83 Weeks with Eric Bischoff - Strictly Business with Eric Bischoff #34: AEW Collision tanks, Wembley, WWE WrestleMania in London

Episode Date: July 7, 2023

On this week's episode of "Strictly Business," Eric Bischoff and Jon Alba dive into whether or not AEW should be concerned about Collision's ratings dipping significantly in Week 3. Plus, thoughts on WWE bringing WrestleMania to London! Special thanks to this week's sponsor! BlueChew- Try BlueChew FREE when you use our promo code WRESTLEBIZ at checkout--just pay $5 shipping.  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 On AdFreeShows.com, you get early, ad-free access to more than a dozen of your favorite wrestling podcasts, starting at just $9! And now, you can enjoy the first week...completely FREE! Sign up for a free trial - and get a taste of what Ad Free Shows is all about. Start your free trial today at AdFreeShows.com If your business targets 25-54 year old men, there's no better place to advertise than right here with us on Strictly Business. You've heard us do ads for some of the same companies for years...why? Because it works! And with our super targeted audience, there's very little waste. Go to AdvertiseWithEric.com now and find out more about advertising with Strictly Business. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey everyone, John Alba here, co-host of Strictly Business with Eric Bischoff. And what I love about wrestling podcasts most is that there's so much variety out there. And that's why I want to tell you about the other podcast I host right here on podcast, heat and ad-free shows.com, the extreme life of Matt Hardy. Every single Friday, you can hear the future Hall of Famer, one half of the iconic Hardy Boys tag team, the broken and woken one himself, Mr. Matt Hardy, tell great stories from his three decades in the wrestling industry from a fairly unique perspective. Few people have gone through the

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NMLS number 65084, equal housing lender. You don't need perfect credit or money out of your pocket to save thousands with save withconrad.com. Find out how much money you can save right now at save withconrad.com. How's it going, everyone? It's time for another edition of Strictly Business with Eric Bischoff. I, of course, am John Alba, but I am not alone. I am joined by the beautiful bald man of the hour.

Mr. Eric freaking Bischoff. How are we, my friend? Post 4th of July, it's a Thursday as we tape this way. what's going on there in beautiful wyoming just uh winding down uh it's been a fun you know five or six days friends of family in town our daughter was here montana and uh just had a you know relatively relaxing but uh enjoyable four or five days so getting back to know that you know what i care about i care about knowing what was on the menu this past week uh what was on the menu this week nothing really uh too crazy you know i did a waggo beef tenderloin which was pretty awesome uh i've got

pretty good at those uh smoked some chicken mr b made an amazing pot of green chili which is a kind of fourth of july tradition here and uh that's about it man nothing too nothing too crazy hey you know what that sounds like you were eating good at the end of the day and i know that's what matters on the fourth of july you get family there you get friends there life is good and uh we've got a lot of our friends and family here with us eric bischoff we got your boy mick mick mack who I'm pretty sure it's like 3.30 a.m. He's sooning in. Says, hope everyone over there at a great 4th of July.

Happy birthday, Mrs. B also, Mick Mack says. So sending the best wishes over there. We got Josh Henney who's on the road. Says, hello, everyone, driving back. This is strictly business. And Eric, because it's strictly business, I figured, you know, we had so much success doing that live show out in Fresno.

Why don't we do another? And that's what you and I are going to be doing on July 23rd for MCD. at the MCW fan jam in Joppa, Maryland from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. they're going to be having a free convention with a bunch of different vendors, including Eric Bischoff. And if you purchase any of the Eric Bischoff meet and greet options, you're going to get admission to a live stage show edition of 83 weeks and strictly business.

You and I back in the saddle again, Eric, how much are you looking forward to that weekend? I am. It sounds like it's going to be a fun weekend. and it'll be fun to get up on stage with you. Great wrestling fans in that part of the country. So I'm definitely looking forward to it. Stones throw from Jimmy's famous seafood, too, so you know. By the way, that's another thing that I had,

Jimmy's Famous Seafood. We did have some Jimmy's famous seafood crab cakes as well over this past weekend. And awesome, as always, absolutely awesome. Always awesome. Go support them. And you can support us here. Visit MCW25.com. and we will have a blast out there.

Hope to meet a lot of you guys and thank you so much for supporting Strictly Business. Eric, I feel like last week, the internet was ablazing at our episode with Matt Cardone and that you've had some time to marinate it. What were your thoughts on our conversation with Matt? It was kind of eye-opening, you know, it was refreshing.

That's a better way to say it. It was refreshing because while I knew of Matt, I didn't know Matt. Didn't know anything at all about Matt. So listening to how Matt has built a business for himself and how we went about doing it and his view of the independent wrestling scene and all that was, it was really refreshing. I enjoyed it. Get a lot of great feedback from him, too. Yeah, he's awesome.

And he was so grateful to be on this show. He really expressed that to me. He said that you told him behind the scenes that you would have booked him to go over Brett Harden, WCW back in 99. I don't know if that was on the record or not, but he did mention that to me. Yeah, we talked a little bit about that. Hey, 25 years ago today, Eric, Hulk Hogan, Goldberg, Georgia.

I know you're doing a special presentation for ad-free shows tonight as we tape this, but any general thoughts 25 years ago today as we tape this? No, it's just funny, you know, because the ad-free shows team have been promoting this watch-a-long that we're doing tonight. And it's going to be live. And if you're part of the Edfrey shows community, you can join in and watch.

And we're going to have some fun for sure. Special guest, surprise, all that good stuff. But it's really fascinating how, you know, 25 years later, my timeline was blown up this morning with people talking about it, acknowledging it. Of course, sharing their opinions of it. So it was, it's, you know, it's cool to have been involved with something. that resonated so powerfully with people not only then but still now that's kind of cool i think it's amazing that people still look back so fondly at that as this transformative moment in wrestling history 40 000 fans millions of people watching a really special moment go check that out

ad free shows to copy man you mentioned your timeline i just saw we'll throw a little plug here both you and i are on threads the new platform i know this isn't wrestling related but you're a pretty in tune guy a smart guy what do you think of all of these different platforms popping up as twitter alternatives do you see a viable path for that and i'm curious to see how wrestlers in particular take advantage of those branding opportunities and trying to hop on these new outlets any thoughts on any of that eric i and nothing other than just curiosity you know it i don't know how viable another platform is, are they just going to split the pie or, you know, look, Facebook meta has probably got a much deeper and stronger relationship with the advertising

community because they've been at it longer. Sure. If that's the case that I think, you know, Zuckerberg's got a real hand up because ad-supported platforms like this are going to do well. And I know, well, I don't know, I read, I hear that Musk is having a difficult time with that. So we'll see, you know, it's hard to get people to break their habits, you know, and I think people have become so habitualized and addicted to Twitter for so long that I think a lot of people will be like me and probably you where, you know, you just end up writing both, maybe splitting your time between them. But I, you know, I went on just because I want to see, you know, the greatest way for me to learn something.

thing is to do it and not just read about it. So I thought, what the hell? I'll go on and see what this platform is. I've done the same with TikTok and other platforms. Didn't like TikTok at all and deleted that app. But yeah, we'll just see where it goes, man. If it blows up and I'll probably blow up with it, just divides the pie, then I'll be spending a little time on both.

I think one of the beautiful upsides of a platform like a Twitter or what Threads is intending to be when it's working at full strength is that it does become like a real-time public gathering space. I think it's one of the coolest things ever, Eric, that fans can turn on a wrestling show that's airing live. And even though they're not sitting next to each other, they can have a public conversation in real time about it. And it always makes me wonder what would that have been like in the Monday Night Wars era where we had two super hot shows going on at the same time, millions of people tuning in and then engaging, creating engagement in the social public square platform where you can bounce off one another in terms of conversation. I think it would have made for an amazing fuel for the not just advertising community, but the product as well as far as wrestling is concerned. well especially with regard to the monday night war because of course nitro and monday night raw were head to head and and they were live so i mean it just would would have absolutely fed into you know if somehow you could magically transport um today's technology back into the mid 90s late 90s

i just can't even imagine what that would have been like because there were weeks regularly where the combined audience for both natural and raw was north of seven to eight million people or that's households and it's usually you know 1.8 or 2.1 whatever the number is now uh people per household so you've got millions and millions and millions of people and they would have been able to engage not after the show's over but while it's going on so yeah that would have been awesome would have been insane erik bischoff reading mean tweets on air on nitro i would have done it i know you would i would have done mean tweets i would have done a eric fires back i would have just tweaked people as much as I could so cool think about what if uh that's more people than

who tuned into a W collision this past week eric i'll tell you that it was a rough week for collision and everyone has been waiting and craving your thoughts on this 452 000 viewers for the first pre-taped edition of a w collision airing this past saturday night uh nearly the same as friday's rampage show, which did $450,000. The demos were the exact same point one three for 18 to 49. What say you, my friend? I wouldn't worry about it too much if I was Tony. Look, it's a Fourth of July weekend.

There's just not a lot of people sitting around watching television over the Fourth of July weekend, at least not as many as there normally are. That's one factor. I, when I say I wouldn't be concerned, I would be aware, I wouldn't be panicking, I wouldn't, you know, it wouldn't be keeping me up at night. But I would definitely be aware because of 452,000 viewers, that's 40, 45% of a drop from their initial premiere episode only three weeks ago. And you and I talked about it. I predicted they were going to drop somewhere between 25 or 30 and they dropped 27%. I don't think you can get more accurate than that, in a forecast, at least.

But when you're losing 40 plus percent within three weeks, let's see what happens next Saturday. If next Saturday is a reflection or looks close to where we were this past Saturday, then if I'm Tony, I'm starting to think about things a little bit. What do I need to change? What do I need to do? and if I'm TNT, is it more outside the church, so to speak? Are you preaching to the choir with your on-channel promotions?

Or do you need to go outside and promote outside of your own network to try to bring some other eyeballs who might not otherwise be all that aware of AEW? So I don't know, man, but a little bit concerned if we see another drop off or even if we come in at $450,000, that to me would be an issue. And I don't think it bodes well for the fall. Well, what's going to happen when college football starts? What is that?

A month and a half away? Yeah, you get the premier sporting events starting with college football. When does college football start? End of August. I mean, unless collision is able to build and turn itself into must-see wrestling, It has to be compelling and episodic in order to achieve that. If they can achieve that between now and college football and build a little bit of momentum, they might not be such a bloodbath.

But if they don't, if they're continuing to dribble in at around 450 or 500,000 viewers leading into college football, I think we're going to see some weeks in the fall where the numbers are high 2's, low 3s, for 200, high, 200,000, low 300,000 for viewership for collision. And, you know, I don't know. Who knows what, you know, it all depends what TBS is looking for. What were, what were their expectations? Right, right. And we don't know that.

And we don't know that. So a lot of the speculation and all is kind of doesn't really mean much. It's just an opinion. Unless you know what the expectations are or the goals were, if there is a threshold, We don't know what that is. The other thing, though, I think you have to think about within the context of business. And again, none of us have any idea what Warner Discovery is hoping for for collision. But if the ratings continue to deteriorate the way they are,

I think Brandon Thurston had a nice post over the weekend. Brandon, I think, laid out six or eight over at WrestleMania. Six or eight of the top 10 TBS owned, you know, out of the TBS library shows that they could do like friends. They're doing with friends now. TBS has a massive, massive library of very popular shows that still do well. They do in the 400,000, 500,000 times sometimes 600,000 viewers in that Saturday night time slot that Collision is in. If Collision finds itself delivering lower numbers, than library material that they've already paid for.

They don't have to pay it to air it again. It's all about where do they make the most money. And if collision is costing them $50,000 an episode or $100,000 an episode or whatever the numbers, I don't know. Maybe you do. I don't know. But it's something.

And only delivering numbers that don't even equal what they can do with their existing library, then it's a final. financial decision but we're not there yet yeah and again the indication that we've been given from tony con is that this was a david zaslov request specifically for more a w content on the turner platforms and that it only goes through the existing television contract which as we're led to believe expires some point fall of 2024 so it's entirely plausible on that pretense there, Eric, that collision could more or less

be an experiment. Well, and again, I don't, first of all, I'm not calling anybody a liar, but David Zaisloff is not programming TBS. I can assure you that. Now, there may be another, there may be

a different relationship beyond just a television licensing agreement between Turner and AEW. If Turner owns a piece of AEW, for example, wink, wink. If Turner does own a piece of AEW, then that's one, what we were talking about earlier. That's when the expectations and the network's expectations in a long-term plan, you have to have some insight into that. Do I think that David Zazlov went, ooh, I want to see more

of Tony Kahn's wrestling on TBS? I really don't, unless it was part of a bigger strategy. and then I could see Zazloff approving something like that. But, you know, the way that story kind of was reported is, you know, David Zaisloff wants more wrestling. We'll see. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think so. I rarely am on the show. I'm not sure.

My accuracy is ridiculous. I mean, weeks in advance, I predict things and they come true. It's just fun. And then when you don't, you get your head shape. well yeah when i'm wrong i when i'm wrong i have to pay for it no i mean listen i also look at it beyond just oh here's the wrestling program it's here is live content every single week or mostly live content every single week that we're guaranteeing that's new and you know what is the perceived value of that but that also begs my

question then to you and i would love your perspective on this because this is something that's very popular in the conversation too i saw a lot of people saying well was a pre-taped show and you know spoilers are out there so because of that they're not necessarily tuning in live do you think that pre-taped versus live has a marginal or a large effect in viewership in 2023 i think it can if i were in tony's shoes right now i would describe two or three percent of my loss to that it's it does happen but it's usually minimal it really is um two three maybe even five percent i would i would i would write five percent of that loss off to the fact that it was taped and again we'll see is next week live or i haven't

seen the show so is it live or is it tape i believe it's live well we'll see i think next week's a big week. Again, I think if you see an uptick, if we see it bounce back a little bit from this past weekend, which I would expect it would, and I think things are okay. But if we see another dip, the other thing that a Turner may be doing, if indeed, wink, wink, there's a relationship beyond just a traditional TV licensing agreement, is Turner may be saying, let's let's throw what we everything we got at this and see how it does and if it does well it looks like it'll grow we'll keep going if it doesn't we won't be it too concerning the joe from ad-free shows wants to eric do you see a w doing a streaming site

sometime soon i i have no idea i have no idea i think you know just by being aware of things that are going on around us i think if you if you don't have a strategy for a streaming site you're probably sleeping at the wheel so i would imagine that there are discussions or plans or maybe more than that taking place right now. I think it's a necessary evil. It's not even an evil. It should be a revenue opportunity, but it's absolutely necessary. I mean, we're talking about it today. You know, we've got a brand new social media platform out there in threats. You know, with technology evolving as rapidly as it does, can, you have to stay ahead of the curve. And I think anybody that doesn't have a streaming platform,

or at least a plan for one in place right now is definitely behind the eight ball. Warning, the following ZipRecruiter radio spot you are about to hear is going to be filled with F words. When you're hiring, we at ZipRecruiter know you can feel frustrated, forlorn even, like your efforts are futile, and you can spend a fortune trying to find fabulous people, only to get flooded with candidates who are just fine. Fortunately, ZipRecruiter figured out how to fix all that. And right now, you can try ZipRecruiter for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash Zip. With ZipRecruiter, you can forget your frustrations because we find the right people for your roles fast, which is our absolute favorite F word.

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Because that's been my thought process that I think if Turner, Warner Bros. Discovery, I should say specifically, if they're going to experiment at all with streaming and wrestling, I think airing the AW-W. Wembley show on the max platform is the perfect time and chance to do that do you see any viability for a one-off to test the waters could happen i mean it does you know it does make sense because it's a big event that's got a lot of buzz it's going to look fantastic it is a it is a major international event can't discount that at all and you know when an event looks that good it feels that

important. You want to show that off to as many people as you possibly can. So I mean, I agree with you. It would be a great opportunity. And if you are thinking about possibly doing something in the future with AEW on the streaming platform or whatever, then it would be. Now, you may also have somebody who's actually running that network who doesn't want to upset the brand or look like a lab project. for random programming that generally doesn't have any fit or promotion on that network. So who knows, man, I don't like to speculate about things I have absolutely no understanding of. I don't think it's necessarily speculating, though, because I think using context clues, Eric,

it would make sense to utilize an event with that much luster and interest in testing the waters with a product that you already own. Turner already, one of our discovery already owns Max. They have this working relationship with AEW. Where else would they err? They could air it on natural pay-per-view, standard pay-per-view, but guess what? They've got a pay-per-view the very next week. So I don't see AEW going back-to-back weeks with traditional pay-per-view where people have to pony up $50-plus dollars in some cases.

I think Max makes so much sense for AEW to test the waters with us. on the streaming platform with Warner Bros. Discovery. It does, unless you're a programmer. And then it probably doesn't because it doesn't really fit. Again, that's from a programmer's point of view. You've got to think like a programmer and they work really hard. And they buy content, they create content. All of it designed to fit a very targeted, not just demographic,

but socioeconomic demographic as well. So who is the programmer that you're referring to then in this case? I don't know. I don't know who that is, but I know that any network has a head of programming and that person's job and all the people that work underneath them is to develop or purchase content that fits this relatively finely defined image of or brand of, their audios. That's where programmers get a little funky sometimes. And I've seen a lot of great content.

Look at the most famous one is, what's the Mark Burnett show on the island? One of the first real successful reality shows. Survivor. Not Fear Factor. Survivor. Survivor. Survivor was a show that a lot of networks here in the United States.

it just couldn't figure out how to make it fit it didn't fit it wasn't drama it wasn't sports it was it was this weird little new thing and everybody passed on it until mark went out and raised the money on his own and bought the time and it turned into this colossal hit that he ended up owning a piece of for as long and it's probably still on yeah but the reason that he couldn't sell that show it was because it didn't fit any program network is exactly executive's profile of their programming content. So when you just drop something in, even though I would agree with you that because it's Wembley, because it's in the UK, because it's a wrestling event, because it's so big,

it's going to look so great, absolutely you would want to showcase it, but not at the expense of your network. That's, and that's a conversation between executives. But Max wouldn't be undermining their network. Turner is. I'm talking about the MaxNet. AEW doesn't currently exist on Max. There's no promotion for it.

There's no anything for it. So just to drop it in like from a helicopter because it's a cool event is kind of incongruent to traditional programming strategy. Programmers don't think like that. Accountants do. An entrepreneur would, but programmers don't. They think differently. And that would be a conversation between the head of programming for Max and an executive, probably not Zazlop, but somebody close to him.

That would be a conversation between those two people. And without knowing, number one, who those people are or what their public positions are on professional wrestling, who knows, maybe it'll happen. It's not a bad idea, but I can understand why I won't either. AEW does have content on Max. Oh, I didn't even know that. The All Access show is available on Max right now. All right. Well, then it makes more sense, doesn't it?

Yeah, I just think, and I'm not going to use the word. Well, I'm going to use the word. I just know you hate it. Synergy that these two entities would have together testing the waters with something like that. I just don't see a way in which AEW does back-to-back weekends on traditional pay-per-view. No, that would be, that wouldn't be smart. And Rosie wanted to know, do you think it's a good idea to do all in and all out on back-to-back weekends as is? Yeah.

I mean, it's hard. That's going to be a fact. Physically, logistically, difficult. But Wembley's going to get so much buzz. There are going to be so many people talking about it. We're going to see a lot of video from it. We're going to see a lot of social media traffic for it. all of that elevates the AEW brand and it certainly can't hurt the pay-per-view coming up

and most likely would help it. I would think it's common sense. You've got people excited about your product. You've been able to showcase it in front of 70 or 75,000 people. There's a great buzz on it. Hopefully there'll be a great buzz on it. There should be unless it's a catastrophe inside of the ring and I don't see that happening. So you've got a great buzz.

You've got a showcase event. You've got 70, 75,000 people. damn how could that hurt your pay-per-view if anything you would think that you would drag some of that audience who might not otherwise buy an AEW pay-per-view maybe they're not quite convinced yet it will be after this event so no i think it's a net positive 75,000 tickets sold for this show so far you think they can get to 90 i don't know i don't know at the when is the event sometime in august the last weekend of august well they still have time right 20,000 tickets, although the trajectory for ticket sales, it's taken them a while. I mean, they went from zero to 60,000 in what seems like about five minutes, wasn't five minutes, but it seemed like it. They went very, very fast. And then it kind of stopped and hovered around 63, 65,000 for quite a while.

And now it's back up again, uh, incrementally compared to the initial sales for the first 10 days. I don't know I got a bit of a bold prediction I think you're going to see just because of the nature of the show and the stadium and the location I think you're going to start to see a lot of the former WWE names

featured a little more prominently on AW TV in the weeks leading up to all in could you you could argue that that's one of the reasons that they're having the success or haven't because they you know Europe hasn't seen Moxley and Chris Jerry and, you know, Mero and look at the abundance of WWE names on that roster that Europe hasn't seen now in five, six, seven years.

But on the flip side, they've also never seen AEW period, so there's curiosity off of that as well. I don't know. We'll see. You know, they're still only delivering 55,000, 75,000 viewers per week. So that would suggest that every single viewer that watches AEW bought a ticket, I don't think so i think there's a percentage of those people that bought tickets but i think a large percentage of that audience are coming to see talent that they fell in love with in wwe and they

haven't seen in five or six years and you know how you'll know when i'm right or when i'm wrong is when they go back next year that's when you'll know see what kind of interest there is there i expect that's going to be a pretty heavy hitting show and i'm really curious to see how tony navigates setting up the card for that one because with two major events and back-to-back weekends. You could argue that all out the weekend after is even more significant because you're going to have to sell pay-per-views for that. Whereas all in, I feel pretty confident there's going to be some other alternative way of viewing, whether it's on a Turner property or Max or whatever it is, I feel pretty confident that it's not going to be traditional

pay-per-view. So we'll see, Eric. We are about a month and a half away from that. It's going to be an amazing event. There's going to be 75,000 plus fans going absolutely nuts. They're going to be rock hard seeing Will Osprey versus Kenny Omega 3. It's playing right into the fan base. But I also know that they're going to be rock hard, Eric, when they are throwing up that blue chew in their pocket. And they're going to be having themselves a good night. Bluechew is a unique online service delivering the same active ingredients

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no man i just open up my front door package just sit right there on my deck and i'm good to go and that's the best part you're going to be good to go anytime you try blue chew day night morning after you're feeling the idas following your fourth of july barbecue all that wag you tenderloin feel like you can't move you pop a blue chew and all of a sudden there's renewed energy at your fingertips blue chew wants to help you have better sex discovery your options at bluechew.com. Chew it and do it. And we got a special deal for our listeners here on Strictly Business.

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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 new edition of The Insiders, Conrad sits down with former Turner Finance Executive Dirty Dick Chita, talking about the internal war between WCW and Turner and the Monday Night War with the WWF. And the system said, hey, you're not going to believe who's down there. She's China's down there and this. What are you talking about? and I went over to her window

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i want to continue our conversation about international pay-per-views eric because wembley doing 75k the same time that w is bringing money in the bank over to london and getting this amazing amazing reaction from those fans there i think it's open the door for a lot of opportunities in the near future for wrestling to truly go international with major premium events. And John Sina himself at this money in the bank pay-per-view, whether he was prompted to or not, tease the audience with the idea of bringing WrestleMania to the UK. What do you think about the viability of bringing an event like WrestleMania overseas? And do you see something like that happening within the next few years?

I certainly could see it happening. I can't imagine what the staff, the team over at WWE are thinking in terms of having to produce a WrestleMania in overseas. I mean, the logistics are tough. You know, first of all, you got all the travel involved. You're working with a lot of vendors you've never worked with before. You know, it's going to be a challenge. When it happens, it's going to be a big challenge.

And, of course, you have the obvious one, right? You want to be in prime time, whatever day of the week, assuming it's going to be a Friday night or Saturday night or Sunday, perhaps. You know, you want to make sure that that live event is available to the largest sector of your audience, which is domestic U.S., to buy so they can watch it live and don't have to stay up until 2 o'clock in the morning. in order to do it. So that's the biggest issue. And again,

the cost is everything is more expensive when you do it overseas. It's the logistic side of that would just, man, I wouldn't want to be on that team. Let's put it that way. I just know, you know, I go to WrestleMania and I'll be backstage.

Or they ask me to do something on camera. I've done it recently. But if you're backstage, you know, a day before, two days before WrestleMania, and you look at the, eyes of the people that are there to work, you know, whether it's a production team, logistics, on-ground logistics, by the second day, they're like the walking dead. So adding the stress of doing it internationally on top of that, mind-boggling to me.

But then again, you know, there's some seasoned vets there. They've been doing it in Saudi Arabia, not to the same extent. It's not a live pay-per-view, but... Oh, there's a live pay-per-view. No, I mean, it's a lot of peer view, but it's not as big in scope. No, no, no. That's a different animal. That's a different animal.

Yeah, I think you have to think about all the events that come with it, too, aside from just the two-day WrestleMania, you got Smackdown, you got Raw, you got Hall of Fame stuff, you got back-to-access stuff. There's just a ton of logistics to have to try to comb through. But I don't think that it's implausible in the near future either. And, I mean, the audience is certainly there to support it. We saw them do that massive clash at the castle show just last year where they did 50, 60 plus thousand over there. And then you throw in what we're seeing, Wembley, 75K.

Rosie wants to know, was John Cena's promo, this hinting of a WrestleMania overseas? Was that a reaction to the AEW show, in your opinion? Again, don't know. could be I wouldn't think that would be the driving force behind it. It may have been on the table for all we know.

This is something that's been in discussions for months or a year, right? You don't sit around in July and go, huh, you know, we got about another eight or nine months until WrestleMania and we got to plan the next one and where should we do it next? You know, I think especially because the bidding rights

right the amount of money that w w is paid to bring a russomania to a location is no small chunk of change it is massive amounts of money and those negotiations start taking place years in advance they don't just start happening six months in advance they usually would happen a year probably two or three more than likely is is when those conversations would start taking place um so i i you know about bringing a rustlemania to the uk has probably been bantered around for a while now does wembley speed that thought process up a little bit perhaps but i don't think much yeah and and on top of that i'll throw this other wrinkle into it eric with this endeavor acquisition Does the pay-per-view model change for WW in a few years?

It very well may, right? It may not be airing premium live events on Peacock at their own will whenever they want to, however they want to. For all we know, Endeavor takes over and says, no, this is how, this is going to be your directive on how you're going to be doing pay-per-views going forward. and the idea of doing a 3 o'clock p.m. Eastern Standard Time pay-per-view domestically for a show that's happening overseas, maybe that's not quite as appealing. Whereas now, WW can just throw it on whenever on Peacock. They've already got their money.

It doesn't really matter. I think that would be an interesting situation to keep your eyes on. Yeah, no, you got a good point. And again, it all depends on it. Now, I did read and I did read much of it. I just basically read the headline. But if what I read, the headline that I read is remotely accurate, John Cena's promo caught the ears of some of the politicians in the UK

and, you know, started an interesting amount of energy at that level. I don't think, you know, I don't think John went out there and just won it. I really don't. He's way too much of a professional and understands business far too much than to go out there and throw something like that out there, just because it felt right in the moment. That's a rookie move, and John Sina is no rookie. So I would imagine, and that's why I say,

I think this is probably something that's been in the plans or being discussed at least for quite some time, and I think John was told to go out there and do it. Did you see John Sina's promo? No. No. It was amazing, Eric, seeing how for so many years, John Sina would get these polarizing reactions

The fans would boo, let's go Sina, Sina sucks The song would hit, they'd start singing John Sina sucks to his theme song Now, John Sina comes out And you would think Michael Jackson was out there It's unbelievable Absence makes the heart grow fonder factor That's exactly what that is

And he's deserving of it too I always felt John got a bad rep from a lot of fans So seeing him get that adulation, I think is well deserved. I'll be honest, Eric, I think we're more likely to see a Royal Rumble or a Somerslam in the UK first as a litmus test before we see WrestleMania. And I don't think that's a bad litmus test at all. Those are premium events in their own rights. And I think UK crowds for the Royal Rumble would be fantastic. But I think that would be a great way to test the market and see what kind of interest there would be for a large-scale stadium show at that.

level for WTO. I agree. And I thought, you know, the one thing I did think about when I heard about John throwing the WrestleMania tease out there was, wow, why would they, first of all, I know that they're probably locked up or close to it for two or three more WrestleMania's in the future. There are negotiations going on at this point, I have to believe, with not next year. Next year's already done, but the following year and probably the year after that, in terms of location and cities bidding and things like that. So that's already. happening has to be has to be happening already um which you know why would you teach something that you can't deliver for three years two or three years right but it would make sense to get

everybody fired up and maybe announce a wrestlemania three years from now four years from now but in the meantime here we come with and i agree with you i think royal rumble would be awesome would be awesome okay yeah definitely micmac says hang on eric called john sina thugging an m&m want to be in the day so you've come around on him eric i've always had a massive amount of respect for john sina massive not only when i worked with him and and i did a couple things in the ring with him obviously and had some fun but just watching him especially backstage you know and in knowing you know what his schedule was like now this is back when it's 300 days a year on the road and oh by the way when you get days off uh you're doing make a wish you're doing this you're doing that i mean

John Sina worked so freaking hard for so long. Nothing but massive respect to John Sita. You got my ear on that one, my friend. I agree with you entirely. Anything else you'd like to hit on here as we wrap up this edition of Strictly Business, Eric? No, I kind of think that's it for now. Well, we want you to join our team here on Strictly Business.

Head on over to Advertise witheric.com. your product, get your business, whatever it may be out in front of thousands and thousands of listeners every single week. I don't know if you saw Eric. I'm pretty sure you did. 83 weeks currently sitting at number one on the Apple podcast charts. And that's 83 weeks and strictly business together at 83 weeks.com. It's a hell of an accomplishment. You should be very proud of yourself and I'm proud to be part of the team here. We'd love for you to be part of our team as well. Advertised with Eric.com. And don't forget, guys, Eric and I are coming. coming to you in Maryland, July 23rd.

We're going to be part of MCW's fan jam. You buy any combination of the Eric Bischoff meet and greets. There's a bunch of different options for them, and you're going to get admission to our live edition of 83 weeks and strictly business. That is Sunday, July 23rd in Joppa, Maryland. It is going to be a blast. Eric Bischoff, anything else?

I got one more. I don't want to forget. On July 26, I'm going to be at Linesider Brewing for Best Trivia Ever. Oh, you're very interesting ever. This is the second time I've done one of these. Best Trivia ever is an event that takes place. They do hundreds of things around the country.

They work with different beer distributors and local clubs and bars and all that. And they put on one hell of a trivia event. And I'm going to be hosting it. So this Best Trivia ever, you can find your tickets at Best Triviaever.com. I'm going to be an East Greenwich, Rhode Island on the Twitter. 26th. I think our meet, greets started around 7 o'clock, and then we're going to just dovetail our way right into the show. It's going to be a lot of fun. But get your tickets at best trivia ever.com, and we'll see you in Rhode Island. Cannot wait. Lots of great stuff for Eric Bischoff coming up, including next week's edition of Strictly Business.

So make sure that you are subscribed to us, 83weeks.com, at freeshows.com. This has been Strictly Business. We will see you next time. Thank you.