83 Weeks with Eric Bischoff - Strictly Business with Eric Bischoff #41: Terry Funk, AEW on MAX, and Ask Eric Anything

Episode Date: August 25, 2023

In this edition of Strictly Business, Eric Bischoff takes time to remember Terry Funk, looks at comments from Tony Khan about AEW streaming on MAX, and answers your questions about the business of the business! Please note this was taped before the passing of Bray Wyatt. We extend our condolences to the family and friends of Windham Rotunda. Special thanks to this week's sponsor! Manscaped- Get 20% Off and Free Shipping with the code WRESTLEBIZ at Manscaped.com. 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

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I, of course, am John Alba, but I'm not the star Strictly Business. Instead, I'm joined every single week at a man of the hour. Mr. Eric Bischoff. Eric, how we doing? today, my friend. We're doing good. I'm dragging a little bit. It's been a pretty intense a couple weeks of travel. I think I've only spent about two days home in a row in the last three weeks. So this is the last weekend that I'll be traveling for at least two weeks. So looking forward to getting this one under my belt. I can't wait to get where I'm going. I'm

going to be in Kentucky this weekend, this two-day event. I always have fun when to get there, but man, this travel is kicking my butt, kicking my butt. Well, at least you're not going to be over in London for A.W. All In, but we know that we will be keeping a close eye on that show as we have here on Strictly Business. Eric, we are live right now on ad-free shows for our ad-free show subscribers. So if you're watching live via AFS, hit us up, shoot us a note. We'd love to hear from you, ad-free shows.com. Get your early access to podcast like Strictly Business and live tapings. If you're a top guy or top gal, we'd love to have you over there. And of course, make sure you're subscribed to 83 weeks.com where you will get Strictly Business dropped right into your feed every single week. And of course, we cover the business of the business on Strictly Business.

And we have a lot to get to today on that front, including a bunch of questions about the business of the business from our Strictly Business listeners. There's enough business to be passed around, Eric. Yeah, I'm looking forward to that one. You know, we often get really, really good questions. And I enjoy those. So, thanks for doing that. Absolutely. Absolutely. I think we should get down to business, not waste any more time.

I want to talk about streaming at the top of our show here. And we're going to have that discussion. But I would be remiss if I did not ask you first, the news that we found out yesterday, the passing of the legendary Terry Funk. I think one of the coolest things about everything that's happened, Eric, is not a single person has had a bad thing to say about Terry Funk and paying tribute to him. what are your recollections and memories of Terry? You know, I got to work with Terry off and on over the years when I first got to WCW for a brief period of time. Of course, I was an announcer back then.

So my interactions with him were fairly limited. Certainly I've heard every, well, I guess I haven't heard every Terry Funk story because I think there's a lot of them out there. But, you know, I often talk to Dusty Rose or Rick Flare. or people that really worked with and knew Terry well. And I'll be honest, you know, there's like anytime you've got peers kind of competing for that top spot over the years, I'm sure that there were rough spots in those relationships. But the amount of respect and love that both Rick Flair had and it still does, I think,

and Dusty in particular, said a lot about Terry Funk to me. even though I never really got to know them well on a personal level. Like I said, we interacted business-wise and backstage. And later on, you know, I worked with Terry on Nitro. And what I remember most about Terry Funk is the last time I saw him. And we were at a convention of some sort of this couple years ago now, maybe two or three. And Terry and I ended up in the same car. somebody was either picking us up or driving us to the airport one or the other and i had about

45 minutes in the car with terry and i got just a glimpse of what terry funk was like away from the arena away from the job so speak and i remember thinking man oh man i wished i wished you know i had been in the business 20 years earlier than i was or had that opportunity to just to share some some drive time with Terry Fong he was an amazing storyteller such a genuine down-to-earth humble man but yet such a powerful character and I remember saying to myself when I said goodbye to Terry I'm thinking damn I really missed out on getting to know this guy because he's just one of those people that you could sit and talk to you sit down at lunch with him and before you know what you're closing up the restaurant at 10 o'clock at night you know he could just

he could uh he could really take you immerse you if you will in that era where terry funk was such a dominant force it was just fun listening to him that's the first thing i thought of when i heard the news actually was that last ride i think there's a fair argument to make that terry funk is on the short list of most influential professional wrestlers You know, talk to Mick Foley, you know, as an example. I think Nick said it in his own post yesterday. You know, Terry Funk was a mentor to him. Mick Foley probably built his characters because he's had a couple in large part because

the influence is someone like Terry Funk had on him. And look at what, you know, McFoly has done in the industry for the last 20 years or so. He's really, he's an icon himself, you know, that modeled his career in, in many respects, I think, after Terry Fong. So you just can't say enough good things about Terry Fong. Certainly so. Great tribute there from you. Eric, we got a few of our ad-free shows fans and family and friends trickling on in here. Dylan says, first live recording of Strictly Business, hell of an experience.

Welcome to the Strictly Business Party. I was going to say, Dylan, I don't recall seeing your name up here before during a live show. So thanks for joining us. I appreciate it. Got Josh Fields here. Dylan also says rip Terry Funk. Without Terry, there is no ECW. And that is an interesting proclamation and potentially truthful in and in of itself, Dylan. Okay, let's get down to business here. Eric, I want to talk some streaming news. We have heard the past few weeks about Max starting to move towards live streaming content. I read it a few weeks ago on this podcast where they were going to pivot towards live streaming

the Major League Baseball postseason games that Turner has access to, the NCAA tournament as well, and that would be part of a live BR tier, Bleacher Report tier on Max. Today, as we record this, there's a report that it's looking like CNN is going to start having live stream content on Macs. So the technology, Eric, is seemingly. coming around for the Max platform. And Tony Conn was on CNBC this past week, and he mentioned that he would love to be on Max. I'll read you a portion of the quote saying, frankly, America, the revenue you drive out there is in many ways the strongest individual point certainly. And I think those US

streaming rights are very valuable. So potentially we could land. I would love to be on Max. And I think that would be an amazing thing. And Max is certainly my favorite streaming platform, and it is the streaming platform of my bosses at Warner Brothers Discovery, the people who carry AEW in the U.S., India, and many great territories. And I believe that together,

we can come up with something really special. But if it was up to me, I would love to land on Max, home of all my favorite shows. So take that for what you will. But it certainly seems, Eric, like... Sounds like a sales pitch to me, but whatever. Well, so it does sound like a sales pitch, but I know you've been a little tepid on the idea of Max for AEW,

but as some of these options start to increase, are your thoughts changing on that at all? No, and let me be clear. I don't know enough about the streaming industry. I'm not involved in it. I haven't been involved in any transactions. I don't know the model. I don't know the revenue streams currently. I only know what I read, and I don't deep dive into streaming because, again,

There's just so much I don't understand and don't need to understand at this point. You know, Tony's comments were, you know, professional, business-related public commentary that you'd expect, very positive and respectful towards his parent company, which is exactly what someone like Tony Khan should be at this point. But I don't, you know far more about the streaming industry right now than I do. So I don't really have a strong opinion. Certainly, I know, I know, like everybody knows, it's even close to the television business that streaming is obviously having an incredible impact on the way we watch content. I know it does for my wife and I. It wasn't until recently when our house was struck by lightning, for example, and we lost

our Wi-Fi for a week and a half, almost two weeks. And I was forced to go back and watch direct. TV. It was like, wow, you know, now I know why I don't watch cable anymore. You know, there's nothing there that really catches my interest other than, you know, the weather channel, what I need to know what the weather's like or news, which is, you know, 24 hours a day on cable. But beyond that, there's so little that's available on cable that I can't get on a streaming

platform. So it's where the business is going. Tony is smart. He sees that like we all do and is going to try to carve out the best opportunity he can, whether it's with Max or anybody else. I'm applying, some of my perspective on this early on is kind of applying the same programming strategies that I am familiar with that were kind of commonplace and core to the architecture of building a network. back in the day, I hate saying back in the day, it's hate it, it's been so overused. But, you know, a lot of that was branding, you know, defining your network and giving your

network an identity in a position in the marketplace based on a very specific genre of content. And, you know, for example, you know, shortly after I left Turner, you know, TNT was the drama network, TBS was the comedy network. So the bulk, not all of their programming, but the bulk of their programming, particularly their first run and the programming that they're spending a lot of money on, was targeted towards that section of the audience that was looking primarily for comedy with regard to TBS. Same thing with T&T, drama. In my mind, at least, I would think that streaming. platforms would, if not at first, eventually adopt that same kind of strategy so that you've got consistency in your programming. And your audience knows if they're looking for male adrenaline,

male soap opera-ish, contact sports, combat sports, things of that nature, any kind of sports, really, that you want to have a platform that people recognize as the home for that type of content. and Max currently is kind of all over the map but we'll see where it goes I wish I knew more about the industry so I could speak more in depth we'll see what happens man I seem to say that a lot lately

let's not jump to conclusions let's just see what happens you mentioned something very interesting there and that was genre what genre are we talking about here we've had this conversation ad nauseum Is pro wrestling considered a sport when you're talking about this particular lens? Is it considered scripted entertainment? What does it fall under? And we've talked about that.

And that was something that I wanted to know firsthand from Tony Kong. How does Warner Brothers Discovery view AW in through what lens does it categorize it? Because that could be very relevant to the streaming discussion. So, Eric, this past week on the media call, ahead of AW All In, I had a chance to ask Tony Con, just that. Here's what you have to say. Hey, Tony. Thanks, Jim, for the time.

Thank you, Tony, for the time as well. Congratulations on the big events coming up these next couple of weeks. You have been really vocal, Tony, the past month or so, about the streaming potential for AW in the future, specifically as far as Max is concerned. And I'm sure that leveraging a show like All In into further distribution would be something you guys would have interest in. I'm curious, from your discussions with Warner Brothers Discovery, what lens do they view AEW through as a property? We've heard reports that they're going to

repurpose Bleach report for the Max platform as a tier. Do they view AEW as a sport-centric program, or does it fall in a different category? I believe we do fall in with sports. We're a very, very prominent wide sporting event we do tremendous ratings this you may have seen a press release that Warner Brothers Discovery put out yesterday afternoon publicizing the success of AEW Dynamite Fight for the Fallen which was the number one show on cable and multiple demographics and among young men was the number two show on all television including network and Warner Brothers Discovery very excited about the potential of AEW.

In the past year, I've been very fortunate to get to spend time with Mr. Zazloff, and Mr. Zazloff is really excited about AEW. I will take it a step further. I saw Mr. Zazloff over the holidays with my father, and I walked up to him and introduced my father to him, and the first thing he said to my dad is, your son is effing killing it.

So I was very pleased with that. and proud of that and always nice when your boss tells your dad that you're doing a good job and i believe it's true i think we're doing a great job and warner brothers discovery very pleased with the work we're doing and i'm just glad that uh you know mr zasloff likes what we're doing i think that bodes really well for everybody at a ew and and the future of the company and hopefully good for the wrestling business to have one of the most powerful people in entertainment take a notice of what we're doing, paying attention doing it, and trying to create opportunities for us. Thank you.

What do you think about those comments, Eric? Very positive, refreshing comments. Not much to read into it. It is what it is. And I think if David Zazlov is excited about AEW, then there is no downside to that. There's nothing to question, really. other than, you know, let's see how, it's not even a question. It's an observation.

Let's see where it ends up, you know, if what Tony is saying, and I believe it to be true, I'm not suggesting it's not, but given those statements in the conversation, the brief conversation, polite conversation that David Zazloff had with Tony's father, and that's indicative of a good, strong, healthy relationship. So there's no downside, really. What do you make of the sports-centric property? You know, we've had this conversation. We've had people on, a friend of yours that we had on a couple of weeks ago that had some

Yeah. And, you know, he was talking to people, you know, on the ad sales side, right? He's got a little different view of it. And sports-centric? I don't know. It's either sports or it's not. but I think perhaps the sports-centric comment maybe reflects the idea that they're selling it

as a live event like sports is, but nobody thinks it's a sport. And maybe that's just semantics at this point. I don't think so. I think sports is a category. I think professional wrestling is a category, and there probably is some overlap. But the common denominator is that sports works because it's live

and wrestling works because it's live. So to that extent, maybe that is why it's sports-centric as opposed to male soap opera. I don't know. I just, you know, to parse it all out and break it down and have strong opinions about semantics, I think at this point it's pretty stupid. pivoting over to the

wwee side and this is somewhat related to the sports idea of collaboration with pro wrestling burke magnus last week who is the ESPN president of content was on the sports media podcast with one of our former guests here richard dichu if you haven't checked out that episode

with richard i definitely recommend you go and find that in our archives because he was fantastic smart guy very smart very smart Burke was on his podcast and Richard asked him about ESPN as a content distributor for WWE events and essentially Burke said that once upon a time maybe they would have looked at them in terms of acquiring for full distribution but now it's a little different and I'm going to read a part of his long quote from him on it and he said there's no hesitation anymore from a brand perspective or from a live event versus

scripted. They're fans and our viewers. There's tremendous overlap. So to me, it's just about the business of it and if there's something that works. I may have said this to you last time we talked, but to their credit, they run a 52 week a year business, right? And I'm thinking, well, let me start from the linear perspective. 52 weeks a year is impossible for us to do on almost any configuration based on the other rights that we have. So that actually cuts against us from a linear perspective, but on the digital side, if we were able to be in business with them on a streaming or direct to consumer distribution or a pay-per-view distribution or something as such, I think that's more easily achievable and they have a great product. So, end quote

there. Basically what Burke is saying there is that putting ESPN programming, putting Raw or Smackdown on TV every single week is not something that's viable. But from a streaming distribution perspective, having some sort of content deal with WWE and ESPN is something that he could see potential for. Now that we've been hearing how Bob Eiger and Disney and ABC and ESPN properties are maybe trying to move a little away from Linear, do you have any comments on any of that? No, other than it makes sense, right?

I mean, when we talk about linear, you're talking about regular cable television and obviously broadcast, But, yeah, with all of the other rights that ESPN has, whether it's baseball or hockey, football, whatever it is, college, whatever it is that they're committed to, they would have to preempt Raw or Smackdown on a pretty consistent basis. And that wouldn't be good for anybody. On the streaming side or the digital side, yeah, it makes sense. I don't know how big the streaming platform is. I don't know if it's a one of the the place to be or if it's in. in the top 10. I don't know. And again, I really apologize. Perhaps I should take a crash course

on streaming the business of the streaming business, although I think it's evolving so quickly that it's really hard to get accurate information. And one of the big issues with the writer's strike now and actors is residuals from streaming. And when you listen to the streamers themselves, they're losing money. They're not making money. So share. sharing in the revenue is not something they're capable of doing at this point. It's going to change. So without knowing that background, without knowing the penetration of a particular streaming platform, subscription base of a streaming platform, the economics of that platform,

it's really hard to have an opinion, a valid one. You can all have opinions, but we all do, but most of them really don't matter much. And without that insight, you know, it's hard to comment. Look, it's always better to have more people that are potentially interested in your product. That's pretty obvious. So it's a good thing. It's not a bad thing. But it would be more interesting to hear from Nick Kahn and what Nick Kahn believes is the ideal streaming platform.

Because if there's anybody in the industry that has their finger on the pulse of streaming and the industry of the business of the streaming business, it would be Nick Kahn. I did think it was interesting that he mentioned there was no longer brand hesitance from ESPN, as far as WWE is concerned. Yeah, what that really means is, okay, we're fucking desperate. We've got to take anything we can get now because our view of ourselves has not panned out that well. And we're dying out here, folks. And we need more audience. That's what that really means.

I'll take you at your word on that one, Eric. I'll tell you what, there's going to be a lot of people we're going to be paying attention to ESPN in the coming weeks. And that's because more than anything else, fall does not just signature the leaves changing. It's also fantasy football season, Eric Bischoff,

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You know, the only thing I might, and I can't say I disagree, it's may have a different opinion slightly, is on how long it's going to take. I don't think it's going to take 10 or 15 years. I mean, cable television is going to be around much like AM radio. You know, AM radio is where you get public service warnings, where you get, you know, important information because not everybody has an FM radio, but just about everybody, at least now, has AM radio in their cars or access to one.

So I think you're always going to have cable television and it'll always be around, but just look over the last couple of years, last five years, the quality of that content, as Lori and I just experienced when we got struck by lightning, the quality of the content that's available on cable is just not there anymore. you're going to go to the big shows whether it again i'll use yellowstone as an example it's one everybody still can remember you know that changed an entire network that show became a business within a business um but game of thrones you know walking dead all of these shows although walking dead did start out on cable um a lot of the big scripted shows are are leaning into streaming

and going to streaming and is when the quality of the television product comes down that's available on cable, so does the audience. It just, it'll always be there. It'll be, it'll function almost, I think, as a utility and a lot of, you know, rerun type programs, you know, best ofs and nostalgia channels and Nick at night and things like that. But, you know, the majority of the high quality entertainment is going to go to a streaming platform. as that. This is an interesting question from the wrestling ace here, because I don't think this is something that a lot of people think about on the surface level, but there certainly

has to be some merit in some degree for it. Yes, do you think production issues may be possible at all in AW is used to scaling, shooting, and performing in 10,000 seat venues, so I wonder if there will be any kinks jumping to almost 10 times the usual venue size. Did you ever experience anything like that, Eric, when you guys would produce events in stadiums versus arenas? I don't think No, we didn't Because we had a really high quality Production team and had experience

So we didn't have any issues That presented themselves When we went to bigger venues or stadium shows I think with AEW Look, I got a guy there by name Mike Mansoury Mike Mansoury worked right next to Underneath Kevin Dunn for a long time in WWE

Mike Mansoury is a very, very very talented producer and has experience with larger stadium shows and bigger venues and so forth. So with a guy like Mike Mansourri in charge, I'm not suggesting that there won't be any glitches. There can always be glitches, you know, when you're doing a live show. Sometimes it's out of your control. I think the bigger issue will be not an issue.

I think the vulnerability overall will come from the fact, that they're still hiring freelancers, right? Not everybody that's working on the production side of that show is coming over from Jacksonville. There's going to be a lot of freelance talent there. And that's where you may run into a problem or two because you're working with people and they're working with people that one of them

never worked with each other before. And in some cases, perhaps not in professional wrestling. And we've talked about this before. You can find really good sports producers or shooters, cameramen. They're really good at, you know, soccer, football, in the UK, or other sports, but have never had any experience in wrestling. Well, if they're running camera for you, that's a vulnerability. It's a potential vulnerability. If there are glitches, that's where it will come from, just because of the fact that I'm assuming,

I don't know this as a fact, make that clear, but assuming that they're going to end up hiring A substantial amount of local production talent. That's where there could be a little bit of a learning curve that could end up as a glitch. Kevin Kellam asked, what is something about live event promotion that varies market to market venue to venue? I don't think it does. Perhaps the intensity of it, meaning the amount of promotion you have to do to cut through the clutter in a larger market. might mean that you have to spend more money in marketing and promotion, but I think the strategy at its core is exactly the same.

You know, you're creating urgency in the case of AEW. Hopefully they're creating an opportunity to be a part of history. It's implied a lot in the commentary. So it's there. That messaging is already there. Whether or not it's there in local marketing, obviously I don't know.

I'm not there. But, you know, a sense of urgency, a sense of being part of history, the idea that this is live, you know, this is happening now when people all over the world are watching it. That's another big draw, you know, making sure that the audience knows that they're a part of the show. And I talked ad nauseum about the fact that I think the star of this show at Wembley is not going to be a professional wrestler.

It's going to be the 80,000 people that showed up to be a part of the show. Let me repeat that. They're showing up so they can be a part of the show. And to communicate the opportunity for fans to be a part of the show, not just sit there and watch it is the differentiator, I think, between big major live events or live event programming and just, oh, we're going to show up in town and shoot a, we're going to have a television taping. And you can go home afterwards and watch yourself next week on TV.

That's not the same. It's so cool. People still dig it. Everybody wants to be a part of the show. It's my ringside seat. So somebody told me the other day, I'm not going to, I knew my. Not somebody, somebody very specifically told me the other day how much ringside seats went for, for WrestleMania. Let's not just gloss over that.

WrestleMania went on sale last week, this week, whatever day it was this week. What, they broke $21.6 million in revenue in less than 24 hours. They set their all-time gate record. And now the largest wrestling event ever, even though. it hasn't happened yet. It won't happen for six months. And now the match has been announced, but sold 91,000 tickets at over $21.6 million in less than 24 hours. But the important part of that is during that conversation, my friend also noted that ringside seats went for $10,000 a copy and we're the first ones to get sold out so much for wrestling fans don't really have a lot of disposable income because they're just a bunch of hicks you know they're on the lower end of the socio-economic thing you know that's the perception of professional wrestling well i think between all in and and certainly the wwee numbers everybody's proven that to be false man we talked about a few weeks ago people will pay for things that entertain them

And that's exactly. And to be a part of history. Again, I think the ticket sales and WrestleMania experience, I think, again, I don't want to keep talking about things I've already talked about. But you look at the fact that maybe 50, 60,000 of people a week watch AEW in the UK, but they've sold over 80,000 tickets. What the fuck? Does that mean that everybody watches the show, bought 1.6 tickets or whatever the bath is?

Now, there's a lot of people that really aren't familiar with the product, maybe tangentially. are aware of it, but it's new, it's fresh, and everybody wants to be a part of history to come and check it out and be a part of that experience and be a part of the show. That's what's driving all in. It's certainly not because of the powerful television viewership. And, you know, again, I ranted a lot last week

in support, by the way, of Tony Khan and the fact that they haven't announced a card. And I think they should learn from this experience because people are tuning in to see what that show. Now, there's a lot of people that are upset because it's not the traditional way of promoting a big event and there should be stories. And I don't disagree. I would prefer that there are great stories leading into this event,

but not necessarily all the matches announced. There's a certain psychology in getting people to tune in to find out what's going to happen. I used to call it must-see TV. And there's a lot to be learned successfully from what AEW is doing. Yeah. And they've done a good job in promoting the main event. The main event angle, I think, has been one of the most intriguing angles they've ever had in their company with MJF and Adam Cole. And if you haven't caught up with that, Eric, I definitely recommend you do because it was a really great mix of good matches, promos, vignettes, segments, everything building to this extremely intriguing main event they have that genuinely, it's going to be hard to predict where they're going to go with it. So, yeah, I'm excited. I haven't been following. at the last couple of weeks just because my travel has been so extensive. And I've been in the air half the time. And by the time I get home, I really don't have the energy or the interest in sitting down and watching wrestling for the 48 hours that I'm going to be home.

So I haven't kept up with it, but I am going to watch the event because Conrad and I are going to do an analysis of it. We're going to record Monday, hopefully Monday morning. I don't get home to like midnight, Sunday night. but I'm going to bust my ass and get home and catch a couple hours sleep, get up early, watch the show, and then do the podcast. All I know. I know. I love a 1 p.m. Eastern start time for a pay-per-view.

I'm all about that because this UK time is making it seem like it's going to be like a Sunday NFL kickoff. Yeah, and unfortunately, I'm going to be flying. I'm going to be in the air. And maybe, you know, who knows? I'm going to bring my laptop just in case I can get a strong enough signal long enough while I'm on a plane to catch it. When you're separating from the military, no one tells you how hard it can be to get your civilian life up to speed. But with VA benefits, it doesn't have to be.

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trade show essentials. And when your order arrives, it's packed with care and backed by their 360-degree guarantee, which means it shows up looking great and right on time. In a rush, 4-imprint has quick turnaround options too, so you can hit your deadline without breaking a

sweat. Whether you're prepping for a summer event or just refreshing your promo lineup, 4-imprint helps you get it done confidently and with simplicity and ease. Head to 4imprint.com to find out more. Yeah, very excited for that 1 p.m. Josh, any top guy,

ask, can you gentlemen discuss how the indie wrestling community survives without huge media rights? What is the income base and pay for wrestlers? Thank you. That's a really good question. And I just texted right before we sat down, I texted the promoter that brought me into, where was I, Newark, Fairfield, Connecticut. No, Fairfield, New Jersey, that's where I was. and super nice guy I love working with him he's just a solid solid human being does everything he says he's going to do takes care of talent meaning you know the rides are on time tickets are made correctly

and there's not a lot of issues and challenges um I suspect and I texted him to ask him you know what his total numbers were and how he did because this is his first really big event and um I think a lot some of the money comes from local sponsorship to help offset cost of production because you can't cover, you know, I was at an event a month or two ago. It was myself, a Marcus Bagwell, too cold Scorpio. You know, we're not high profile talents. You know, we're not A-listers. There's no, you know, we are, I have a very, very rounded view of who I am and what my value is out there in a marketplace. Pretty, like I said, grounded about that. But you still, you've got our airfares you know you've got our hotels in my case because i only fly first class i am going to be

that diva at this stage of my life um you know just to get me to an event forget about what they pay me to get me there just to get me to an event and the cost of hotels it's it's rich and when you get three or four people in my category that are on a show it gets real expensive and when you're only selling 300 tickets or 400 tickets in some of these smaller markets you can't possibly make your money back in ticket sales alone. Concessions are negligible at that point, very little merchandise at that point. So a lot of the expenses in many cases, if not, certainly not all, but in many of the cases where I've asked the question, like, how do you pull this off?

Local sponsorship goes a long way. You know, your local car dealer or local real estate agent or your local insurance company, whatever, your local supermarket, you know, it's a part of the community. And a lot of the people that go to these shows, the ones that I go to are typically smaller markets. And you get the local mayor to come out and be a part of the show. You know, it's a community event. And as such, I think they're able to get enough sponsorship to help offset some of the costs. I try to provide a little perspective here because I've been working in these for almost a decade now

and very involved still in the New England scene. I believe we had Randy Carver on from Limelous Wrestling, one of our previous episodes. One of the things, Eric, that has happened a lot in recent years with indie companies getting on streaming platforms like IWTV or Fight that's become very popular, is that people can pay to sponsor wrestlers. And that happens a lot. Podcasts will do it.

Local businesses will do it. Online businesses will do it. They will directly sponsor a wrestler. So you can have a match between Effie and, insert indie talent here Alec Price and a company will sponsor Alec Price in that match and when they're doing the reads for the match live on the streaming platform they'll say hey this match is presented to you

by so and so or Alec Price is brought to you by so and so and I think that's a pretty innovative thing as streaming advances I love that I just see I wasn't aware of that I love that idea and I'm thinking as you're talking well wait a minute who do I I got to sponsor somebody. You know, it's got to be the right person, but that's awesome, you know, that's what's fun about emerging platforms and emerging business models is because the ways and means by which you can make money kind of evolve and present themselves.

And this is like a great idea. I'm going to do it. I'm going to find somebody to sponsor. We'll have either an 83 week sponsorship. or Strictly Business sponsorship and just get us out there and I think that's brilliant. I like that.

That's great. And as far as what do they make, Josh, every indie wrestler has their own rate that they'll charge a promoter and included with that will be travel, kind of what Eric was talking about there. So that's going to be on a case by case basis. One size does not fit all

when it comes to indie pay. Let's step aside for a second, Eric, to remind the Strictly Business listeners out there that this episode of Strictly Business is presented by Blue Chew. Let's talk about sex, gentlemen. Guys, remember the days, and it might have been a while ago. It's okay if it was. It might have even been just a few weeks ago when you were always ready to go on a moment's notice.

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Visit Blu2.com for more details and important safety information. And we thank Blue Chew for sponsoring Strictly business. Let's keep going here. We got one from Dylan, who's also in the chat. It says from a presentation standpoint, does Eric prefer the commentator desk to be at the top of the stage or down by ringside? That's such a good question because I go back and forth on that one a little bit. I think for me, I preferred the announced booth to be away from ringside. Once we had consistently large audiences, over five or seven thousand people for our natural shows, once we hit that point, which was pretty early on, really, for the first six months or a year, we were there.

At that point, I loved the announcement to be away from the field of play, so to speak, because it, in my opinion, at least, it gave the viewer a larger sense of scope. It felt bigger. It wasn't any bigger, but it felt bigger. When you put the announcement with right at Ringside, and there are advantages to that. They're creatively and logistically, there are advantage to that. But it starts to feel a little claustrophobic to me,

just in terms of the visual presentation. And I tried for so long initially, because I had to find a way to make our show feel bigger Before we were drawing five, six, seven thousand more people to a Nitro, a live Nitro, there were times when we couldn't get 1,200 people to an event for a television taping. And I went so far as to have a couple of our cameras fitted with white angle lenses, not noticeably, but it was there. And especially on our gym cameras, our crane cams, they come in, they fly in,

and they do a big sweeping kind of panoramic view of the venue. Well, when there's 1,200 people in there, it doesn't look that good, but you put the right land, you put a fish eye lens on it, give you a little wider perspective. All of a sudden, the room feels bigger. The audience seems more spread out. It's not. It just feels that way. And I was kind of forced to create things that made our show feel bigger than it really was. And one of those things was the idea of moving the announcement away from ringside.

But like I said, there's advantages to both. You know, there's a real sports feel sometimes when you've got a big fight feel, when you've got your announcement very close to the, to the ring. That is an advantage. You know, you've certainly got the creative potential of involving your announcers, or at least their desk and their equipment and a threat to violence to an announcer. All these things are available to you when you have your announcement right next to the ring. So I think it's just, it's subjective.

I don't think there's a right answer or a wrong answer. Yeah, Dylan says it was great on top of the stage until Cain's Piro goes off and then you got chaos. Jim Ross always used to get so angry about that. Cain's Piro would explode and J.R. would be all bent down a shape about it, which I don't blame him. I understand that little shocking. You should be in a ring when Cain's Piro goes off and you're standing there in the middle of the ring. if you think it's loud in the announcement, although I think the amount of pyro is probably greater on the entrance. But man, when you're standing 16 feet away from it and it surrounds you in all four quarters, like, oh, my God, how do I not get a concussion from this?

Coach Rosie's in the crowd. Ask Eric, what percentage of your budget would you dedicate to lighting and set in 2023? Oh, good question. I'll tell you what, we always hear this with restaurants, right? People eat with their eyes first. I think that translates, too, to presentation. Oh, it absolutely does. And, you know, I can't, coach.

That's a great question. And I'd actually have to sit down for a few hours and think about it and have an idea of what production costs are today. but I think lighting and sound, lighting in particular is one of the more critical elements. It's all critical. You can't do a show without audio. You can't do a show without lighting. You can't do a show without staging. All of it is important.

But I think in terms of the end product, I would spend as large, I would spend as much money on lighting in particular as I possibly could. whether it was 1998 or 2023 because it's that affects that in the number of cameras you have affects the look and feel of your show probably more than anything good question there rosy again guys if you're part of the ad free shows chat we'd love to have some of your questions live here just as coach rosy's was here's a interesting one from trabb medway says hi guys here in the uk we love talking about football player salaries can finances be weaved into storylines competing for cash or contracts prize money for being champions and also how long until we see widespread sponsors on wrestlers gear god i love that question i've often thought and not

in depth right i haven't locked myself in a room for eight hours until i came out with the answer to this question but i've often wondered how one could kind of make real-life salaries and contract issues a real thing because here's how I started down this rabbit hole. And this occurred to me a couple years ago. I don't know why. But it's like, how do you make it feel real again? How do you make wrestling actually feel real? How do you make the stakes undeniably real? Because that's the issue for me. You know, and back in the day, you know,

now I'm talking about when I was a kid as a wrestling fan. It was two wrestlers competing for $50,000 cash prize. Well, the cash prize was bogus. It wasn't real. Nobody was making that kind of money back then. Not very often anyway. But it was something that the audience could, relate to. Because you hear about that with boxing, right? You hear about an MMA, you know,

the prize fighters, which is what professional boxers used to be called before they were called professional boxers. You know, prize fighters, people that are fighting for money. The money was the stakes. And in professional wrestling, the implication was always there. Look at Rick Flair. Rick Flair was the champion. Rick Flair was in Lear Jets. He was in limousines. He's wearing Rolexes. He's surrounded by beautiful women drinking expensive champagne. The implication and the inference was that as champion, you're making a lot of money. You're making all the money. And of course, you want to stay champion. So you can keep making all that money. That's gone. We don't hear that anymore. It's not a part of creative presentation anymore. And I think it's one of the ways, if there is a way, not that I know

it will work, but I would really, really investigate and play with the idea, develop the idea of making this shit as real as I could as it relates to how much money wrestlers are making. Can you imagine, and this is where it gets hard because nobody wants to disclose their incomes, I get that, but I'll just give you a rough example without thinking through it too much. Obviously, Roman Reigns is the champion of being so dominant for as long as he has, is probably making more money than anybody. Okay, we'll put Brock Lesnar off to the side for a moment. But throughout the course of a year, making more money than anybody.

Well, if I'm Cody Rhodes and I'm not making more money than everybody else, I want to. I want his contract. I want what he's getting and more. And to find a way to make that a part of the presentation, but doing it in a creative, compelling way that's, mostly true because it is professional wrestling and scripted entertainment i think would be a really interesting discussion and exploration it'd be a great vehicle for tournaments too i host matt hardy's

podcast and arguably the angle that launched them into superstardom was the terry invitational tournament where they competed in the latter match against edging christian for a hundred thousand Of course, the Terry Invitational Tournament, Eric, 1999, the TIT, is something that a lot of wrestling fans remember. But it was one of the last times we saw a cash prize in WWE, and that was 90. Yeah, I don't think the cash prize idea works anymore. It really doesn't. Nobody would believe it because it was never true. And that's why if someone's going to do it, they would have to figure out a way.

And it may be impossible for legal reasons and other reasons, management reasons, to not really share that kind of information. But it's got to be a way. You know, it's a creative business. You just have to think of it. There is a way. You just have to conceive it. What do you think of the second part of that question? How long until we see widespread sponsors on wrestlers gear?

That I don't know that we'll ever see. now on you know premium live events or pay-per-views or whatever they end up being called depending on who's putting them on possibly because there's no conflict of interest there but for example if if I'm a performer I'm in the ring for WWE and I have a sponsor that's willing to pay me personally $100,000 to where their name, their brand on my ring gear. Cool. Go to WWE and say, yeah, we don't have a problem with that. But the network might because they may have an advertiser that they're doing a long-term business with

that is a direct competition with them. And they're not interested in that. So it's trickier in that respect. I do think, you know, possibly we've seen it in UFC. I think Brock Lezzer even got away with it a couple of times in WWE with a beef turkey company he was working with for a while. But I think across the boards is a regular thing. I don't think you'll see it on weekly television just because of that conflict of interest

between the production, the production company, in this case, WWE or AEW, and the network who's got the relationship with advertisers. If Ford, for example, let me make this clear, If Ford, for example, is a major sponsor, major advertiser over at Fox, right? I don't think the executives of Fox want to see Chevy advertising and promotion within their program. Well, he was in their program. When Brock Lesner came back to WWE, he had the Jimmy John's sponsorship on his gear. And this was actually one of the big things when CM Punk walked out because Punk mentioned that he thought that was a good,

thing for talent to be able to do something like that. And he wanted to try to do that for him. And he was, he claims he was told no, that he wouldn't be allowed to do that. But Brock was allowed to do that. And I thought that was interesting, even 10 years ago. Then if I was Vance, I would have said, look, you and Brock go in a room and whoever comes out and gets to do it and whoever doesn't, doesn't. They're simple. You can manage these things. This is not hard. When you're separating from the military, no one tells you how hard it can be to get your civilian life up to speed. But with VA benefits, it doesn't have to be. From the VA home loan requiring no down payment, to the GI Bill covering tuition, books, and cost of living, to VA

health care offering top-ranked low-cost care designed specifically for veterans. All the support you need is at VA. I'm here telling every veteran because I wish someone had told me. Get what you earned. Visit shoes.va.org. Not all veterans are eligible for the type or amount of benefits mentioned here. Let's be honest. Finding the right promotional products can feel overwhelming. But with 4 imprint, it's easy. Four imprint makes it stress-free, straightforward, and backed by real peace of mind. That's 4-imprint certainty. Not sure what promo products to order? You can get free samples, expert advice, even free help with your logo, so everything turns out even better than you expected. Need options? They've got thousands, including summer ready gear, like branded apparel,

drinkware, outdoor, and all the trade show essentials. And when your order arrives, it's packed with care and backed by their 360-degree guarantee, which means it shows up looking great and right on time. In a rush, 4 Imprint has quick turnaround options too, so you can hit your deadline without breaking a sweat. Whether you're prepping for a summer event or just refreshing your promo lineup, 4imprint helps you get it done confidently and with simplicity and ease. Head to 4imprint.com to find out more. for imprint for certain That's a good one I like that Matt Thomas Why didn't WCW ever sponsor Mark Marnes NASCAR Cup Series car For a race or two in 98 or 99 seasons

You guys had a working relationship with him Through Valvaline And he even showed up at a nitro or two But we did Who was we did sponsor a Bush car I can't remember the driver's name right now He was relatively young but doing pretty well probably money yeah there has to be a return on investment and we you know we we we sponsored

it was a bush car it was in a bush series right not not a NASCAR but a bush car we sponsored that car and it did really well for us we got a lot of presentation out of it we able to get down on the track shoot some video integrated into our programming that was a reasonable return on the investment but to get once you step up into the bush or excuse me into the NASCAR category and some of the bigger names and how many cars it's a lot more expensive and you really have to do a risk return on investment analysis and I think it was probably money at that point I'm going to find that let's see you had a few actually there were several more than one Kyle Petty in the Bush series 96 97 honorary new world

order remember Kyle Petty that is yeah the NWO had a race on it Lance Hooper don't remember Lance Jerry Nadeau Steve Grissom Steve Grissom is the one that I remember because we work with Steve the most Wally Dallenbach Jr. Dallback's a big name.

Blaise Alexander and there were a few others it looks like too. So you guys were pretty, did you find a lot of overlap between the NASCAR audience and wrestling audiences at the time? You know, there was the assumption, right?

His wrestling's really popular in the South and NASCAR's really popular in the South and there must be, you know, There must be crossover there. I think for us, for me, I'll speak for myself, not for the other executives at Turner. But for me, personally, it was more about the visibility. It was more about business to business visibility. I wanted advertisers and advertising agencies in particular and the people that work there to see that relationship between WCW and NASCAR to help open the door to other, to the automotive industry that up until that point, we were never, we never,

we never got any automotive business in terms of advertising and sponsorship well before you know it we had valiantly a number of others that was all a result of dipping our toe in the water with the NASCAR project so for me it was more business to business as opposed to

audience let's get one more in here we got so many questions we'll definitely try to do these once a month or so because you guys have been asking great questions about the business of the business here on Strictly Business Adam Leeson as does Eric believe AW has too much content already?

Yes and no. I think it's, look, I'm not knocking anybody here, but I don't think anybody can look at the last six months of AEW and consider it to be a well-oiled machine. They're still going through a lot of growing pains, just like I did, learning on the job, just like I did. Catastrophies that happen to that you are completely out of

your control, but you have to deal with, just like I did, I think at this stage of their evolution in terms of management and as a corporate entity, yes, yes, I think they're in significantly over their head. And I think the evidence of that is what we're reading and hearing about, which is getting much more coverage and traction in social media than the event itself, whether it's Wheeler, blowing a gun on somebody allegedly, the chaos with who can be at what event and who can show up when someone else is there and that kind of juvenile high school nonsense. All that is a manifestation of lack of maturity as a company, and I'm not talking about about emotional maturity or anything like that.

I'm talking maturity as a company. And I think they've taken out a lot. And I don't think, as evidenced by what we're reading and hearing about, that the management structure in AEW is up to speed yet. And dumping more content on it and hiring more talent only exacerbates them. I agree. And let's get one more question. And just because it's from our ad-free shows faithful, let's get Rosie one more time here.

I think there's a good, timely one. After just attending podcast movement, what is something you learned about the podcasting business? There's so many fans that listen to Strictly Business and all the Conrad podcasts that want to start their own podcast, Eric. So what's something that you learn that you can share with the audience here? I don't think it's, you know, I didn't walk away going, wow, I didn't know that.

You know what I mean? But every time I, this is like the fourth year. I think I've done the podcast movement. And my takeaway is, wow. This is getting bigger and bigger and bigger every year. And it's getting more sophisticated every year. I think that advertisers are getting more comfortable. There's still a lot of advertisers out there that just don't get podcasting.

They're so familiar with television and radio in print that they're actually a little uncomfortable because they don't really understand it. And that's human nature. They're uncomfortable advertising and podcasting. But that's changing, you know, and a lot of that has to do with guys like Joe you know, who are planting a major flag in this industry and giving advertisers comfort that this is real, it's viable. So I'm just seeing the growth is the thing that just made me more than learn anything,

probably be more grateful for the opportunity that I've had here over the last five years because it's still, it's still in its infancy. Podcasting is just like streaming has changed radio or changed television, podcasting is changing radio and it's going to be interesting to follow that over the next couple years well if you're hesitant to get into the podcasting realm from a business perspective but you want a good teammate well we're here to team up with you at advertise with eric dot com join our strictly business team to get your business or your product out in front of thousands of listeners every single week.

83 weeks feed is one of the biggest feeds in all of podcasting, and we want to help you get your product out in front of it. Advertise witheric.com. Make sure subscribe to 83 weeks.com where you get strictly business every single week alongside the 83 weeks, podcasts, of course, at free shows.com where you get early access and live taping information as well. Eric, anything else you want to add here, all in?

We've been talking about it for months. It's finally here. Anything that you'd like to throw, out there before you get on another plane and travel out? No, I'm just grateful for the opportunity to do this again with you, John. I love doing this show. I get a lot of positive feedback. You know, Conrad and Jeff Jarrett

and I were on a panel at podcast movement and talking about how we build the community. And I think I've got to be honest with you. I think we, the collective we, with Conrad at the home, have probably done a better job of actually building

a community than anybody in the podcast business. the after we show's family is a true family and we're seeing friendships relationships develop as a result of this platform and I'm just proud to be a part of it you know we gave up and talked about some of the things that we do you know top guy weekend me shaving my head donating $15,000 to say Jews for example we got done on that panel and I probably had no fewer than half a dozen successful producers, podcast producers, want it to know more. I'm sure Conrad got the same thing, probably more so. So we're doing some things right here.

We've got a great audience. I love doing this live thing. I love reading. It's kind of distracting, I'm sure, because I'm looking over here reading and talking to you at the same time. But I love it. And this is an awesome platform. I would thank everybody for being here.

Yeah, you really hit the jack. pot with the head shaving gimmick because you donate all the money you get your head shaved and then your hair's back in like a month it was unbelievable yeah it's kind of unfair but i told god right you know when we made the bet because it just kind of came up spontaneously and he was making a joke and i took it serious and that's how it ended up happening because i sometimes take things seriously that i shouldn't and uh we can find a way out of this you know we can even though because i said no i'll do it i'll say i bet you you know i drew a line in a sand and kind of said we don't really have to do it you don't have we'll find a way

it's just hair it'll grow back in a couple weeks it'll look fine you know it's not like if i shave it off it's not going to grow back but mine does grow unbelievable fairly fast always had a good hair head of hair obviously but you've proven that with age your agent like fine wine Eric Bischoff and this podcast every single week this has been strictly business we'll see you next time