you can pretty much bet that if you're going to stage a big event there, you're going to sell out because of the history and the track record that you've established in a WWE's case are probably over 30 years. You know, you just know that market. and you probably have people on your staff that are working with all the newspapers, the radio stations, and striking great deals because they have relationships and they're able to get more than possibly somebody that only comes into San Antonio once every five years.

But you've got WWE who's going there for a big pay-per-view, but oh, by the way, we also produce television here a few times a year, whatever it is. We also come here with live events. We're in your backyard on a regular basis. And because of that, they're able to leverage sweeter deals with radio and local television and possibly print. And all of that is very important. That's added value. It reduces the amount of money that you have to spend promoting the event locally because you've got a relationship there that you've established over the years that are doing it for you at a much reduced price.

That's an example. of why a market like San Antonio was a great market. Beyond that, you've got the obvious, you know, what's it look like on camera? What's the rigging look like? You know, what have I got to work with here from a production perspective? And I'm sure the Elmo Dome is, look, they wouldn't be there if Kevin then didn't like the setup. And I'm sure they have a great setup, which is another great reason to go to a bigger dome,

a bigger venue or a dome. Yeah, that was the last time. they ran the Alamo Dome in 2017 for the Royal Rumble, and it looked great on camera. It was an awesome aesthetic. It definitely came across as a venue that they'd probably run again, and here we are running it once again here in the year 2020. Because I always found it so fascinating as a viewer,

and I know nothing about this, that you would opt to run, say, the Georgia Dome, as opposed to the NBA arena there. And WWE, even back in the day, used to run when they'd go to Toronto, they'd run the Skydome for house shows and put 35,000 people in seats for a house show rather than running the Air Canada Center up there. Was there ever a time that maybe you overshot your expectations and you had a disappointing draw at the gate in a situation like that? No, I was pretty conservative, but I want to go back to another reason why

they might be going back to San Antonio. You've seen how different cities, and we've all read, right, compete for the rights to host WrestleMania. Yep. Well, this isn't WrestleMania coming up, but I wouldn't be surprised if there aren't incentives or concessions from the city. 100%. Given WWE's track record in that market, they're also probably offsetting a lot of their cost, some of their cost of production with some of the concessions or the

incentives that the local community is providing as well. That's another good reason to go to a bigger venue because you're probably going to get more support from the local community. Oh yeah. I mean, this is an event that you could argue is WWU's number two pay-per-view between that and Somerslam. It is an event that people travel to that local tourism becomes invigorated because of an event like this. So that is certainly something that plays into that. And plus on a Saturday, I love the Saturday pay-per-view as opposed to so do I so do I yeah it's such a better viewing experience no but going back to your original question before I backtracked um you know I was always pretty conservative you know I was I was the

guy that shut down live events because they were losing money my my my argument although is unoriginal as it was um was if you build it they will come let's quit trying to convince people to come when they're not interested in our television show let's put all of our resources into television, shut down the live events, focus on a television product until such time, the television product becomes so successful that people are going to want to go see a version of it live. Now, as a result of that, even when we got really, really like 96, you know, we started really rocking and rolling and doing some serious business of 96. But I wasn't looking at 97 and going, okay, let's go to whatever the biggest

dome in the country was at the time. Let's go play the domes. I was super conservative because to me it was more important to harness the energy of that audience so that it translated to people at home and they felt good about investing their time and money in the product because they're looking at 10,000 or 15,000 people that are having a blast. Whereas if you're in a 20,000 seat arena and you only sell 12,000 tickets, you're sitting at home. Number one, that energy, I know it sounds weird, but it dissipates. People just don't react the same way when they're in a half-filled arena as they do when they're on top of each other. And that energy is contagious. That translates to the viewer at home. So I was always more concerned about making

100% sure that we had 100% capacity or as close to it as we could get as opposed to going, yeah, but I played this dough. It's just, it's more ego. Yeah. Sometimes than it is practical. Yeah. I can't wait for the Royal Rumble. You a fan of the Royal Rumble?

Um, yeah, because it's got that unexpected. Who's it going to be feeling about it? So, yeah, I do. One other than WrestleMania, one of, one of my favorites for sure. I just think it's a. now that like sports betting is legalized to I'm seeing all these different companies have legalized betting on the Royal Rumble and that's just wild to me and a sign of the times of how much stuff has changed how weird is no I don't know anything about the gambling world in sports betting I

haven't gambled a nickel in the last 20 years on sports betting so this may be an ignorant question however how do you bet on something that's scripted that that's exactly my point i mean that's weird yeah you're very much betting on something that is scripted that's what it boils down when you go to make a bet you know like can bruce pritchard show up and be like yeah the day before the event put on some sunglasses and a beard and a hat and lay down his bets i mean that's weird to me next thing you know he's banned from the wwee hall of fame for life because he bet on his own sport and man i don't know would they do that i don't know he got a pete rose situation there right now it's producer steve showing the betting odds favorites cody roads for the men's match and ria ripley

for the women's match so to win or just to participate to win to win to win what are the odds that cody's going to win he's the favorite what are they uh steve there they are plus 100 So you got to bet a hundred and you win a hundred? Well, it depends on the type of bet. You have to bet a hundred to break even and then you go above that. It's a whole sport. Wait a minute. So you're telling me I have the opportunity to go to Las Vegas, put $100 down.

I'm betting on Cody Rhodes. And all I'm going to do is get my money back. Well, no, it depends on the service. Like I said, it's a very complicated thing. It depends on who you're using, where you're putting the bet down. There are a bunch of different types of bets that you can put down. It's a one to – producer Steve chime in and also a degenerate gambler.

It's one-to-one odds on Cody Rhodes. And then, as we saw here, Sammy Zane is plus 150. That means you'll get one and a half to one. So if I bet $100, I'll win $200. There you go. Or I'll lose. What's notable here – it's not this book, but it's notable on a different book that Stone Cold Steve Austin was way down here.

with like the carrying crosses of the world and then he jumped all the way to the plus five hundreds of the world where Kevin Owens is and people are saying that that means he's going to be more involved in the Royal Rumble or WrestleMania. I think that's probably just because of the reports that came out this week that Austin had matches pitched for him for WrestleMania. So I think that's probably why he jumped up the leaderboard there, which could, hey, could happen. But I mean, Sammy Zane's not a bad bet with how everything's been playing out recently. He's doing great, isn't he?

Is he such a fun, Kerry? That raw 30 episode, that segment they had was just fantastic television, really, really good. So yeah, Royal Rumble's coming up this week. Go check that out. Eric, before we wrap, there's one more thing. I know you want to talk about. You and I have been texting back and forth about this, and that is LiveGolf because Saudi Arabia has been a big talking point on the show.

Saudi Arabia helps fund the LiveGolf tour. And they had been struggling for so long to get a media rights partner here in the United States. and they finally got one a couple of weeks ago. They are going to be broadcasting on a multi-year deal. Their tournaments on CW, which is owned by Next Star, which is one of the big companies that owns different cable stations and news affiliates across the country.

This is going to be a 14-stop 20-23 schedule. So far, only seven dates have been confirmed. The logistics of the deal have not yet been confirmed as of yet, as things stand. There are expectations that this could be a revenue sharing agreement rather than a traditional lump sum rights payment for Liv. What's your reaction to Saudi Arabia finally finding a partner here? And does that equate to anything in your mind for potentially what we could see in the wrestling world? It was a very interesting deal. And I haven't followed it too closely beyond the first couple of days after the announcement. What I've read, not yet

confirmed through a number of sources, media sources, is that it is a rev-share deal. There are no license fees. Let's start out with that. There are no license fees. So in an era where live events, sports in particular, and the rights that go with them are able to generate massive licensing fees, live golf didn't get one they got essentially what is it's a version of what we used to refer to as a barter deal back before license fees then now this even you know when I was in

wcd when I first got there and even for a couple years after I got there syndication was a big part of the revenue model for WCW so you had your main shows you had your WCW Saturday night And then you had your Sunday night main event. WCW Saturday was the A show. But you had, you had, what were at, power hour. He had two or three shows that were one hour shows in syndication. And they were distributed around the country. We had good syndication.

We had a good network. Rob Garner, VP of syndication, headed it up. Did a good job. But we didn't get paid a dollar for any of those markets. In some markets, we actually paid to be. beyond Turner did. So did WWE early on. Their model was exactly, in fact,

WWE, from what I've been told by people that were there at the time, was that there were certain markets that Vince would walk in and stroke a check for, one way, shape, or form, stroke a check. Because it was important to have that television show in that market in order to promote your live event.

So in that form of syndication, as it was with WCW, the local television station would keep six minutes of ad time, and WCW would retain six minutes of ad time, right? WCW would use a portion of that to promote our live events or whatever it is we're doing, our paper views, and the rest of it wants to turn our ad sales. Standard barter agreement. That was the mainstay of the syndication world for a long time. This deal sounds a lot like the old barter deal, where in other words, LivGolp gets television exposure. Yep.

And shares in whatever revenue is generated by advertising within that tour. It's a version of the old barter deal. It's very interesting. Kind of fascinating, actually. What's especially fascinating about is CW is not the kind of network that airs content like this historic. And they wouldn't have the, they wouldn't have the money for a massive sports.

CW, their target audience based on what their content is, are teenage teenagers, but specifically teenage girls, honestly, um, and young adults and live golf is certainly, that is not the demographic when your headlines are.

And to me that was like, you know, and it's funny because, you know, was it Greg Norman? I watched him do an interview. He's putting this deal over. We've been working on this forever and we were talking to other networks and we had to be

very careful that we were doing what was, I mean, it was so much corporate. Gaga and I, you know, I'm not blaming him for doing it. That's his role, but I'm, I'm waiting. I'm okay, now give me some information that matters here. Don't give me your press release. Give me something that matters here and I got nothing. I got all this flowery press release type language in this. interview never got down to anything and I'm thinking to myself the CW this is the what is it

Katrina the teenage witch or whatever she was you know what was your name Sabrina the teenage witch Sabrina the teenage witch I thought it was good no that was a hurricane sorry Katrina wasn't packed a hurricane yeah but this is an obscure teen and preteen girl audience to me it was an act of desperation That's a wrong way to say it. It was a strategic move based on the fact that nobody else wanted to touch them. Because you could not find a network that means less for golf than CW. And maybe it's just the optic of having a broadcast partner and broadcast presentation.

And I mean, I almost think, and it's not apples to apples here, but even when TNA was so grateful just to have the Fox Sports networks airing them in syndication before they were able to get the deal with Spike TV. They got on the television station, got their product settled, and then it was, okay, now we can go out and get it. But obviously, circumstances very different here. But it's just, I mean, they're in a building phase. They're taking the best TV deal they could get.

They have no, nobody else was, nobody else really wanted them, or whatever reason. Part of it could be because they just didn't feel like they wanted to compete with the PGA. It's too much of an institution here in the United States. Too many people had too many vested interests. Nobody wanted to compete. There's a lot of reasons why. The end result is they're not getting a license fee and they're on the worst possible network you could possibly be on for golf. But at least they're going to be on television.

Now, here's a potential upside. There's always a different way of looking at things. Something, I have no reason for saying this other than my gun. is telling me to. I have no experience or information. In other words, I'm ignorant when it comes to the world of professional golf. I swung a golf club at a skunk once years ago. Bad move, by the way. You swung a guitar at it first. Maybe that's why I never took up the game. I don't know because it had such a bad experience. But something suggests to me that the principles involved with live golf have a strong enough relationship with some very key advertisers that

live golf through their players and the players agents and representatives and lawyers. There's enough connective tissue there with a couple big dollar sponsors. that even though it's a crappy deal with no license fee, if Live Golf brings them in, and I have no idea what the contract looks like, but it would not surprise me in this barter arrangement, this version of a barter arrangement, this revenue sharing opportunity, let's call it that,

that if Live Golf brings in, let's say, Mercedes-Benz, then instead of splitting that revenue 50-50, maybe Liv gets 75% of it or 60% or 51%, who knows? So it could be the first step in generating interesting revenue because we all know those advertisers that spend money in golf, spend a lot of money. So maybe it is a good thing. And the reason I find it interesting based on what we talk about here

is because it's another model, right? I remember so many times I have been approached, not in the last 10 years, but. probably in the last 15 or 20. I'll get a phone call from somebody that I know, get into a conversation. I've got this idea. And we're going to buy the time.

We're going to launch this program by buying the time, like an infomercial on this network or network, that network. And I would shut that down immediately because there's never been a successful business model that I know of that I've been involved with. Let's put it that way. I think religion, it probably works.

That's why you see a lot of religious, you know, in for basically, they're buying that time. It's pay to play. Because they're generating enough revenue from it to pay for it. Fishing shows are typical buy-ons. I don't watch them as much as I used to, you know, but on Saturday mornings, that's all it was on the cable. You know, before sports, it was like build dance, fishing down in Tennessee, learn how to catch a bass. But all of those shows were buy-ons. They paid for that one-hour of time or half-hour a time.

time. And then they hope to make it up on the back end. And on the back end, a lot of those fishing shows, they had sponsors. They had a boat sponsor. They had a motor sponsor. They had a lure sponsor. They had a bug spray sponsor. So they could literally, as long as they had distribution in X amount of markets or X percentage of the United States, sponsors would spend money with them. And I think because this is a version of that syndication model or buy-on model and the fact that live golf and the principles in it have some pretty deep relationships

with some pretty big advertisers, it might be a good first step. But it's certainly not the phenomenal deal Greg Norman made it out to be. One of the big stories back in October when they were really getting going was that they were really struggling to get these big name advertisers

because a lot of big name advertisers didn't want to be doing business with Saudi and actually a lot of the golfers because golf is very much individual sponsors. so each athlete has individual sponsors. A lot of the golfers lost those individual sponsors because they jumped from the PGA, specifically the institution, to live golf.

Because of the A, fears of negotiation, and B, advertisers didn't want to be throwing their money at golfers who might not even be on television, which there's a fair agreement with that. Or a fair argument, I should say, rather, on that. And so definitely something, that we will be monitoring here. And I want to bring us full circle

as we close this episode of Strictly Business, Eric. Do you know who the international streaming rights partner of Live Golf is? Nope. DeZone. Who?

DeZone. Oh. How about that? The same company that A.A.W. Just think it's international streaming rights agreement with earlier. Ooh. What does that say to you?

I just, I'm not here. That's an interesting little tidbit for you to lead me with. Now I'm going to have to think about that all afternoon. I'm just here to ask the questions. That's all. This has been strictly business with Eric Bischro. Anything else you'd like to add, my friend?

Nope. I'm good. All right. Well, it's a pleasure always getting to sit across here, chat with you. This was a cool episode. Just a little myriad of topics. Again, guys, 83 weeks.com. Hit that subscribe.

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