During his interview with SI, Bryan Danielson spoke on how competition between AEW and WWE has led to a healthier wrestling industry overall. Here’s what he had to say:
I think from a business perspective, you do have to worry about being number one in your genre, in the sense of how much you get paid for the TV rights fees, which is essentially, both company’s business models. It’s no longer fully about how many people that you can attract to the show. It’s no longer about live attendance. It’s no longer, specifically for WWE, about PPV sales, hardly at all. With AEW, it’s a big part of their business model, but the more viewers you can attract and that sort of thing, the higher price you’re going to get from the networks, as far as for your show. So where that’s really going to come to pass is I think in two to three years when these contracts come do, WWE is with USA and FOX and ours with TNT and Turner. That’s where that really comes in from a competition standpoint is big, big dollars, but where I’m mostly interested in it, as far as elevating AEW is I think it’s great for wrestlers. I think it’s great for wrestling fans to have different products and different products that focus on different things.
Some people like their wrestling this way. Some people like their wrestling this way. From a wrestler perspective, this was the same thing that happened with WCW and WWF back when I was in high school. Chris Jericho wasn’t being used, hardly at all, in WCW, and then he goes to WWF and is able to show his talent. You look at somebody like Malakai Black in AEW or Ruby Soho where they weren’t utilized very much in WWE. AEW gives them a chance to come over and show people how skilled they are, and eventually, it will go the other way too. There will be people who feel like they’re underutilized and will jump to WWE, and and people will be like, whoa, they maybe missed the boat on that one. But that’s just going to happen, and I think that’s good for the fans. I think it’s good for the wrestlers. I think it’s a really fun time to be in the industry. This is actually, I think, the healthiest the industry has been in the time that I’ve been wrestling because for the most part, it’s been mostly a monopoly as far as big wrestling.
You can listen HERE.
Credit: SI. H/T 411Mania.
