Eric Bischoff believes that wrestling audiences will follow the product wherever it goes.
Throughout the history of professional wrestling, many different shows have aired on many different networks such as the USA Network, ESPN, SyFy, TNT, TBS, and many, many others. In recent times, SmackDown has moved networks quite often, airing on Fox, USA, and Syfy just in the past ten years alone.
The conversation of television rights for both WWE Raw and AEW Dynamite have been a big talking point in the community as of late, as the future of both shows should be known relatively soon.
On the latest episode of Strictly Business, Eric Bischoff was asked if channel jumping helps or hurts a wrestling company. In response, Bischoff noted that wrestling fans are very loyal, even more so than Nascar fans.
“One of the great things about the wrestling product, whatever company, your audience will find you. The wrestling audience I think, and I’m not really an expert in this because I’ve never sat down with people that are and read the research, but just have been around shit for a while. I know the NFL has an amazing fanbase, Nascar has a very loyal — I think the Nascar fanbase, in terms of real loyalty is probably more loyal than most NFL fans. Where as Nascar fans are just, they’re addicted to the legend. They get caught up in all of the drive emotions, but I think the Nascar audience, having been around it — I sponsored a Busch car, Kyle Petty for god sakes. I’ve been around it enough, and if I compare a wrestling audience that I’ve been around a couple of times to a Nascar audience where I was in the pits so to speak, I would say the Nascar Audience is almost as loyal as the wrestling audience. I compare the two because I’ve been there and done it. So when a wrestling, whether it’s WWE or AEW, if AEW moves to another network, every single one of the 845,000 average weekly viewers of Dynamite will absolutely know where it’s going and will absolutely follow them, provided that the cable outlet or whatever they’re on is available to them. If not, they’ll seek that out and download or subscribe to it. I don’t think it’s gonna have that big of an effect at all.”
In a seperate recent podcast episode, Eric Bischoff said that signing Mercedes Mone will do nothing for AEW. Fans can learn more here.
Furthermore, fans can check out the lineup for the January 12 episode of SmackDown here.
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