AEW sells 60,000 to Wembley Stadium

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We are joined by Chris Gullo from Buffalo and Jesse Collins from the Greater Boston area. Hello. Good morning. Good morning, guys. How's it going? Fine. What a beautiful, beautiful Sunday morning. It is to discuss some very, very interesting things today. Yes, we have the quite good WWE premium live event backlash that I watched pretty, pretty much in its entirety. It was on the living room and AEW has sold some tickets. I've heard AEW and what else do we have here? We'll look at some of the biggest gates of all time and things of that nature. The interesting slide that was part of an orange county presentation that I mentioned on previous podcasts, we'll give that another look. And General David Zazloff was at the helm this past Friday, I think. And we might go into my article about wrestlers under the age of 30. So anyway, if you want to participate with a super chat today, you're encouraged to do so we'll answer your question or comment. And AEW at Wembley Stadium, all in August 27th on what was this? What was the third? It was the third Tuesday? What day? This was Wednesday, Tony Khan on Wednesday saying after only 32 hours of pre-sale, AEW all in in London has already sold over 43,000 tickets. That's the equivalent of $5.7 million. That was on Wednesday. He gave another update. I love these updates with numbers on the record. The following day, Thursday, he said thanks to the amazing support of the fans, 50,000 tickets have been sold, an equivalent of $6.5 million. And then on Friday, the general on sale began and AEW all in at that point. This is Friday, Tony Khan is tweeting at 4.42 p.m. Eastern time. Like almost 10 at night London time, I think. Anyway, 60,000 tickets sold, $7.7 million. Or if you prefer, $6.1 million. Great British pounds stirlings. That how you properly say it. Usually I think you just say pound sterling. Pounds? But the abbreviation is like GBP. Great Britain pounds anyway. My knowledge is entirely based on soccer transfers. And they say pound sterling if they have to elaborate. OK. Well, $7.7 million sold. That's the gate at this point. And 60,000 tickets out. This is what the ticket map has been looking like. So this is ticketmaster.co.uk and not ticketmaster.com. So the ticket map wasn't visible during the pre-sale at all. It was just sort of the multicolored image file that was sitting there showing all the sections. So you couldn't zoom in and whatnot until the general on sale actually began. And a Twitter user here, Fusion Addict, stitched all these together and tagged many of us in the wrestling business media space last night and stitched the ticket map together. So we get an idea of sort of what tickets are available and are on sale at the moment. It's several thousand. There's a great deal of confusion here about how many tickets are out. And a WrestleTix posted a lengthy post, I believe, yesterday morning. At least two other people have also tried to do the WrestleTix style got counting while ruling out the sections that are apparently not open at all, either for production kills or whatever. And everybody's coming to this number that's more like 75,000 tickets distributed. But the 75,000 is way too high. I'm told that there's about 15,000 seats that are being held at the moment for different reasons. Some because of sight lines, some are being held to possibly be comped, some are killed as usual for production, and some are just being held so that other seats will sell first. Maybe for reasons they want to fill up certain areas for the camera or something like that. But I am told there are 15,000 tickets being held. So if you add 15,000 to 60,000, you do get the 75,000 that people are finding when they try to count up the dots on the ticket map. So that would explain that. So WrestleTix put out a tweet clarifying that WrestleTix has not reported that there are 70,000 tickets distributed for all in. So WrestleTix, that is where it takes time. WrestleTix wanted a valuable lesson of they went with the very lengthy post explaining different factors and aspects of the process of what they basically summarize the realization of everything that they've done over the last few days. And they learned a valuable lesson that sometimes when you go into greater detail, some people will just take one of the small things you say and then extrapolate it as something big you said. So when they mentioned the 70,000 figure that some people just took that and ran with it saying 70,000. Oh my god. Yes. I may have been advising Mr. WrestleTix that people are going to have really low breeding comprehension. They're just going to glance at it and run. I may even be guilty of doing that with press releases sometimes. So I've been looking through the Pro Wrestling History and seeing how this stacks up to other events. Pro WrestlingHistory.com has a great Excel spreadsheet that you can find on their website. It's kind of hidden. I forget where I find it, but it's in there somewhere. Or if you just google pro wrestlinghistory.com Excel, it'll come up. In any case, it's got a lot of numbers probably sourcing from the Absoror newsletter of the biggest crowds of all time. It's got some gate numbers in here and attendance numbers in here. And so I went through and I took all of the events they have a gate for and I added some more that are not in here, that are more recent. And I adjusted them all to 2023 US dollars. And to find out where does all in rank among the biggest gates of all time at this point. I mean, the reason to believe that they'll sell more tickets beyond the $7.7 million that they, according to Tony Khan, they have sold. And it would put it, I've got what are probably the roughly 40,000 or the 40 highest Pro Wrestling Gates ever. I don't know if I'm missing any here. This wasn't like an exhaustive list where I combed through and combed through, but these are at least 40 of the highest Pro Wrestling Gates ever. The number one biggest gate ever still is a WWE WrestleMania 32 at AT&T Stadium with $17.3 million at the time, adjusted now to inflation. So all the inflation we've experienced since 2016 would now be the equivalent of almost $22 million, a single day event. Now, if you want to combine the two day WrestleMania, the two day WrestleMania of this year would be over that, but we're not doing that. I've separated each one into an individual event. And this year's WrestleMania is in the, I don't know, the top 20 or so. It's about 10, 10, 10.8 million for both nights. Right. Right. So I'm just cutting in half the 2021.6 million dollars that they reported in their press release. But it would put, all in would already be above the 2010 WrestleMania and just on the cusp of the Donald Trump 2007 WrestleMania in Detroit. So, and that would put it. In terms of attendees, this will be the biggest, the most attended show that is a non-W wrestling show since Jesse and I were discussing this a few days ago, since at least 1960. Right. There's some, I don't know if it's on here, but there's like some, some 1960 event that is on this list. That's not a W show. Yeah, you'd really have to go back to some really old events that's attendance are hard to verify. There's a series of, I'm sorry, we have to rule out the North Korea shows too, of course, that people were ordered. This is what you're doing today. You're going to see Antonio Noki versus Ric Flair. Aren't they like giving away food at those events and stuff like that too? Like it was like a relief festival. So like people wanted to get like bread for their family. They had to go watch Ric Flair versus Antonio Noki. It was a, it was a peace festival. It was Antonio Noki making the world more peaceful. But yeah, you'd really have to go back to like, Bronwyn and Gerstierty Jim Londo, stuff like that. Yeah, well Jim Londo has these, a number of stadium shows in Greece in the 1930s where he drew an indeterminate number of people. The biggest estimate I've ever seen is 100,000 people with 30,000 turned away. You probably have to look back at those shows as like the biggest non-WW crowds ever. But for all intents and purposes, all in is going to be that number. It's either, it's probably going to pass the Londo shows for paid attendance. I would assume it's already probably passed that from being realistic. And so if for all intents and purposes, it's going to be the more highly attended non-WW show of all time discounting the North Korea shows for obvious reasons. Yeah, we have a 19 looking at a spreadsheet off-screen here. There is a 1962 event in Karachi, Pakistan that, according to Prorasan History.com, had 60,000 attendees. That's a round flat number, 60,000. May 18th, 1962. Yes, and those numbers are almost impossible to verify. And if I would say, let's say it's accurate, 62,000, I very, very highly doubt that 62,000 paid. Yeah, we don't know if it was just maybe a free show, a free festival and all that. And then there's a new Deli India show. New Deli? Just 1960, no more specific date than that, that had 80,000, according to Prorasan History. And that's the famous Dara Singh match. People are familiar with Dara Singh. That's like his greatest accomplishment. Again, probably unlikely that's a paid attendance figure. If it's inaccurate at all. And the further you go back in history, the less accurate these numbers are going to be, for the most part. But this will be at a minimum, you could say. This will be the most highly attended show since in the last 60 years. NANDWV show, yes. Not NANDWV. NANDWV. NANDP.R.K. With those caveats. Yes. So is there more here that I had? This has, if you want to get people fired up here, this has surpassed Clash of the Castle in terms of paid attendees. It has not surpassed Clash of the Castle yet in terms of a live gate. WWE reported in Q3 of last year. They break out North America, live event business, and international live event business, because of that. And because there was only one international event in that quarter, it's pretty clear. There's no question about it. Clash of the Castle had 54,000 paid attendees. And it made $8 million in ticket sales. They also got a subsidy from the local government. I don't think that's included in ticket sales. I would guess that that's included in the other line here. That's reported as $1.8 million in the quarter. But it could surpass that live gate. And we know how high those ticket prices were, at least in terms of the reaction online to the ticket prices. The average ticket price for that event, $149. Let's call it an ad. If we do do some math here, what's the average ticket price of all in at this point? And it's what we got, 60,000 people divided by, oops. It's 7.7 million, 7.7 million dollars divided by 60,000 paid attendees is an average ticket price of 128. So Clash of the Castle, 149, all in 128. And that's also you have to consider that the most expensive tickets for all in have probably all been sold for the most part. And that average ticket price number might fall down as these new sections get opened up. And you look at the ticket map and tickets that are available. Those are not going to be the most expensive tickets that are available right now. Look at them. They're really on the outer edges of the stadium. So theoretically, if they sell more tickets and we get closer to the date, that average ticket price for all in is probably going to fall. And did Clash of the Castle have a $30 ticket like all in has? Like, I don't think they had. I think they might have. I think the big difference between all in and Clash of the Castle, if I recall correctly, is that the ringside seats in the seats really close to the ring for Clash of the Castle were much more expensive than the similar seats for all in. But once you moved past, once you got off the field and moved into the actual stadium seating, I think the tickets are relatively similarly priced. And I do think they had cheap tickets. Because Clash of the Castle, I mean, I guess it sold out in the way WWE does sell outs. But I would imagine that that stadium can sit more than 50, whatever it was, 58,000, 59,000 people for wrestling. Shall I imagine? It was 54,000 was the paid number based on W's SEC filing. Spressel ticks. I'm trying to look it up real quick. Russell ticks had what for tickets distributed, 62,000, 250. Yeah, so that sounds a bit, I guess that sounds about right. I'm thinking like, if someone was at Clash of the Castle, they can surely weigh in. But if there were people sitting in the very, very back of the top 300 section of the stadium. So I know it's the old Millennium Stadium in Cardiff. I know that's a really big stadium. I don't know if it's as big as Wembley. But it's probably equal in size to any building that they front WrestleMania in before. So we know the highest gate ever is WrestleMania 32 in Dallas. What is the most attended wrestling show other than the North Korea shows? I guess there are some like Greece shows that are supposedly 100,000. Yeah, but that's such a, like those might as well be the WWE announced figures. Like, there's no one has. So as far as modern, let's say the video era, the era in which there is video, the highest attendance ever would be, I think it's WrestleMania 3 in fact. I think WrestleMania 32, and according to the Arlington police, they told me 8,100 and something. I should probably know this. But just over 80,000 was the number through the turnstiles. So I'm loosely defining here attendance as spectators fans who were there to watch the show, not including ticket takers and staff and things of that nature versus Wrestle Mania 3, which Dave will admit is at least 78,000. And I think Bix put together a pretty strong argument to sell me on that. It's more like in the mid 80s in terms of attendance. So and I don't, I can't think of anything that's above the mid 80s. Yeah, I have a hard time believing there were mid 80,000s in the Silver Dome. I think that exaggerates the size of the Silver Dome. But it's probably, it's either WrestleMania 3 or WrestleMania 32 and the number is probably in the low eight to mid 80s, I guess. So, but yeah, I think Bix is considering sweets and things like that in any case. So what does this mean for AEW? Is this a, how is this actually bad news for AEW? AEW is going to have this big show and people are going to be disappointed because the people watching it are only familiar with WWE wrestling because AEW definitely doesn't have 70,000 plus fans. So they're going to get disappointed when they see the Young Bucks doing a couple extra rotations on their moves and Orange Cassidy doing comedy. And it's going to turn them off forever and probably kill their entire business in Europe. Okay. I'm joking, I'm joking everyone. Please do not clip that. You can add Jesse Collins on Twitter with your one-time clients on my Twitter account, but hopefully clarify this comments. So I, you know, I do believe this is a good event in AEW's narrative that, you know, that AEW is doing well, which, you know, we did a show a few months ago, right? I think going into the revolution pay per view in March about, you know, how AEW's popularity has been in decline up to that point and it hasn't really changed, at least until this week, or I think, I mean, this is just one data point, but I think there's a really strong marketing message here in that, wow, this is kind of at least for this week and who knows what we'll follow. This says for this week changed the mood around AEW to my view to what extent that's meaningful. I think it is meaningful to some extent around the notion that while AEW is doing something exciting and there's good positive news here. There's a long way to go until we get to the day this event actually takes place. Sam Punk is coming back. AEW collision or whatever the Saturday show is is probably going to start, you know, a few months before this show. It'll be really interesting to see what kind of place AEW is in leading up to the show. What kind of matches are they going to have on it? Are they going to be huge matches that people are going to be excited about and they're going to be able to build up on television so the anticipation for this event is high so you see people, more people tuning into Dynamite, like the month leading up to this big event. And I think the question is how can they leverage this big event which is going to be a really big deal. They're going to have a huge crowd. People are going to probably be really interested in watching it on however they're able to watch it, which we don't know yet. How can that be leveraged to beyond just this one event where they do a really big gate and they sell out tickets? Are they going to come back to the United States and they're going to sell 4,000 tickets to a taping in Washington, D.C. and do a .28 in the 18 to 49 or are they going to be able to see some more consistent positive trends in popularity related to anticipation for this event? I guess. The rating on Wednesday after they had sold, I think at that at that point 40 or 50,000 tickets was one of the lowest ratings in the last 12 months or so. It was about the same of what they've been doing, right? .28 in the Delaware total viewership. On a very, very competitive television night and it's going to be very, very competitive this Wednesday as well. Yes. Are they going against the Lakers and the Warriors? It's like the Vanderpump Rules, part three of their interminable seasons finale. I believe there's a Trump one-on-one or town hall or something like that going on on the news networks or one of the news networks. NHL playoffs. They might, you know, they're going to have, you know, they have the Kenny Omega vs. John Knox, the CLK match, which is, you know, a pretty big match for them to give away on television. But I wouldn't expect like a massive rating this week. Yeah. It was, I'm trying to see if this was some bench market. Oh, this was the lowest total viewership since June 15, 2022. Okay. So. The, um, the other question I have associated with this event, if we're looking at, let's say, let's say they've sold 60,000 tickets and I think it's fair to say that most people that would naturally be enthusiastic about going to all in have already bought their tickets. So how much of a market is there over the next few months for AEW to sell more tickets to people? Is that going to come from certain matches that they can give away? Is that going to come from local advertising? Is that going to come from continuing to kind of sell the idea that this is just a major cultural event in pro wrestling? And even if you're not an AEW fan and you've never been doing an AEW show in your life and you don't even know many of the wrestlers, you're going to want to go to this show because it's a Wembley Stadium and it is going to be, you know, the biggest non-WWE show from an intense perspective, perhaps ever. Um, and from a paid attendance perspective has, as a chance to become, you know, one of the five or so biggest attended wrestling shows ever, even including WrestleMania's. So, um, what, what, I think some of this depends on like what's, how, how available are hotels for people who are coming in from out of town? And that's, it's not something I have a great grasp on. I guess I guess I could just start shopping for hotels in London during the stage. I mean, they're in, okay, they're in London. And it's not like there aren't events that do 100,000 people at Wembley Stadium from time to time. With people coming in from out of town. Like, Copingar told us about the, uh, the Tyson Fury fight that did like 94,000 at Wembley Stadium, I think earlier this year. He was kind enough to point that out. What's the percentage of people who are coming in from out of town for an event like that or for a soccer event? Right. Um, I think this is probably, this has got to rely largely on people. I would imagine pretty high for like a, a major boxing event. Um, obviously you're getting people from London. Um, but you're getting people from all over Europe, certainly for a major international soccer game, like the, you know, UEFA, um, Euro final that took place at Wembley, um, two years ago, certainly you're talking about it. You know, England was in the final, which probably helped, but they're certainly talking about a lot of flying crap, people from there. Um, I, so I, it's London. It's one of the largest cities in the world. I really have a hard time believing there's like a massive shortage of hotels because there's these wrestling fans coming into, to London. London has like, they have like seven, I'm showing on the screen, you can, you can still get hotels at a pre, pre-resemaal price in London. If this was, I'm searching if you were having this Jacksonville, Florida, I would be like, Oh, there might be a crunch on hotels or something like that. But the fact that they're having it in just a massive tourism city, um, like London, I wouldn't be that worried about like hotels and things like that. And I am, and I imagine that most people who would be getting a hotel for this event are people who already bought their tickets because they're planning everything on advance. They gotta get their flight, they gotta get their hotel, they gotta get their tickets. I think the people that you're going to sell to maybe, if you want to take this from 60,000 to 80,000 over the next few months, the people you're going to sell on are going to be people in the London area or in maybe in throughout, you know, the UK and maybe Ireland. But you're going to be, it's going to be mostly people domestically who are going to want to go to this show that I think anyone with the, that's an international fan, maybe you're a fan somewhere in Europe, maybe you're even a fan in like the United States and you want to go to this, you, you were in on the pre-sale and you, you were able to get your ticket, you know, for the, for the most part, I don't think there's a sizable, I don't think there's a lot of fans, you know, somewhere in like Italy or Germany that are like, I'll see what the card is and then I'll try to get in. I think if they're really considered going, they're already going to purchase their tickets and I guess I'm just wondering. What if you're a big sting fan though and Sting's going to retire on this show? That's a card you can play. I mean, we can talk about what you think they can do on the show to throw in more fans. What can make this show special? What kind of matches can they give away? You know, is that, is it going to be, like, are they going to have UK wrestlers, you know, in prominent spots? Would that sell more tickets? I don't know. I don't think so, really. It could you, you know, see a punk going to be in a major match, probably see people talk about Sting's retirement. Who are the biggest names? Who are the biggest names that UW has who are originally from the UK? Jamie Hader's current women's champion. I would say POC. POC. Sarea? Yeah. Sarea, you know, you know, and that's one of those things where it's like Nigel McInnes coming back. Oh my god. I mean, I would be flying hip-borne. Are you flying, Joe? He met, he teased it on, he said, if we sell it out. He said he's clear. He's not, he can't, he's not unable to. Oh, yeah. And he said he's, he said he's, uh, says if they sell out, he'll, he'll come back. So I'm actually going to probably purchase all 20,000 remaining tickets or whatever to, to ensure that Nigel comes back to wrestling. I would think like, if you're looking at like, really the biggest British star, I mean, Sarea probably has the highest name value because of her time in WWE, but I don't really know, like, you're not going to put her in like a main event match, I think at this point. So I think like the biggest British star you have is probably Will Osprey in the sense of having someone with main event credibility. Maybe he's not the most well-known, but if you're like, this guy who is, you know, an English wrestler, who's one of the best wrestlers in the world, and one of the biggest internationals. Who's not an AW wrestler? He's a new wrestler. He is not, but at least. I would not, he could, I would not be surprised if New Japan has a, I wouldn't, I'm not going to say it's a full cross promotional show, but it wouldn't surprise me of as business partners, as as promotional partners to a degree that they wouldn't want to, you want to make the show special, maybe throw it, you know, Okada and Tanohashi, maybe they're still tag champs, maybe they defend the IWGP tag championships against somebody on the show. Like it wouldn't surprise me if they throw in, just kind of a match like that to make it seem even more special. So there's, I mean, there's an interesting one that people have talked about, and we don't know his full contract status, but Drew McIntyre is apparently his contract is expiring. I think the last I heard was in a few months. Sean reported it yesterday, I believe it's at the end of the last year, so that would go beyond. So yeah, so if that, if that's the case then yes, he will not be on the show. Sex Haber Jr. is one that people keep bringing up him at Danielson is the dream match that everybody wants. Yeah, Zach's another one. They also have Trent Seven, don't they? AEW have Trent Seven under contract. I don't think so. I know he did the one shop for him like that weekend. Listen, Trent Seven is all illegal. Yeah, I think there was. Yeah, but I mean people, Dave has mentioned this, like Davey Boy Smith Jr. is available if you wanted to do like a British bulldog kind of style back at Wembley Stadium kind of thing. You could do that. I think that's kind of, yeah. And Russell Teddle, that's kind of like playing off, that's celebrating in other companies wrestling history. Dynamite's and if he's wrestling now too, I don't know that they could do something like that, then my kids nephews. So in terms of money, so this is $7.7 million in revenue, I think this show is already going to be profitable then because I'm sure this show will cost multiple millions to put on, but probably not more than $7 million, probably well under that. I don't know how reputable it is, but I've heard $400,000 to rent Wembley. I don't know how reputable that is. I don't know. I could imagine, you know, Tony getting, if not a deal on it, the reason why it's at Wembley Stadium is because the Jaguars have played at Wembley Stadium a number of times. So maybe there's some sort of deal where it would have cost a wrestling promoter more if they were not, if they did not have that. Yeah, I mean, the Jaguars play at Wembley. Tony is the owner of a primarily team in London, which means he probably has some sort of relationship with the English FA who own the stadium. So there might be like a sweetheart deal involved in that. The NFL doesn't play their, I don't think they play any games at Wembley Stadium anymore. They play them at the Tottenham Stadium instead, but for a while the Jaguars are probably played about at least a half dozen games at Wembley Stadium over the years. But the point I want to make is that usually, especially shows that will be of this scale are hard to make profitable without media revenue, unless it's a really big ticket event, which this is. So even before we even consider how is this show going to be distributed, you know, live or, you know, through video, whether it's going to be a pay-per-view, whether it's going to be a streaming event on max and how, if that's a US only situation on streaming on max, how's it going to be distributed in the rest of the world before we even consider any of that? This is probably already a profitable show. But I would expect other going to be news, probably in two Wednesdays from now on June 17th, when the WBD does its upfront, maybe then we'll learn about not only AEW collision, but maybe about some sort of presence on max from AEW, maybe including the show, that would be my prediction. Somebody in the chat is mentioning that the Jaguar still play at Wembley Stadium. I didn't know that. I thought all the NFL games have moved to the Tottenham Stadium, but it looks like that the Jaguar specifically still play their London game at Wembley Stadium, which adds to those ties. I wanted to bring up, we've talked, but this has been mentioned a few times in the past, about like AEW's version of WrestleMania and how like AEW has these four annual pay-per-view events, but there's nothing really that distinguishable about them that kind of makes them feel like major events every single year really comes down to what's on my card and what kind of matches they have and things like that and the build-up for those shows. Could this be AEW's WrestleMania? Because no one, the WrestleMania doesn't have to be in America, but if they can turn this into an annual event at Wembley Stadium, and it has that kind of special feel to it every year, the name all in has has that history and that lineage and in a similar way to the way that WrestleMania has that kind of history. This was the first big bet, even though obviously all in itself was not an AEW, it predates the launch of AEW. That kind of adds to the war and right, and this I mentioned earlier, the idea that you can go to the show and be a part of history, and that by a time, it kind of has a vibe similar to the start of AEW, which is it's not just, the interest is not just coming from, oh, it's a wrestling show, that will be a good wrestling show, and that's why you want to go do it. The selling point is in some ways the idea that it's a wrestling show, but it's more than that you are participating in this history-making event, and if you're going to support this thing, you're supporting a more interesting, healthier wrestling environment than if you just go and support WWE who have billions and billions of dollars and are going to be successful whether you participate or not. As AEW has become more established as a wrestling company and as it's had years and years of events, I think that appeal is kind of naturally waned off in the sense of if you go to AEW, it's kind of this established brand to a degree, so it's not really like you don't have the same kind of revolutionary energy that you had at the very beginning of the promotion, and certainly not at the first All In event, which was sold a lot on the idea, we're going to try to change the world by having this independent wrestling event sellout of basketball arena. And I do feel like All In, this London show, by being a stadium show, has kind of reinvigorated this sense of if you, this show is going to mean something historically if you go to it, or even if you just watch it. And that's a powerful marketing sense for AEW. And I think there have been a number of shows in the last, I guess, 2018 and forward that have been a big part of the draw with no, you know, they sell out or they sell very well with no matches announced. But the part of the draw is that this is a historic monumental event. All In was one. And this MSG show that you want supercard was another. And slam, I would say, would be another one that touched on that. It clashes the castle to an extent, the first W pay per view in the country in decades. Right. And you can only do that once in WrestleMania, WrestleMania every year to an extent. I have has some of that. And that's my point as far as like, can this establish All In as the signature show for AEW every year? Where you do it next year? What? Where you do it next year? You run it. You run Wembley Stadium again and run Wembley Stadium every year. Trying to stadium in the States because that would be the next big milestone. You could do that too. That's also possible. I think there's something about, I think if you deliver a really high quality show in Wembley, you get people excited to want to watch, come back the next year for another major show. I mean, it's, there's a lot of attractive things about running it in that kind of market. It's closer to Europe. So you get a lot more flying fans. You will make it, you will turn it into almost like this pilgrimage thing for the hardcore US fans that are like, I've got to go. I'm not just going to fly, you know, a couple hours somewhere. I'm going to fly across the ocean to go to the signature event. Yeah, you could, you could run it somewhere else. So that's certainly possible. But I think if it is kind of like an annual event similar to how double or nothing and all are always in the same cities, I think, and it's kind of like, I think we talked about this like forbidden door, those tickets sold out right away for the show in Toronto. And they sold out much quicker than like double or nothing's tickets are selling. There's fewer of them, but yes. Right. And we discussed like, come, why is that? And part of it is forbidden door feels like a special annual once a year event where it's this new Japan in AEW Super Show and these two major wrestling companies are going to collide and have into promotional matches and things like that, as opposed to your typical, you know, AEW quarterly pay per view, which is generally expected to be a very good show, but there's nothing inherently special about that show each year. It really depends on the car. You don't think if, if instead of forbidden door in Toronto, it was pick your other pay per view for from AEW. It wouldn't have done just as well. In the Toronto market, you know, it's hot. It's possible. I can't say I can't definitively say it wouldn't. But if you look at, look at, you know, look at what double or nothing's ticket sales were in Las Vegas, look at what Revolution did at the Chase Center in San Francisco. Those weren't first pay per view in the market. Those are all. Chase was not. Yeah. That's that's true that the San Francisco was right. It's Toronto. The first time they were going to go. Probably one of AEW's like three or four best markets that could run a show in probably. But I think part of the reason is that forbidden door really stands out on the calendar as like this individual special event, not unlike the way WrestleMania or the Royal Rumble stand out for WWE each year and kind of sell based on that brand. We're going to sell out forbidden door. No matches on the card. Nobody has any idea, you know, who the champions are even going to be at the time when the show rolls around. But it still sells. And I think you want to have that's a very powerful thing that WWE has. AEW has kind of been resistant to that based on how they've done their quarterly pay per views. But I do think introducing these new events, you know, for Bendor, I know reviving the all in name and making it London, you're creating that kind of special annual event that people will really want to flock to and make in and sell it as an important event, regardless of star power, regardless of who's on the card. You still got to deliver. You still got to have a good show. If for Bendor is an absolute mess and a terrible show with no star power in the main event is like Yoshi, Hashi versus- I mean, all the tickets are sold at this point. Why wouldn't she just save all your pig matches? Going back to Toronto, and we talked at the time when they announced their two Rico Coliseum shows for Toronto, which is a rampage and a dynamite. I think the rampage tickets have trouble selling. I think it's clear now that they missed an opportunity there to maybe do a pay per view around that time in Roger's Centre, or even just do this as a thought experiment. If you do Forbidden Door for the first time, first show in market in Toronto and say it's Forbidden Door, or even any other pay per view, put it in the Roger's Centre, how well does it do? I think it does pretty well and it fills the stadium. Yeah, Dave mentioned the observer he talked about. I think it was the first all-out show in the number of people that were in the queue to buy tickets for that show was significantly greater than the number of people that were in the queue during the Wednesday presale for the Wembley show. There were like eight presales for this, by the way. I think the number in the presale queue was like 80,000 for that all-in show in Chicago. The first all-out show, I think, is the one that we're talking about, the second AWP pay per view after Double or Nothing. That show did, you know, if you go by just the number of people in a queue compared to this Wembley show, which we now know that the Wembley show, the demand was big enough to fill a stadium that they really could have run a probably large stadium in the US for that first ever all-out show. They missed that opportunity. Yeah, I mean, that's been something that, like you mentioned, the Skydome of Toronto, their first show in Los Angeles at the Forum. Could they have run a larger venue in LA? Maybe like the soccer stadium in Carson, California, and done like 25 or 30,000 fans? Had they been, have they been underestimating their ability to sell tickets the first time in a market? This time they didn't, right? They could have run Craven Cottage, maybe. They could have run- I will say the one time we were, I think around the time that they'd run their first Toronto shows at Rico, and we were talking on here after about how maybe they missed an opportunity to run at Rogers Centre. And I was being questioned afterwards about what our obsession was with running a stadium show. And I think this kind of proves that if you, running the stadium show itself is a draw in that people believe that there's history in the making here, they have to be a witness to. And it has this, in addition to selling lots of tickets and maybe selling media revenue, you're also getting a great marketing value out of it too. Yeah, and I often thought that like if they were to do a stadium show, it would probably, in the US, it would probably do really well inherently based on the value of, we're going to try to do a stadium show. And every single person in the US that has any interest to ever travelling to a wrestling show, which is quite a large amount given how many people travel to WrestleMania over here, those people are going to have to come to the show because it's going to be the first ever non-WW stadium show in 25 plus years. So how high can this go? When it's all said, and assuming we've got three numbers on the record from Tony at this point, maybe he'll continue, at least at the very end, say this is how many tickets it sold. And he has been giving gate numbers before this as well. In any case, attendance, and let's just do attendance, how, where does this end in terms of paid ticket sales, and that's the number that we know right now, which is 60. Without knowing this fault, it seems like they have a lot of options with seating. I would say the absolute ceiling for this event would probably be 95,000 fans paid, just like that Tyson Fury fight, the absolute possible ceiling for it. I would, that is the highest. I would not. That's the capacity. I think that's the, is that your prediction? I think, no, it is not my prediction. I don't know. Are you predicting 90,179? I don't, I was before this Wembley show, I have absolutely no idea how many tickets they're going to sell. They could sell 10,000 tickets and it wouldn't like be that shocking to me. They greatly overestimated their popularity and love it. Or they could sell as many tickets as they ended up selling it. That wouldn't also super, super surprised me. I have absolutely no idea, but I'm just going from a hypothetical. If we look at like, what is a major scale boxing event do at Wembley, and it looks like it's around 95,000 paid or whatever, that's what I imagine the capacity is with, you know, minimal staging and business. Is that a real number that, that the SPN boxing reporter was referencing? Well, you see that we only have factual information in that tweet. So I wouldn't, I don't think that, he would be incorrect on that. No, but that's the number. I mean, the Wembley does over 100,000 for soccer. So the stadium itself is capable of building. It's not, it's not like a, you know, a WWE number where it sits, it's a much higher number than there are possible seats, even if you count for the field. But I believe at this point, they can do something over 70. Like, like, can they actually sell those tickets? Like, is this a bigger question? I'm thinking, like, what is the absolute ceiling? They come up, they have Sting's retirement match. They have Kenny Omega versus CM Punk. They bring in Mercedes Monet and she's wrestling Jamie Hader. They're doing like, absolutely everything to have as big of a show. They, they pay Bill Goldberg a bunch of money to come in. They, they pay the rock to come in. Like, what is like the actual crazy thing that they could do to, to sell the absolute max tickets? Probably about 95,000. Realistically, maybe 70, but again, I don't know, I don't know what that ticket market is going to be. I don't know if there's going to be people in, in London, I have, who live in that area have told me that this event could do a big walk up business. If there's a lot of hype going into it, people are in the city or buzzing about this big wrestling show at Wembley. Could it do a much larger walk up business than we've seen other, which it rains though. A.W. shows. It rains and that kills the last cup. Wembley might, it's Wembley have a roof. It looks like it's got some sort of retractable something on it. Yeah, it's, if we put the image back on the screen. I don't know if it covered, it could actually cover during games. I think some of it, I think maybe at least that it looks like the, the, you know, the stands can at least be covered. I don't know about the field, but it looks like the stands can be covered. And obviously there would be people on the floor on the field in a wrestling event. It has like a partially retractable roof that's kind of used more for like, sunlight purposes. What is this big bowing structure over the stadium to have been wondering that, looking at this image? I don't know. Any guesses what this thing is? This is the new Wembley. It's not the old one. The, um, we did have a super chat real quick. We were talking, we were talking about like, okay, how well that's, is this the first summer that the roster is back and healthy? Well, knock on wood. We got a lot. We got a few months to go before that. And I wouldn't count on it. No one, you'll never have a fully healthy roster in wrestling, unfortunately, unless you can't count on it. Um, what's, um, and we'll see him punk. See him punk will probably have returned by then. Will he still be healthy at that, at that time? Two months later, uh, we'll see. Um, do you think, um, what do you, we can talk about it? What do you think is, we talked about this a little bit, um, on DM's earlier this week, Brandon, like, what do you think the record is for highest paid attendance for wrestling show? I think WrestleMania 32 did about 80,000 paid very close to it. Something in that range. We know, because of the KPIs, it's in some fairly wide, we said like the mediums, the median of the KPI range is right around 80,000. The median, the median is 79. And if you round up, it's 80,000. Um, and I think it's, it's a question of what did WrestleMania three really do? 93,000 67. I'm sure, I'm sure WrestleMania sold sold, WrestleMania three sold less than 93,000. Did it sell? I think David at some point has reported 74,000 paid at some point. The famous name, which he once had written down on a piece of paper, but his wife threw it away during a, uh, cleanup of his garage or something like that. A famous loss of history. Dave had the actual WrestleMania three attempts, but it was thrown away during a, a garbage, a decluttering. But, um, yeah. So I guess that we don't have a concrete number. And if you want to take that median number, which I think WrestleMania 2019 is up there too for highest paid for one of them. So if you want to take that median number of 79,800, um, if you want to scoreboard watch, uh, it's not outside of the realm of possibility that this show ends up potentially doing the highest paid attendance in wrestling history, um, which would be quite the economy, understatement would be quite the accomplishment. Um, I mean, for getting over 80,000, it's, it's, we can definitely at least speculate that it would be because I can't say with great confidence that any, any event has ever sold 80,000 tickets more than 80,000. Yeah, we don't. Yeah. So we don't have that, a concrete number to look at, but that's what I would be looking at. If I were to, how can we talk about this event being like historical in general? I would just say even, even at the 60,000 figure, if they, if they, let's say they get to 70, let's say they do 10,000 more tickets over the next few months, 70,000 tickets paid attendance, um, for a one night wrestling show is we're talking of like what maybe five shows in history that have done that. Um, it's all wrestling. Yes. We're talking just a, and even most WrestleMania's don't get to 70,000 paid. They're most, they're not in venues big enough, for the most part, but they have, um, that's, we're talking about really serious, you know, we're going to remember this attendance in 50 years kind of level event. Um, and, and can we question here? Because I've gotten some questions about it. Um, perhaps unsolicited questions. What, what credibility or what, how, how hard should we rely? Can we rely on Tony's own claims here at that? It's me, it's not a publicly traded company. I mean, W E is a publicly traded company. And they put out some pretty questionable numbers to say the least about attendance themselves. Um, what, what are the incentives or disincentives for, for Tony to be truthful here about this paid attendance number? Um, he could obviously be lying because he's a wrestling promoter and, uh, he, promoters, he would not, Brandon, I'm, this is, this might break, be some breaking news here, but he would not be the first wrestling promoter to exaggerate, uh, the attendance. Um, we know Tokyo don't attend, which we believe this, this number would surpass all Tokyo don't attendances for wrestling ever, which we believe are all under 60,000 at most, maybe 55, maybe high fifties at the, at the absolute most. And so for the real capacity, despite gnocchi final being announced at 70,000 or something. And so, um, he could be lying, um, historic. Like, if you study Tony's patterns, like it's very rare for him to give concrete numbers. Like, I could see him talking about like, we sold a ton of tickets. We're already past our gate record. We're going to be one of them. This is going to be one of the biggest shows in, of the, like, in recent wrestling history. The fact that he went, he gave us a real number of tickets sold or, or actually he gave us a rough number of tickets sold, right? At Prox, we know that at least 60,000 tickets have been sold to take this tweet at face value. He also gave us a gate number, which, um, is pretty rare. Um, in the past, he has said, I mean, to this point, A. W. has only done gates that are just over a million. And he is, he's not gotten super Pacific down, specific down to the hundred, hundred thousand mark as he is here. He's only said things to the effect of over a million, a million. Was there a event like last year where he was like, whoever is like, puts us over the million dollar gate, we'll get like a special commemorative chair or something like that. Yeah, they did a whole thing for, yeah. Yeah. Like we're, we're at 992,000, if whoever, you know, so it's a kind of like, boosted ticket sales a little bit. Um, I would say like, if we take Tony's number and we also look at like research that people like Russell ticks are doing on the ticket map and things like that, those numbers seem to, to be in the same ballpark. So I mean, did Tony buy all the tickets himself? That's if what, if you wanted to be the crazy conspiracy wing of, of, for wrestling Twitter, that's what you would say. But obviously I don't think Tony filed to get himself. Um, yeah, I probably shouldn't have said that because I don't even want to give that. We're gonna. I unfortunately already saw that out there. Yeah. We're gonna isolate that clip and attribute that to Jesse. Yeah. And said it, send it right to Tony, tag him in the tweet. I'll say like, I think they're, the information that we've tried to get about pay-per-view buys has been questionable to me. And as for the last couple of papers, why I haven't really updated that chart where he kind of led media to believe that it, that, you know, one of the pay-per-views did 140 or something like that when I, I think it did under 140. Um, pay-per-view is a more malleable influx number as opposed to ticket sales where you don't really know what your pay-per-view buy number is for months and months after the event. Um, I'm 100% sure that they know exactly what the, what the paid ticket sales number is by going into Ticketmaster's client-only app and it will tell you how many tickets you have sold. So there's no ambiguity or projections about this number. Um, and, and I've been told separately that this 60,000 is, is true by somebody who I believe is telling you the truth. Do they have a dynamite to announce for like that week before or after? Do you think they possibly could be running like a dynamite or a rampage taping or collision in the UK during that time period too? It would make all the sense in the world because you're going to have so many flying craft people that are going to be there. So I would do, I mean, WWE is running the O2 which is, I believe, the biggest indoor stadium in, um, in London. London. Uh, so they could run wrestling there if they wanted to. Um, could they, could they run a Wembley show where they, they tape off a bunch of stuff and they sell 20,000, 30,000 tickets to a dynamite taping the night before or a collision the night, the day before? Um, because they're already going to have the stage set up and everything like that. Um, could they run at a craving cottage or another venue in London? Um, I think it would make all the sense in the world, Chris, to have, you're going to have so many fans flying in. I'm sure we're going to see some level of independent wrestling shows popping up. I believe Rev Pro, um, might have already announced some shows, a progress, I've already announced plan shows for, for that weekend. I'm sure there's going to be some level of kind of, uh, other wrestling going on. Peking out. There'll be a convention. With the 27th is it? Probably. I would imagine. Yeah. Oh yeah. The 27th is a, is a Sunday. So that would work. And if you've ended up doing like a dynamite on the Wednesday rampage on the Friday, if they're still taping rampages separately and then on a Saturday, the collision perhaps. You could potentially go to other cities. And if you're going to be there on Wednesday, you could tape, uh, an episode at dynamite in Manchester. Um, will this be the beginning of the rebirth of Brit Russ? I don't know. I don't know. If Nigel, if Nigel comes out of retirement. Yes. Um, and the most important question of all brass, what will WWE run on this weekend, coincidentally? Uh, and then so summer slams already will already have happened on August 5th, I think it is. So that will have happened way in the past. So it would be pretty quick to do another PLE summer crown jewel, maybe that will probably happen in the fall. That'll probably happen October and October, the castle to at, um, London Stadium in, in London on the same day. Yeah, I don't think there are any WPLE's announced beyond summer slam at this point. Yeah, I don't. That's kind of interesting. They don't have that whole, they haven't announced to them or already in May. So, um, yeah, and, and, and you know, we didn't get our, um, live event touring schedule as a result of a lawsuit against John Doze for the, you know, the preemptive lawsuits that they usually file at her year ahead of WrestleMania to, to, you know, to press charges to prevent bootleg venue merch sellers. Um, so we just, usually that would give it away. Um, but I don't know, I don't know where that they're, say, September or perhaps, yeah, it would maybe an annex, usually what gets thrown in there is an annex, which will be weirdly on a Sunday afternoon for some reason. Um, yeah. They will, uh, I mean, they'll probably do something. Now they're going to London for money in the bank. When is that? That's in June. That's next month, right? Money in the bank is a bleep July. Um, I'm looking July 1st. Right. So they're, they're already running there and that's sold out well in advance. Yeah. So they're already running their event, you know, the month before in the UK and they're staying for, to go to Cardiff the following day for a house show, which you mentioned too. W.D. did great international house show business. They did really strong international house house, house show business last week or so. Um, yeah, they sold out Harris, UK and France. Yeah. I, I expect, I mean, the thing with WWE is they're really looking to be paid in wooed by these, these places to have these big events. Um, and so that kind of throw is in, like a monkey wrench into like, could WWE run Wembley Stadium next year to, to, to top AEW to let everyone know when they possibly could? I'm sure WWE pay per view event at Wembley Stadium would do very, very well. Um, but if London doesn't want to pay them the, you know, a couple million dollars and to kind of lure them, they are the way that they seem to be, that seems to be, if they want to hold the international pay per view event, they want to run, they want to have it, they want to be paid. Because the going price appears to be a Royal Rumble Orlando or Orange County has approved $850,000 in a bid. Puerto Rico gave them $1.8 million. Um, San Antonio gave them something for Royal have reason to believe it pays off in terms of, you know, the, the whole presentation, which is online for the, for Orange County is, hey, look, this is going to result in thousands of, of hotel rooms being rented and, and that's going to more than pay for the $850,000 that we invest in this bid in addition to the marketing value of, and if you notice on, on the, the backlash show, which I may be, we'll start talking about our moment. Um, there were a number of times during the broadcast where they had like these, these big wide landscape shots of like the beach and Corey Graves is talking about what an awesome time he had at the casino. Um, this was also a, a tourism commercial for, for San Juan, Puerto Rico. Yeah. No, they, and they, we've seen that a few times before. I mean, I was most notably in this audio, radio shows, but we've seen them kind of, there's ideas that they're not just, you know, showing one camera shot, like, oh, we're here in, in, in, you know, you know, Tampa, Florida. It's like, we're looking at all this stuff you can do here. Come to Puerto Rico. And now that they have ads during the events, um, yeah, this, this is what you're seeing on video here is not the shot itself, but it was something very similar to this. I got this from the Puerto Rico tourism. That's like the fork in San Juan. The, um, uh, yeah, in like, with, with Orlando, like the Orlando, like you meant you have the Orange County slide. I don't know if you want to bring that up, but this is, um, basically the pitch for Royal Rumble to be in Orlando. Um, I'll say this, like just Orlando and Orange County, Florida are a very unique entity in that, like to huge tourism. Yeah. Like we sometimes want to be in tourism city and having a lot of hotels, like Orlando's entire economy is based off of people flying there to do stuff that's there, whether that is going to places like Disney World or Universal Studios. Um, but they also host a ton of conventions, work conferences, special events, um, across the world. Something just just to support Governor Ron DeSantis. Oh, I'm sure it is. This is, um, but this is standard practice for, for Orlando. They, they're almost like, and I know other cities have done the events before Orlando was like the master of doing this, I guess. Um, and they're, uh, And what this, this slide shows is it's showing the CPMs for, I'm guessing what's on, what's airing on Peacock. And, you know, if you look at the, what they call P 18 plus, they're, they're selling, uh, advertisements for $37 per thousand viewers. And they're showing this in the, in the slide to, to government officials who are weighing whether to approve an $850,000 bid. They're, they're showing this to them to say, Hey, look, this is, we'll, we'll give this bid, but we'll also get some of this marketing value, which has this value to it. And if it's a royal rumble, there's going to be over a million people apparently watching it. And if you, I don't know, I'm not going to do the math on air, but it's, it's, you know, many thousands of dollars in, in marketing value and essentially advertising value for, uh, you know, w to show and perhaps Corey Grace and Michael Cole will talk about how wonderful Orlando is and you should really visit it. You'll have a great time. You can get 73 billion views on YouTube with their, with your commercial unquestionably. Um, but yeah, so in Orlando is like, that area that's uniquely equipped, I guess, for handling these kinds of things from a hotel perspective, from having rent to cars, from having transportation to get people to and from these events. Um, yeah. 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Maybe there's a lot of comps being given away. Anyway, Russell Ticks has the SmackDown at 16,900. Russell Ticks has the backlash, the PLE at 17,390. I was happy to see a very small entrance stage. No gargantuan massive screen and LED ramp. This was a very narrow entrance way. So more seats were available because of that. So we're at how they can do that. Yes. And Michael Cole said on the broadcast said something over 17,000. I forget what the number was. It was a little bit higher than this number on the screen that Russell Ticks has 17,390. I have sent the public records request to the public information officer for this event. So maybe we'll see if we get some more records related to attendance and ticket sales and things like that. The crowd, as you've probably heard, was super hot. I think it was a really, first of all, was a really hot crowd. And these fans were really excited to see people who were of Puerto Rican descent, like Bad Bunny and Zelina Vega. And I thought it was a really great sort of cultural moment for wrestling and to see wrestling in this different culture where people are super excited. And this place has a wrestling history of its own. And it got Savio Vega coming back and Carlito. And Chris Olinar was saying something to this effect on Twitter. It would be really fun to see this replicated and it kind of already has. But to see this replicated, say in Mexico, we got Rey Mysterio. He was suggesting do hair versus mask, Rey versus Dominic in Mexico or something like that. But if you look at the last 12 months, there have been three really good WPLEs in Cardiff in the UK, featuring locals out there, Richard McIntyre in Montreal. I was there live for the Sami's AIM match with Roman Reigns. It was an excellent show. And then this one in Puerto Rico. So if you look back at the history of what are the greatest W paper views of all time outside of WrestleMania, let's say, and the first ones that come to mind for me are like winning the bank 2011 in Chicago with punk and Canadian stampede and Calgary with the hearts. Right. When a wrestler has a unique connection with an audience, it usually creates a very interesting atmosphere. I think like you saw to a degree with Sami Zayn and Montreal for sure. But a lot of that was based on Sami Zayn himself was just over everywhere. What was really interesting to me was like, Carlito gets like this this whole COVID 1985 era pop for coming out. Carlito is not a particularly significant figure in WWE history. He kind of hadn't been teased to showing up like, it's not like Carlito is this gigantic star, but to these people who were not expecting him, he was because he's the son of Carlos Colón and he's alleging that his own right in Puerto Rico. And there's a really strong cultural identity with those kind of wrestlers in that style of wrestling that the fans are instantly recognized and treated him like he was a God. And Bad Bunny is almost a totally different scale of celebrity in Puerto Rico. I mean, I assume so I haven't been to Puerto Rico, but I imagine he is, you know, not really comparable to anyone in the US when it comes to his appeal and star power in Puerto Rico. And so it creates this, you know, amazing atmosphere that is exciting and people like to watch it. I don't know if that can be recreated in the United States. I don't know what wrestlers that I don't know what American wrestlers that they have that have that kind of connection. WWE's, you know, historically been committed to not putting people over in their hometown. They're not committed to even making people's hometowns a really big deal all the time. And I think it has hurt them to a degree. And that's by my impression is a habit of this. And I lord knows why he books that way. It's just are there other instances of this? Because in a lot of ways, this plays to their their notion of global expansion, international expansion, and the notion that perhaps that even they're going to do developmental around around the world and cultivate all these localized areas. Australia is one maybe. I mean, you have Rhea Ripley who's an Australian talent. Today, India eventually, there's no standout Indian talent to me, but maybe eventually. Yeah, do they do they present Rhea Ripley as like an Australian? I mean, she's from Australia. And I don't want to I don't think they should like she shouldn't be out there wearing like the outback jack out things like that. But like, we definitely imagine a year from now where she's face and they go there and it's we knew WWE, you know, we've seen it with some of the people that they've hired as developmental prospects. They would love to have an Indian wrestler who was. They could go to Nigeria for almost finally give almost his money. Yes. Well, there's another aspect of how financially successful are those markets and what kind of value prices will help will be have to scale to the economy. And that's one of the issue with India is selling, you know, they ran their they scheduled two events in 2017 during the gender Mahal era and they had to cancel one of the events. Yeah, she tells you how well if they could if they could get money from the Indian government to run the show, they'd probably be happy to do it. I mean, certainly that's what they do in Saudi Arabia. But I do think, you know, they they they they want to I'm sure WWE sincerely wants to have a very globalized diverse set of top stars. They'd love to have one top American star and one top British star and one top Mexican star and one top one Indian star. But the truth is they're not particularly good at making stars, especially from performance center trainees. So they've made though they've hired people to try to put that put those put people in those roles. But those people don't learn fast enough. They don't get over and their results are usually disappointing. So it all comes back down to talent development. And in in this case, they just got a celebrity who was already naturally going to be a huge star with a natural connection with the audience and had him do a celebrity wrestling match and credit to bad bunny, he worked very hard, he was willing to take bombs, he's willing to do all sorts of stuff to get him to the performance center is excellent at training people like Logan Paul and bad bunny to have matches that are sort of main event style matches. We're also talking about people like the huge advantage bad bunny has in wrestling as opposed to anyone from the performance center is that and that's done quite well too. And Logan Paul is almost to a lesser extent. And Logan comes to teaching people look on the glass and having more basic what Logan Paul has done has athletically, I think is a lot more impressive than than. And he's a he's a natural bad bunny. Yeah, and that bad bunny's athletic enough to do it. Right. But what the advantage bad bunny has over anyone else is he steps through the curtain and he's just this gigantic huge star because especially in Puerto Rico, he's a huge star in entertainment. And so he is naturally like he can do like, oh, he does like a tornado DDT or he does a Canadian destroyer, which are stuff that kind of a lot of people can do with a good base. Those are going to get huge costs because they already see him as a huge star, which is like the hardest thing to do in wrestling is to convince the audience to see you as a huge star. It usually takes an extreme amount of charisma and talents as a wrestling performer and also extremely good booking to get someone into that position. But you can kind of shortcut that by having a celebrity like bad bunny. And so it's hard for me to kind of compare like, oh, the performance center is good at having these celebrity matches together, which is true. Like the performance, they're good at teaching celebrities how to do these spots and they're well laid out. But it's really the cheat code here is you're using somebody who's already spewed as a huge star, which you can't do with your typical performance center training. But I mean, I would say that their execution looks good, good enough for what they're being asked to do. And I think it's it indicates something doesn't it that like, when it comes to the traditional stuff, you know, wrestler, who's in developmental, who's supposed to start out square one and start having matches and start getting over, it's it's it's about more than being over, isn't it? Right? Like the way that those that a lot of those wrestlers look on NXT TV is, you know, even if you adjust it for, you know, the the overness of how they received, they look a lot less prepared than Logan Paul and bad bunny right in. I think that's because there's something to unpack there that's very interesting. Well, and I think part of it is Logan Paul and especially bad bunny are naturally extremely charismatic people. That's why they've part of the reason they've been successful in their non pro wrestling endeavors, right? But and when because they're big celebrity, there's way more rope and leeway for them to be themselves. So they often come across as much more natural and organic than the WWE trainees who are coming in at the Performance Center and kind of being programmed to be a certain way. So you take someone like bad bunny and Logan Paul and they don't have to kind of, I guess, abide by the rules the same way that your Performance Center who has this drilled into their head and gets told what the right thing to do and what the wrong thing to do is they're kind of the celebrities come in and they're allowed to be themselves. And it's really apparent, I think, when you look at this, you could say the same thing about Brock. Brock is a charismatic person or Goldberg. I'm like Goldberg, like Goldberg came out and like when he came back, Goldberg's promos were like actually really good. And part of it was because he was just allowed to be Bill Goldberg and talk like himself and be an authentic version of- Nobody put a gold wig on him. Yeah, and he didn't have but like, and it's like, well Goldberg is, he's actually a good promo now. Wow, I didn't expect that. And a lot of it was just because Goldberg was allowed to be himself. He was this, you know, guy with a great beard that's going to kick the shit out of you. And people responded to that as opposed to being programmed to cut the sit, talk the same kind of way as everyone else does in WWE. And I think that's true for the celebrities as well. People like bad bunny and Logan Paul are just allowed to be themselves. And the version of themselves is extremely charismatic, successful entertainers that are millionaires. And you know, that translates. I think- Well, I was gonna say we have a super chat about the crowd at backlash from dollar obd, he goes, this is minor, but the backlash crowd didn't look like it was very predominantly males. And there was a lot less of that look of stereotypical wrestling. That's believable? Yeah, I don't know. I mean, who knows? I didn't get a good look at, you know, all 17,000 people were there. But and if it's some of it may have been family members of like Selena Veg or something like that. But yeah, just family members of Selena Vego that made up the 17,000. No, but no, but they were her family members were in the front row and were shown on camera. I mean, I think having bad bunny there, you may be attract a different type of wrestling, a different type of audience that a typical wrestling show historically has Puerto Rican wrestling attracted more of a female demographic than typical American traditional wrestling. I don't know. Do we do we, I didn't watch the full show last night? Did was anyone hit with any batteries? Not that I wasn't. That mysterious wasn't pelted with some sea batteries. Since since Vince took over wrestling and revolutionized that everything's been okay as far as batteries go. But oh, it's just a dwell on the developmental point for a minute longer. I think and this is part of my my broader philosophy slash suspicion about power and wrestling that I think power in wrestling is not that is not that smart and power therefore doesn't educate or in this case train people that well, they're good at doing the non traditional type of training of celebrities who because their celebrities don't have to go through the initiation process that new recruits at the at the NXT level have to go through. But the so the NXT recruits what they have to go through is this more traditional application of the way the things are that and apparently doesn't and who are the great promising up and coming talents that are in NXT in developmental right now. It's not that many who are obvious to me and I think others would agree. So I just think the sort of the hubris that W is because they're the biggest company because they have the most resources which they definitely do that they should somehow be able to be the ones who are best at training people from scratch as I mean 10 years into the performance center has I would say not clearly not been the case and you can look at a lot of other companies or you know sources around the world that have been more effective over the same amount of time. Yeah and I just I think you know power and wrestling it tends to be very stupid and so you end up not having very challenging approaches to training and educating people it's more about making sure that people are instilled with the values of power rather than instilled with the equipment that they need to get over in this moment. Do you think if bad bunny spent a year at the performance center going through all the drills that you're typical if nobody knew he was bad bunny right I'm just saying hypothetically like the performer he's now he spends a year you know getting instructed do this don't do this this is what you should do this is what you can't shouldn't do that kind of and he is totally like like many people totally subservant to what WWE wants him to do and he comes out do you think he is a better performer than he is right now he'd almost certainly be better at like fundamentals he'd maybe hit the ropes better and his his could be more crispness and his strengths and things like that but would he be like as charismatic or feel like as special of a star if he had spent a year doing that I can't definitely say yes I think you know I think a lot of people who train there you learn things that that complicate their ability to perform and get over more so than what we see the people who sort of jump the whole process or some of the more successful people who are trained outside of the w system okay one other thing I wanted to discuss here there was blood on this show at the very end so the main event was Brock Lesnar and Cody Rhodes and Lesnar took a bump into the unprotected turnbuckle and he bled I don't know if he was running a razor crosses head here but the commentators even acknowledged the blood so I don't know if Walt Pysick from light shed has has heard about this or not but he should be very pleased to know that there was in fact blood and guts on this premium live event and it was pretty late in the night I think it was around 11 o'clock p.m. so the kids were definitely in bed by then the company Michael Cole said the word blood either him or Corey Graves did and one of them said the word krypton you know the phrase crimson mask there was explicit acknowledgement of the blood here which is very unusual to my memory for w and I just want to make a formal offer to Mattel if you would like to have a partnership with us a sponsorship perhaps if you want to make chris skull action figures there's no blood on this program yeah there will be no one pleating on this program today so so you have those photos those are black and white right so are those three preppers because this is a wholesome this is a wholesome family program so today I haven't seen it did they tweet out any of the blood like today I don't know you know a few years ago Brock Lesnar there's different rules for black blasner like last few years ago Brock Lesnar you know cut open Randy Wharton in what seemed to be a preordained attempt to get blood the hard way yeah I was there live and he took his elbow and just smashed it over his head and yeah it would yeah god forbid someone you know takes a little bit customs forehead a little bit on their own but rather have a 290 pound MMA fighter bash a guy in with his elbow that's that's not hard better and I believe the hell in the cell match that Lesnar and Undertaker had I think 2016 17 17 anyway at that at some point in the last few years they had a home cell match and there was blood in a way that was like I don't know that that was either purposely done hard way or that was a blade so that's interesting maybe a sign ever since the company the softening with it's late in the night and PLE in Puerto Rico they had to I think legally that was probably part of the agreement with the Puerto Rican told me a Cody in there too you had to have blood yes it's the Carlos Colón clause the CCC it's you have if you're having a wrestling show I think Moxley when Moxley was working in Indy show in Ohio he was bleeding so you had to one up him the first Brock Lesnar John Cena match when he first came back at Extreme Rules didn't that also have blood in it I don't know that's like 2013 we're talking now but we we can go back to WrestleMania right where Finn Balor accidentally gets split open badly with the latter and they went out of their way to make sure now granted he probably maybe required real medical attention at the time because he they stapled me he got a really nasty gash but yes they didn't what Paul Pysick wanted to see to blood he was upset they didn't show the they didn't show like they tried as very hard to not choke any blood at all in that broadcast and that was only they put the camera on edge just sort of hovering that way and that was only a month ago so whether there's a doctor in coming or not there's different rules for Brock what I mean in this this interview with like shed that I'm making jokes about here when while Pysick brought up the issue with the edge and Balor mash Nick did say something to the effect of yeah we're something we're looking at and if it's later in the night maybe we can do you didn't say it like this maybe we can do things that are more violent or show blood who knows what he's how what he's basing that comment on but he did say that is um okay no that no I was about to say the same thing okay okay we'll uh we'll go to the general now this is what I did on my Friday morning driving into work I listened to the Warner Brothers Discovery earnings call with David Zazloff talking about artillery talking about ammo talking about battling against churn um this is still I'll I'll read parts of this summary from John Paul of post wrestling WBD released its first quarter earnings on Friday um and said that a key item being that it's streaming business would be profitable this year one year ahead of schedule as we know uh Netflix is basically the only streaming business that's profitable and it's the oldest stream business that's profitable I think we talked maybe it was last week about how what is it peacock's gonna lose a billion dollars this year and this is going to be the peak of their losses and they hope that their losses will diminish in time after after this year um the company generate 10.7 billion dollars in revenue they're trying to deleverage their debt for its US streaming business the company made 50 million dollars this quarter and rose to 705 million dollars a year over year WBD is gearing up for the relaunch of its streaming service max which is currently called HBO Max it's gonna be rebranded in June and I don't know in in may I think in a couple weeks actually uh company CEO David Zazlaw stated that WBD would be quote unquote disciplined when it comes to the renegotiations for NBA rights which expire in 2024 2025 and the WBD stock reacted well um so just uh just to note that you know this was news from WBD that it's that it may actually be able to make money in streaming which has been one of the big questions around media in this transition from behavior happening through traditional TV and now behavior moving over more so and will continue to move over to streaming how is it going to be profitable because mostly stream businesses aren't profitable well they're on track already earlier than expected to be profitable and this is WBD who's been so so focused along with Moon or Weidenfeld's the CFO of WBD talking about cost discipline not more better content so they're trying to be very conservative with how they spend money and strategic and maybe this is maybe things are looking better for streaming overall than we had expected up to this point in terms of finance I don't know the answer to this um and I don't know if you do either but is it possible like HBO when we talk about profitability of a streaming service which is this HBO Max and Discovery just there what what are the biggest um drivers of programming on on HBO Max and Discovery um they're mostly probably shows or or perhaps movies but probably shows that are produced by uh HBO for for the still you know cable network HBO right like House of the Dragon or Succession is still on traditional network yeah right so these major HBO shows like is the um people are subscribed to HBO Max to watch those shows but is HBO Max the streaming service paying for the production of those shows or is that coming from a separate you know HBO I guess what you're saying is how is the accounting main done right like as I suppose some of the some of the cost being attributed to the stream business as opposed to like Netflix or Disney Plus I would suggest this is a publicly traded company I would suggest there's there's probably strict rules around how that accounting needs to be done so and I'm kind of there trust that that process if it's all being factored into the broader HBO Max or one of others Discovery Umbrella they can disclose that but if we're just talking specifically oh HBO Max's streaming service you know is the product are they spending the same amount of production uh if you don't count any expenses everything's profitable yeah um as opposed like Netflix right like Netflix is paying to it's all one business yeah and into a lesser like Disney Plus is probably producing most of their content for Disney Plus like the Star Wars TV shows and the Marvel shows and things like that um I guess if it checks out if we know Netflix is profitable right um and they're the only one well if you look at this chart H.U.M.A. Max Discovery appears to be um the next highest up subscribers and they did disclose there's there's about four million subscribers who are subscribed to both currently HBO Max and Discovery so you can knock this 55 million or so down up down to about let's say 50 million and that would still put it just over um Hulu so they said that they do expect when they merge these two services officially and HBO Max becomes just Max and all the Max subscribers will suddenly have access to the Discovery Plus content you can still be a Discovery Plus subscriber only what are you gonna do what's your household gonna do go when uh Max becomes both the home of Discovery Plus content H and HBO content so I mean are you gonna drop to Discovery Plus and become a Max subscriber or are you gonna keep Discovery Plus now? Max subscriber because I like a lot of the uh HBO Max shows so but another thing that was significant I think to our wrestling discussion is they talked about putting more news and sports on Max which other than like I don't know the what the John Oliver show maybe that's news there's basically no news or sports on HBO Max I think somebody in the chat telling me if there's ever been a sports broadcast on HBO Max and sports I mean that's maybe that's how they'll maybe they'll use NBA to some extent if they've got a new NBA 10y extent and maybe that's sort of where they're thinking and how AW may fit in into being on Max and it wouldn't surprise me at all if NBA or MLB playoff games or things like that or simulcast between you know your typical TBS and TNT and on HBO Max the same way that NBCU does that with peacock and events that are on NBC and USA CBS you know does it with events that are on maybe CBS Network and Paramount so it wouldn't surprise me at all if they adopt the sim basically what has become the standard practice ESPN does it as well with ESPN ESPN Plus so that doesn't seem to be the standard practices we'll pay for the NBA we'll have it on TBS and TNT but maybe we'll also have games to watch on HBO Max so you don't have to subscribe necessarily to TBS and TNT to get these games maybe they'll have games that are just on TBS or just on HBO Max and the talking point is that with the NBA and the NBA has an especially young demographic relative to other sports and that so maybe especially well suited for streaming which NBA games basically don't live in any strict streaming place right now I could see as we discussed I could see Rampage especially if Rampage is going to become this basically take over the duties of dark and dark elevation in terms of being in this place where less important matches happen between you know established talent and and you know extras then maybe this is maybe Rampage ends up being a component of AW's presence on Max if that happens which I think it will. Even if it I mean if Rampage also could probably retain his time slot if they're happy with the 10 o'clock on Friday numbers yeah if they don't have something better or more cost effective in there yeah okay um Wrestleomics on Patreon is patreon.com slash Wrestleology get my weekly TV ratings reports the weekly merchandise report Steve Austin was number one for WU this week the viewership spreadsheet is there podcast slides are there I've been there hasn't been a Thursday podcast in a couple weeks in these weeks where I'm doing a podcast with John Paulk of post wrestling I might not unless there's something big I might not do a podcast that week but if we don't have one of those we will do one just so I'm not overwhelmed and end up doing a Thursday show where I have nothing to talk about because I've already talked about it so that's the patreon patreon.com slash Wrestleomics and what more do we have to talk about here and if you want to put in a super chat you certainly can. I have a bunch of WU stats here I don't know if we need to talk about this in terms well I guess we could say this the smack down color and I were talking just before we went on air here the smack down fast affiliate looks especially low and I don't know if there's any external factor that I need to consider here but usually it's it's it's the case if there's some external factor causing it to be too high in any case this looks like it could be when the final rating is reported on Monday be the lowest smack down in many months in terms of the least total viewership. What was on on Friday that could have been competition I know there was basketball goal was was discovering that there was basketball on was ESPN it was so yeah Sixers but it wasn't wasn't Lakers and warriors though the league no no it wasn't there was Sixers and Celtics and then nuggets had Celtics do yeah the Celtics won they are now up two games to one and there's series against 76ers and they play game four this Sunday starting in 330 so three hours from now okay so this was just a day and I don't know any reason why this would be a false impression but this looks like an especially low smack down number and they went against you know the in these other you know previous weeks in the immediate past year they were going against NBA games that are being simulcast on ABC and ESPN there's only this you know shark tank was on ABC I don't know if that was like a season premiere of shark tank or something like that but you know they've gone against what seemed like tougher competition well it looks final numbers come out on Monday it does look it looks extremely bad compared to last week which obviously the draft um held a lot of appeal to people but it does also doesn't it doesn't look that bad way if you contrast it with the week before that and kind of closer to where they were kind of before the lead up to WrestleMania so is this kind of to be expected with the post WrestleMania you know downturn interest Roman Reigns isn't on the show um he's on next week though all right he's back right so that'll be a good a good thing to see how that impacts him Cody is uh well this in the starting the title tournament right um despite the title being a raw title there's going to be wrestlers wrestling for it on SmackDown it's gonna be two three way title three way matches on both Ron Smack's on the winner's face each other in singles match later than the night and then the winners of those two matches face each other in the chances right so but that's something to watch on SmackDown like that those are matches they have real consequence um I think this was this SmackDown this week was kind of a pretty light show I guess it's a go home for backlash but it wasn't necessarily like it was in Puerto Rico was hot crowd Cody was on the show and you know but this could be if my projection is right this this could be the lowest since September 2022 um I guess what I want to think about is like I know everything is still up and I'm sort of pounding the desk about it that ratings are still up but we haven't really seen the fall of what the effect the draft is here and I think it's kind of a unnecessary measure that they're taking here when things are going perfectly fine as it was um but I guess I wanted to point out to you that how shows are still way up through through April and April is obviously over with now we've got you know I put this up here that how shows have gone from undesirable to undeniable they're up in April 45 percent the in March up 35 percent and it's some of this because of Cody I did break this out and you can see that the tables for yourself on video I won't read through them but it's it's not super conclusive I mean the shows that don't have him some of them are are are not up market to market uh but there are some that don't have him like in Champaign Illinois it was up 25 percent versus the previous house show there didn't have Cody on it but a lot of these that do have Cody on it are are up strongly can I attribute this bump in house shows to Cody maybe but can't say for sure um any thoughts there before I talk about the reception of shows no I mean I think that I think their business their their live attendance has hung up has hung on uh better post-wrestle menu than I maybe thought I would they still seem to be doing really well especially for Ron's Mac down tapings um we'll see in a few months we'll see what the if the brand split impacts that if because you've been kind of living off of the idea that stars have been bouncing between both Ron's Mac down so if you buy tickets to a Smackdown there's a good chance that Cody Rhodes would be on it and if you buy tickets to a raw there's a good chance maybe not that Roman Reigns would be on it but maybe like Sammy Zane or or the Usos or other major stars in the company if once if we do get into a defined roles in the brand split will there will how will that impact their attendance if you're kind of inherently taking less star power off of these shows and as we see there Ron Smackdown continued to be up year over year in in all these monthly comparisons um so my my other question is that well since Vince's explicitly back now since WrestleMania and they're starting to do this draft and brand split but we're only the brand split only really goes into effect Monday I believe right um in any case what's the reception been like at least among the cage match voters and was in April that whole month of April we've got Vince explicitly backing in control and then we were getting reports that he is making changes uh and Raw was in terms of the cage match event ratings was down to to its lowest level since July 2022 which was Vince's last month Raw was so Raw according to the cage match voters sentiment was as bad as it was back when Vince was back and in every month in between it was at least a little bit higher uh but Smackdown in April had a really strong average rating of 7.6 which is you know among the best months of for an average for Smackdown um and this paper view is quite well received when I took the screenshot this morning uh backlash rating at over over an 8.0 rating just over which puts it on the level of elimination chamber, clashed castle. I imagine the April Raw ratings are being really hurt by the um that that post me or rah that everyone just the two it kind of turned into like a uh a meme on cage match where it was like I don't know where it is now but it was it was like the third worst reviewed wrestling show in history it was like only like heroes of wrestling and like one other show uh I think there was like episode of Smackdown that had no matches no wrestling on it but also got killed like so I imagine that's hurting the April rating a lot um and everyone blame Vince was back making changes yeah you can see that like it's obviously currently sitting it up 0.63 out of time in a lot of votes so that was a 367 whereas everything around it's got like at most just a lot to be fair that was a hugely watched episode of one of that rah the post WrestleMania episode for sure um so but I'm assuming that is kind of like if you were to do I don't know like a median rating of uh of April it would probably be a little bit better um true yeah what I mean that it does it does six or something it does if you're if we're going on the idea of like Vince being back in charge and making some having more creative influence is hurting the perception of the product it's hard to ignore the episode of rah everyone new Vince was back on everyone hated um this Smackdown median would be seven it's neither five here so it's easy to tell the median would be 7.49 which is pretty good right um Smackdown you know doing good Smackdown had Vince had a couple of triple H coming out and telling the fans everything was going to be okay so that probably helps the the people feel better about the Smackdown yeah it's graduating um in AEW despite the fact that I think um a lot of people would say that the the build to double or nothing has been colder than most pay reviews that they're not necessarily the the dynamites over the last month or so have been below expectation doesn't seem to be reflected in the cage match rating um which is kind of interesting um but at least that in that metric it doesn't seem like dynamite is particularly better or worse than they were a few months ago right in your time it's up to well this is one week in May but it was up to an eight right it's it's it's doing just as well as it pretty much has done for the last year um I think if you were to talk to some of the hardcore fans and to read some reviews and stuff like that that it's a little bit more pessimistic than I think that cage match rating would imply um okay I don't know that we need to go through all my uh wrestlers under 30 analysis you can find that at wrestlingautics.com that is free for everybody where I use a number of metrics including your match count your promotion count your google trends you're the count of matches that you've had rated on cage match that are eight or better and I ran an index and sort of tried to find who are the wrestlers that stand out well under those numbers that that who are under the age of 30 and who have an age actually entered in cage match and we get is this over a thousand wrestlers is that the right it is it is ranked this is the ranking right here now I wrote now I wrote in the in the article if you read the article I wrote in the article don't take this these the order of these tables too seriously but here's some suggestions about who the who the wrestlers are under for under 30 who are standing out now you may react no I'm not gonna I'm not gonna say anything okay there are some names at the very top that are ahead of some names towards the middle of the list that I would we can verify here that masha slam a bitches in fact better than will osprey okay moving on to the next topic briefly we are we have an ELO draft update and uh I have to look into this to make sure hopefully over time these numbers will change but we've got three dates here because these are the dates that apparently matches took place on on so we started the clock on may first if you missed last week's episode we each picked five wrestlers and based on their ELO ratings from here to the end of the year we will have a I don't know an ELO league fantasy league here and the winner will be the person who has the highest daily average ELO among their five wrestlers um and and I'm ahead here just because I have and we're early in this process but it's really about where these people end up more long term but I picked I think the five wrestlers who are the collectively the most highly ranked to begin with so I am above everybody I'm above either Guller or Jesse at this point. So Wardlow won a match is ELO rating didn't go up at all is that just because he beat a driver? I'm suspicious that this whether this data is correct or why why it didn't move when like these people had matches. Yeah the younger bell there was one last night well the I don't think we have the the I don't think we have her record for what happened last night in here yet I did run this this morning but I don't I but see I I scraped cage match at like midnight so probably at midnight maybe that record is in there trying to think of shoe wrestlers on raw this like I know Wardlow wrestle Don Dynamite um yeah and I'm trying to think we'll see what happens next week if these numbers continue not to change there will be a data investigation hook wrestled on um uh on a rampage sonata beat haramu um this week orange Cassidy won you want a tag match this is all between the first and the fifth yeah I think so orange what wrestled on wednesday which would have been the third I think right okay well there will be a data investigation before next week if these numbers do not change over the days sh so but uh well the death of a w dark does that impact right that was a that is plays a huge role here we all we all made these picks based on the assumption that a w dark dark elevation will continue to exist and continue to allow wrestlers to pile up the winds no more no more a w dark dark elevation other than I don't know maybe a week or so how much is really left um so that that that changes things doesn't it sort of I don't know who here who among those we have picked is is really a regular on on darney dee hulk but I would say I don't I don't know for fact but like I feel like someone like hakar rishita is winning a lot of three-minute matches on on on dark and dark elevation if we watched darker dark elevation we would probably better able to answer this question moxley's probably not wrestling that much on dark and dark elevation jade might be is not sure how frequently she's on those shows hook maybe sometimes orange castee maybe sometimes on my end ward low I could see squash and people and under dark and dark elevation um Athena maybe and I did I did look up your your nick all this jesse he's he's ranked just below the top 100 okay but this is a long term play on now just getting a big push and impact so right hopefully he doesn't wrestle like twice like he's not gonna wrestle that much I hope he's gonna be that each week but yeah wrestling a lot is really an advantage here yeah and how shows don't count yeah and so that's why the dark and dark elevation are good because it would just be these quick matches that you can get you know talents we send right okay um you have us a couple of chats uh louie de cappie was asking uh when does a AW air on i-TV is it live and does the improve the proceeds value of a wtv and brin something which is will all in you know improve that proceed value of a wtv I don't know if it based on the uh the pound sterling of of louie super chat I think he might be better I would think he would be better equipped to answer one one day if i google if all in will air and think he's talking about all in yeah maybe yeah i see for those wondering like when i google it it says aw air is live every thursday at 1am in the uk and rampage air is every saturday at 3am on fight so like that is live but yeah late late at night um i think that's a question okay because i think this is gonna air my my guess is this is gonna air on max in the u.s that's only gonna be the u.s because that's not a global service um i think it's in a couple other countries but probably not the u.k um so it's either either going to have to find some streaming partner in the u.k. or maybe they are on tv or maybe it's um maybe it's part of a w plus maybe it's pay per view does it have a pay per view service or like because i know one of the u.k. networks that i know are was i would think they stay away from pay per view globally because they're gonna offer a pay per view globally the following week i think that um so maybe you know a.w. fight plus if nothing else. Impreceded value of a wtv in britain i think obviously the show selling of my tickets and running Wembley stadium sends a strong message to of what this this company is in in the u.k. and in europe we know from uh you know doing very well you know at the fakia forum doing very well in new york city um impresses some people in network position so i'm assuming doing really well at one bay stadium impresses people at itv and in other you know broadcasting partners in europe um we have another one here uh this is uh from uh del marabdia was the a w rating this week younger skewed than usual i think it would be right because it did a .28 which is about the same as what they've done last few weeks but it did significantly less than total viewers so i think that means that it's skewed younger from most part probably i'm pulling up in the spreadsheet now um if i look we'll divide the demo by the total viewership here and uh a w all access not doing great ratings by the way it's doing about the same as power slap yeah so 47 percent was in the demo this past wednesday what would happen last week that was 47 percent and then the week before this week was 43 percent had to have been a younger audience generally i mean obviously because it's as as jesse said same demo but lower total viewership so yes okay and i know we have one more to scroll on up to the comments very that participated here yeah this is from is he mccler just uh saying thank you rustl nox is the best part of my sunday morning thank you is he thank you it's the best part of my sunday morning too it's also the best part of my sunday morning especially the way this talk named season's going all right and i believe that is it just scroll up for chance no we should be good to go we should be caught up in the right okay anything else you want to talk about a plug i do want to talk about something if you got a few minutes um sure sure and it's part of it i'll tie it into my plugs um so uh the gentleman's wrestling podcast um i record an episode with garret kidney um garret for people who don't know is kind of like the foremost tna impact analyst historian um in the game and we talk kind of about the history of tna and the legacy of the company and one of the things on the show we talked about was kind of who who was in charge of tna at different times when it came to the create event and how often tna relied on people with past experience uh in wrestling people like whether it was dusty roads or vince russo or john d'bioric or bruce pritcher these people that had experience writing for ww or maybe wcw or somewhere else and they were constantly relying on these people for um uh to kind of hell in the creative aspects of tna and a lot of time it kind of worked against tna's best interest because constantly trying to relive the past and things like that um and i wanted to kind of draw attention to will washington being hired by uh a w this week um will for people who don't know it is a long time podcaster um and kind of wrestling analyst uh and he got hired in kind of like a multifaceted capacity from for a w he's gonna do i forget what his actual title is but he's gonna do you know some some social media some house show works and why have attendance works some create work in creative capacity i've been kind of told that he's gonna be kind of responsible for the director of wrestling administration right as will i just and tony mentions like he's gonna he's gonna have some sort of level of creative capacity and he's gonna be i think i've been told kind of he's gonna be overseeing um some like continuity uh within the company and things like that and i kind of wanted to point out like just it's very very difficult for like people to break into wrestling in a creative capacity and if you look at who has been allowed to have a strong creative voice in major professional wrestling it's really only a handful of people and it tends to be the same people from generations ago and so it's very interesting to see aew three and somebody who to my knowledge doesn't have any like proper wrestling booker experience but their experience comes from being a fan and having respected opinions and analysis over wrestling and that's someone whose voice is not frequently heard from in wrestling creative in ww yes they have writers and some of those writers maybe are fans but it's all under the thumb up in sick man and it's also under the thumb of people like Bruce Prichard and Paula Beck who have been involved in creative capacity in wrestling for decades um and it does and i'm thinking like historically that's really stunted the creative developments in pro wrestling because it's only a few people are ever allowed to really hold the pencil and like aew kind of only exists because and tony con is one of those new voices who has emerged and the only reason he's been able to emerge is because he is incredible personal wealth and decided to dedicate that to running a major wrestling company um and you could say it's to a lesser extent like Billy Corgan is another person who's been a new voice but it's largely because he's funded it himself and it's exciting i think for different types of people to get an opportunity to be a creative voice in pro wrestling and get a chance with a major company to to get some ideas on there and to put the the voice of a fan in the room which is something historically has been sustained by pro wrestling creative um and i think it will be very interesting to see how it goes and if what kind of impact that has and we should welcome i think this opportunity for more people to get involved in wrestling creative as opposed to the same names that have been kicking around for years and years i'm i'm scram with a look at the quote he wrote this said something to the fact when in the early days of aew um i i i seem to remember him saying that there just shouldn't be writers but he but what i'm finding is him saying that there are there are no plans at that time like 2019 for aew to to hire writers and i think when we talk about writers we talk about like the wub version of of it which is like we're gonna get some people maybe with some scripted tv drama or sitcom writing experience and they're gonna pitch which is something that never existed right and we're gonna pitch man re reimagine we're gonna pitch like backstage storylines like some of the ones we heard about like in the lawsuit obviously not as offensive as those but the idea of like this person is gonna be in a relationship with this person and those kind of things as opposed to like people deciding who's gonna feud with who and what kind of story are we gonna tell and and those kind of aspects and it's been controlled by the same people forever and ever and it's one of those things where if you're gonna if you're looking to hire a new creative head you usually look at people who have prior experience even if that experience is not particularly good um or they burned out or they don't have that connection with the audience anymore um and you know it's overwhelmingly white it's overwhelmingly people over the age of you know 40 or 50 years old it's a it's people who have been around wrestling for a long time or maybe your their only experience is being around the sick man's version of pro wrestling which was certainly something that is hamstrum t&a over the years um and it's it's a different it's overwhelmingly men yeah and so um it is um a different will will hiring will is a very different step and i don't know how actually how much power will is ultimately gonna have if he's gonna be booking the whole show as i doubt it as if tony is still gonna have most of the control there i'm sure but the idea of putting another voice in the room like that is um an interesting step and i'm excited to see what happens and i hope that if it goes well you know just more people from different backgrounds are given an opportunity to to have a role in creative and wrestling because that's really when the best stuff happens is when new people come along and experiment with different ideas and when you're recycling the same people over and over again you're not gonna get that kind of output yeah i think yeah i think that's that's very true that's the the creative isolation that wrestling has been contained us wrestling has been contained to the last three years has been a real limit on its ability to attract new audiences take to gain an audience and to have you know greater success but but wrestling has not failed badly enough for those people to truly be be weeded out um or to have you know if you have to have to to add for it to be demonstrated clearly enough to decision makers to be like well maybe we really need to recycle the kinds of people we put in these positions for whatever reason and i think Vince is the biggest one of all yeah Vince owned the company so Vince had an incredible amount of authority over what was going on um and that was but even if you look at tna like when tna went through a lot of different people but with the exception of when they would bring in like Scott dm more it was always like who can we get that has some experience whether it's Vince Russo or Eric Bischoff or you know even some like John Gaborick who was like kind of like a WWE i think he was fcw at the time and like just but just the same kind of people that come from the same kind of environment which is ww or maybe wcw and you're not getting the new kind of ideas and the new kind of perspectives that need to be shared and think you know the understanding of of what the contemporary wrestling fan wants and what do you and if you want to create new fans what do they want um right it's just something that's been kind of and there's like there's a hostility to that old money that there's a hostility to to the ways that wrestling has changed in terms of perhaps appealing to what they perceive as the smarter fan and how that's that's actually that that's actually appealing to much smaller subset when you need to appeal to the people at walmart and things like that this it's who do you think under yeah and like this mass of tension and also kind of like who do you think understands the average person anymore the person who's been in wrestling their entire lives or for the last 30 years or someone who's coming from a different background right if we're talking about who who's going to be the idea that these wrestling fans are going to come in off the streets and they're just going to book for their hardcore smart friends i feel like i would be more i feel more comfortable that those people who haven't spent their entire lives in pro wrestling would be able to have a perspective to perhaps be able to influence and attract non wrestling fans or non hardcore wrestling fans as opposed to crusty old guy who's been in the wrestling business for 40 years and this is all he knows because he hasn't had a real job in 40 years i would suggest the tony even if we let's say that we take for granted that you you personally dislike and hate the aw product he still has not booked we can say this at a minimum he still has not booked a w badly enough that it has done worse ratings than it has such to the extent that it's been you know it had to move its time slot or something like that has been canceled or didn't get an upgrade in its tv deal in january 2020 and he did this he avoided doing that extent of damage to his product i'm trying to make this very very basic right that he did this despite having not only no no experience booking wrestling but no firsthand experience in the wrestling business at all yes he worked in sports and all these other things but not wrestling he's just a guy uh who's a big wrestling fan and tape trader and dvd r message board poster uh mentioned that on the the week that uh unfortunately dean rasp in passaway um which is sort of like this i think it is like this you know to make it really hoity toyy reference like sort of this uh you know paris cafe of of uh wrestling minds who emerged in the very early 2000s um yeah it's it just goes i mean it demonstrates to you that no you can't listen to every wrestling fan or every pundit online but there are some smart people with ideas and perhaps even people who don't have have who are huge wrestling fans but don't have the typical experience that one has before one becomes a wrestling writer or booker these people can be quite effective and i think that that's what really sets a w apart from the the folly of of tna and impact is that it wasn't run by it was run by somebody it was a huge deep hardcore wrestling fan it was not run by dixie carter or the carter family or even the jerets it was run by somebody who loved wrestling in a way that the most hard core fans love wrestling and that has been effective and if you don't think it's been effective it has least least not been prohibitive to the company existing and doing what it's done to this point yeah and it's also been somebody who's avoided like hiring the the old guard um because they don't know any better or in learning from history and like it makes sense why dixie carter brought an arach bishop or vince ruso it makes sense you know oh i'm gonna get this person who you could you could ask some people and they will tell you oh they were successful running rest another major wrestling company in the past and they were accessible being a booker um at this point nobody brought that bill lots again the cowboy well Brandon the cowboy's not cowboy's not gone he's still around i'm just saying well like i think actually maybe hank Aaron ended him actually yeah but um well no because because he was hired by vince after that's true yeah he worked for ww after that that was a different time different time in place yeah and so i think it's just been like really create like think about television like or let's let's let's do like let's do because we're talking about like major american wrestling let's think about like big budget movies there are some people who like steven spielberg or you know james camera and all cameras aren't really that prolific or peter jackson right these people that are doing big budget movies and they've been around for a long time but there's also all sorts of other people who have stepped into that realm over the last 10 or 15 years um and been able to show that they can do a great job and be successful and it hasn't been limited the fact that they never had any experience making a big budget movie before and that's why we have a bunch of different like i guess some people would say we don't have enough creativity in hollywood these days but we have different creative minds getting a chance to do something and wrestling has really been stunted it's only been a few people that have really been enabled and empowered to do that and i think we've had so much of wrestling and so much of so much of a w is fighting this uphill battle of pushing back against the singular creative vision of ww which is largely defined for wrestling over the last 20 years because ww's either been the only major show in town or if you consider tna another major show tna was largely run similar to ww from the creative ends um yeah and then i would argue that a w even as it is is still infected by the bad habits that wb hasn't still look absolutely so many people who who work in a wnore influenced maybe who never worked in ww right because that's the version of wrestling that's existed for 20 years um now and i think that that is a major um step i think in the right direction for a w um and that's why like if we talk like i don't think this has really seriously been discussing a little bit but like the idea of like a third major company right like what if mark cuban got involved there's some other billionaire was like i'm gonna run a wrestling company i do think tony is really a one-of-one individual in the sense of he had access to tremendous wealth to run this company but he's got the he's a big enough fan to understand who the con men are and understand what are some of the tropes he doesn't want to fall into are as opposed to listening to all these experienced hands that want to tell you and it's probably not a surprise that a lot of these old con men are not fans of tony because they maybe saw him as one thing and then quickly learned that he was another and and there is this point and this sort of related to i think to the notion that that i think we've discussed that everybody had this utopia utopia utopia utopia idealistic concept of what a w could be as your idealized alternative to wrestling and then it it deviated from that and you are happier support it's kind of like the extent that it deviated yeah i had an optimism about what a w could be um early on and that you know but it but it has still you know ended up being a largely wv influence products consciously or not regardless of you know the lack of of w experience that tony or other people involved have have had yeah um like you look at watching an episode of dynamite especially in the last few weeks and I think the the criticism that you know pundits or people online have been having for lately it's been a quite wv looking product in terms of you know we do the promos in the ring and there was a you know that for that that four-way match of their building there was a cavalcade of challenger segment where one came out and another came out it was very wv influence product involving four wrestlers and perhaps producers who had nothing to do with wv you know in any significant way yeah and to be fair without getting into any specific examples there are some ww things that they're okay to do there are some of them are really good ideas that you should try to emulate but you're right in the sense of if you want to have presented a product that's different to feel different and to avoid some of the mistakes that other companies have made emulating ww and we could go even further into the gutter here and and like and go will can weigh in here like in on the indies in a in a on an indie show where nobody's worked in wv4 it's an incredibly i would say many of these shows that i've worked and are incredibly influenced by wv and w tropes and the beginning matches despite nobody ever working there 100 especially things like the tlc tlc matches on the indies and money in the bank and yeah cash and royal rumble style matches and yeah and even even old tropes from old ww i've still used the whole like oh two guys wrestling chitar all here comes two guys running art now we have a tag team in event like right hey and some of these ideas i think match stipulations some of these match stipulations are really good ideas i think i'm this is like something i've heard push back against i think a w should just do a full blown royal rumble call it something else but do have one through 30 come out individually big world title shot online make the the world title match at all and you have to win the the a w version of the royal rumble i think it would be great and people would overreact we'd have this whole cultural or fight about you know or doing a ww idea like all this stuff and then just be like i don't care if they're copying ww i think it would be a great uh i think it would do a huge rating on dynamite and i think a w has a lot of interesting talents that would get big pops when they came out and it would be interesting to see who wins i think that would be a great idea but they probably wouldn't do it and maybe they shouldn't do it because it's just an ingrained ww tradition but as a as a just a wrestling fan i think it would be great okay anyway so um that's so me and garret discuss a lot about um you know the limited creative minds and tna and that's on the jaliman's wrestling podcast and i also wrote an article for voices of wrestling.com talking more in depth about like the will washington hire and kind of more of like historically what this means for for wrestling creative and that's on the voice of wrestling.com you can check that out. Oh hey jay welcome me uh this weekend uh saturday night uh i'll be re-announcing uh empire state wrestling uh bralface macardona first kevin benet in the main event uh is that frontier for all over works um yeah and then uh the night before i'll be at the one i cat brewing uh doing stand-up comedy in the williamsville area of buffalo in New York so okay okay thanks everybody for listening thanks for your super chats today uh thanks for supporting subscribing we will talk to you we will i will be back with john on wednesday with a special guest uh to be announced i think you will both enjoy uh but then we'll be back so probably not a thursday show this week because i'm doing that on wednesday and then we'll be back of course again on sunday with this program talk to you then bye it's jeep four by four season make your next adventure epic and hurry in now for great deals now what qualified less seeds get a low mileage leaks on the 2023 jeep grand Cherokee laredo four by four for four eighty nine a month for 24 months with three thousand eight oh nine do its signing tax title license extra no security deposit required call one eight eight nine two five jeep for details requires dealer contribution at least through ally financial extra charge for miles over twenty thousand residency restrictions apply take delivery by five thirty one twenty three jeep is a registered trademark so how does it feel when you play roll up to win with tim warden's by a hot or cold beverage using the tims app and find out roll in the app for a chance to win prizes ranging from free coffee and donuts to a universal or land or resort vacation or a sweet card oh don't forget the tv and this year every roll is a shot at a one thousand dollar daily giveaway drawing for two five hundred dollar prizes roll up to win and get treated by tems no purchase necessary account registration required fifty us and dc eighteen plus entered by four two twenty three see rules at rollup2win.com for free entry and full details. 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