- Joined
- Dec 27, 2016
- Messages
- 109
- Reaction score
- 0
They really can't go under, their streaming network is getting close to the money of the tv deal and doesn't carry close to the cost. When they redid the tv deal about two years ago they even got a minor rise in dollars. If anything this is the reason wrestling isn't as popular, since the company can't go out of business they have no incentive to take the risks to improve the product.That's kind of the point of the first video I posted. If the TV networks don't want to renew the TV deal, WWE goes under. There could be zero TV networks that would want to grant a WWE deal in 2019 considering how fast things move in the TV/streaming industry.
Even if Comcast (the owners of Universal who owns NBC who owns USA) wanted out (which would be ratings suicide as the channel hasn't been able to replace their blue skies era which wasn't ever that big) the company could still get enough dollars to produce Raw. Even if tv was a loss leader, which it was in the brightest days in most wrestling organizations, the company would scale back and play to a new audience.
The problems you cite may be in wrestling's interests because they have a big audience and are a cheap buy (a year of WWE content on USA costs them hourly what a single Monday Night Football game costs ESPN). The largest issue, wrestling isn't a cool product nor ever was, is mitigated by the sheer volume of content distributors desperate to fill air time. Netflix paid 80 million for a Will Smith vanity project that gets them almost no buys, and is about two hours of content.