Eric Bischoff gave his thoughts on various topics on the latest episode of his 83 Weeks Podcast.
During it, Bischoff talked about the competition between AEW and WWE, his belief that AEW is not a real competitor to the rival company and more. Here are the highlights:
On a parallel between WCW and AEW:
“This whole idea about being a challenger brand, I do take exception to that. I think if there’s a parallel between WCW and aside from the fact that they’re on a Turner Network, obviously is, you know, if you looked at WCW back in about 1993, I think that’s where in many respects, not in every respect, certainly the, the Wembley, you know numbers are big numbers and WCW certainly never got anything close to that. But if you just set that, aside as a one-off and set that off to the side is. Right now, it is about where WCW was back in 1993. In terms of being a competitor, a real competitor. In fact, I think if you were to go back. And again, the only thing that we have records of really are ratings. But if you go back and look at WCW long before Nitro, WCW probably had 60 or 70% of the television market share of WWE before we got Nitro, when all we had was WCW Saturday night and Sunday night’s main event at 605 and in syndication. And I think we have the power of our WCW Pro or something like that on Saturday mornings on TBS. But if you looked at WCW ratings back in 92, and 93, they were probably still 60 or 70%, maybe more of what WWE had. AEW is not even close to that number yet.”
AEW not competing with WWE:
“Yeah, you know, yes, in some ways certainly with Wembley. And you know, the stadium shows. What’s the one they did in New York? Arthur Ashe. That was a big event. I was excited about that one. You know, it was putting Tony over. Think they’re going to be there at the end of this month and I don’t think they’ve got 4000 tickets sold. So, yeah, you know, everybody is coming out and they’re excited about the new kid in town and they want to get a nose full of that new car smell and see what it’s all about. But so far, the pattern has been. They came, they saw him. Only about half of them come back, maybe more. That’s not that’s not good. You know, you look at the house. I was looking at the house show numbers. Brandon Thurston put out an interesting tweet that really broke down. You know, ticket sales, ratings, all kinds of information, all in one graphic. And the live ticket sales are not impressive and they’re getting less impressive by the week. That, to me, is not competition for WWE. They’re just in the same business. That’s all it would be like me opening up a hot dog stand down the street from a Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse and saying, I’m competing with Ruth’s Ruth. Chris. Not really. But hey, if it makes you feel better, go ahead and say it. If it helps you sell a couple more hot dogs to the people who want to buy hot dogs that aren’t going to go buy steak. Absolutely. Go for it. But it’s not real. My point is they’re not competing. They’re not even close to being competitive on any metric, whatever you want to measure, gross revenues, ticket sales, international distribution, you know, commercial advertisers, sponsorship dollars, there’s not a business metric you can point to where you can honestly say with any credibility that they’re even remotely competitive. But they are in the same business. And by the way, they don’t have to be competitive to be successful. I think that’s your point. Well, no, people should forget about whether or not they’re really competitive because it’s not real and just accept it for what it is, support it for what it is, and quit making the comparison. But that starts with Tony Cobb, because one of the first things that Tony did after Wembley was come out and say, you know, we’re competitive with the WWE. No, you’re not, dude. You sold 81,000 tickets at Wembley and you should absolutely be thrilled and happy with yourself for doing that. And your entire team. Entire team. Behind the cameras. In front of the cameras. In the office. Wherever. But you’ll be lucky if you do 50,000 next year based on your current track record. Trying to. Yes. Are they competitive? No. Just what was what was.”
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article, please credit with an h/t to Wrestling Headlines for the transcription.