The business man himself discusses WWE's latest TV deals.
Two weeks ago it was reported that World Wrestling Entertainment had come to an agreement with FOX to air WWE's weekly show 'SmackDown Live' on their network and the agreement entailed that the deal was worth a total of $1 billion dollars over the course of five years for the show. A few days ago another report came by way of 'The Hollywood Reporter' which noted that WWE will be paid $265 million by NBCUniversal for the rights to WWE's flagship show Monday Night RAW.
WWE has come into some big money and the sports-entertainment company is expanding their brand in the process. An individual who knows about growing a brand is the founder of 'DDP Yoga', WWE Hall Of Famer Diamond Dallas Page. During an interview with CBS Local Page weighed in on the news of WWE's strategy to further establish themselves as the biggest sports-entertainment company in the land of professional wrestling.
"Wrestling is cyclical, and if you look at the 80's, it had an unbelievable run and then it just fell down. 90's had the biggest run ever, because of the Monday Night Wars. People would say, 'Do you think you’ll ever see that again?' I say to them, 'You’ll never see it like that again.'" He explained. "See, Vince has mainstreamed the television, and he’s the taken the wrestle and over the last 20 years made him a superstar not a wrestler, and the biggest star in the world is who? Is The Rock. Then out of wrestling the next guy would be John Cena, and then maybe Dave Bautista, because what he did in the wrestling world, but what he’s doing in Hollywood, he is an A-List actor now, so is John. You’re gonna see a lot of guys come out of that. You’re gonna see The Miz come out at some point and have a hell of a film career." He said. "Cody Rhodes just got five episodes coming up on The Arrow. He’s mainstreamed the boys, and the girls, because it’s not like these crazy ratings that they had. We had better ratings than they had back in the day, but it’s more mainstream audience, so it’s a way more valuable audience.
So no, I’m not surprised at all. I’m super happy because they’re getting these kind of money numbers from the television and they own the network, the WWE Network. So owning your own channel on a spot where you’ve got it 24/7 and we’re talking about creating your own channel, just like I did with DDP Yoga. My DDP Yoga channel with my DDPY workouts, it’s my own channel, and I’m constantly putting money into making it better. I’m like over $2 million into my DDP Yoga Now App which is insane, and no one, and that’s including Beach Body or anybody else is doing it the way we’re doing it, and that’s what Vince did, and Vince is always going to be the man there. But Triple H and Stephanie, and now Shane, they’re the key cogs that put the players together to orchestrate this. Bringing in the old school from… Bringing back Warrior after… I mean they destroyed Warrior when he left, because they were mad, but at the end I was so grateful it was all fixed before he passed, and he went out a Hall Of Famer as he should have. But also with Jake “The Snake” Roberts, and Triple H is responsible for putting that kind of stuff together." He continued, "The NXT, the next thing, like nobody believed that, but he did, you know Stephanie did, and look at it today. It’s bringing the greatest athletes from there. So really there is three different channels. I would not doubt if you see like maybe a year or so from now, maybe less I don’t know, is the NXT get some crazy big deal. I wouldn’t doubt it, because the talent is amazing."
Diamond Dallas Page also discussed the possibility of SmackDown Live moving to Friday night's and the possible outcomes of that along with much more. To read the full interview, click here.
