Disney's FX interested in WWE rights, AEW Collision debuts

Hello, everybody, and welcome to another edition of Rustal Linux Radio. I'm Brandon Thurston, broadcasting live and on demand from both of New York for today is Sunday, June 18th, Father's Day. This is our follow-up episode of our Mother's Day episode. And I'm joined by Jesse Collins-Low. And I want to say a special hello to Chris Gullow, as I was bombarded this week on both Dynamite and collision broadcasts. Admittedly, I'd not tune into Rampage, could have been airing during a Rampage due, but in our local market of Buffalo, New York, I was immersed in advertisements for Gullow's Garden Center. Is this your, are you, in the interest of full disclosure, Chris Gull, are you buying advertising during AW broadcasts? I am not buying advertising during AW broadcasts. I am not affiliated with Gullow's Garden Center as an employee or anything like that. Now, it is owned by my uncle, my mom's brother. So it is in the family, but I have no ties to Gullow's Garden Center. Can you send him an invoice? Because we have calls to action here on the screen right now for people watching live on YouTube, the website, and the phone number are there. If you're like, this is with the Garden Center. There it is. But you're a big gardener. Yeah, yeah, but yeah, it's a Garden Center. They have a landscaping company too. I thought we were going to have our own little mini segment each week on the show called Hello Gullow and Gullow. We've just slapped the background around Gullow. And he tells us a story about his life for like two minutes. Yes, yeah. No one's ever said Hello Gullow's until my aunt who probably came up with that slogan. I'm assuming so, yeah. Well, it does ride. It does, but, you know, it's not a word. Hello is not a word. Okay. Well, we're going to talk today about the debut, not that much to say yet because ratings aren't out. But the debut of AEW collision as well as the report from the York Post that FX is interested in WLive rights as well as some ratings things looking at the long-term ratings of WWE in particular. And the MLW versus WWE lawsuit must continue. We will explain that as well. But first, we'll do some housekeeping. Once again, if you haven't listened to the last week's episode, Russell Alex Radio, this podcast that you're listening to right now will become Patreon exclusive three or four weeks out of each month beginning in July. So the July 9th episode will be the first episode that is exclusive to subscribers at patreon.com slash Russellomics. And we'll continue to have the first episode of each month will continue to be free on the platform that you're listening to or watching right now. But other than that, they will be exclusive to Patreon still in the Russellomics Radio podcast in the YouTube channel. There will continue to be the Pollock and Thirsten podcast that is a collaboration of Russellomics and post-wrestling. So that will continue to be free. We just had this past when it would release it Wednesday was recorded on Monday, John Pollock's and mine talk with Tony Khan, which we can probably talk about as well today. Jesse, I know you've listened to it, your analysis. I was interested for sure. I definitely think there's a lot of, it's a Tony Khan interview. So there's a lot of him going into promoter mode. It was a great show. It was a great interview. I'm sorry. No, I mean, I thought, you know, he definitely is really bad time for a car. I want to be going off alone. As someone burglarizing a car in Boston. But again, such on, last night on A to B collision, CM Punk said that, what is his line? He, David Zazloff, who's pictured here for people watching live on YouTube, David Zazloff calls him. Was him one, one Bill Phil? One Bill Phil, big CM Punk fan, David Zazloff, I suppose. But it raises some questions. But what were your thoughts on the interview, Jesse? I thought, you know, it's one of the, my big takeaway, honestly, is that Tony, I did a good job, right? I did, I did good. I do. I thought that you and John did an excellent job asking the questions that you could ask and trying to get something out of Tony that you don't see him get out of, say, the rassulin podcast he did earlier this week with, I think it's bar stool, right? And some of the other podcasts you see, it was funny, I was thinking about, you know, like one of the things Tony does during that interview is anytime he's asked about a question about, CM Punk potentially feuding with the elite, Tony turns into this monologue about, well, while he's feuding with, you know, Samoa Joe has been long time rival Samoa Joe this Saturday and then CM Punk comes out on Saturday for collision. He's wrestling Samoa Joe later that night. Does he mention Samoa Joe? It is opening promo, absolutely not. He takes shots at the elite instead. What was he talking? I didn't, I didn't understand any of that promo. I don't know what, what exactly he was talking about. He was talking about David Zazloff, who maybe David Zazloff will be his manager soon on television, that would be interesting. Not really sure, he used to have been missing because of an injury primarily only. Right, there's, well, I mean, that's true. He has only been missing because of an injury. If he wasn't injured, he would have been on the show much more recently. He would have never missed time. He'd be the AW world champion if he wasn't injured. Yes, he must believe that. Yes, yes. But yeah, I mean, if he wanted to get into his promo, I mean, it's going to be a week by week thing. I don't know, I don't, I think like in a vacuum, his promo was compelling. But I don't really know what it means for the direction of his character. I don't really know what it means for the direction of his feuding with the elite. Perhaps that's intentionally by design that we're supposed to want to keep tuning in each week. I thought that there was a kind of a representative disconnect between his match later that night and who he was supposed to be feuding with, the Bullock Club gold and someoa Joe. And what he was actually saying, which was seem to be implying feuds with both the elite and MJF coming up. Yes, a real life feud and in a worked pro wrestling feud, I guess, those are two different things. So we look at the Russell Tick's number, the estimate of Tick's distributed that we have for this event at the United Center, the same location of the second rampage where CM Plug made his return to pro wrestling after seven years of absence. So this is Saturday like 10 9203 9203. I sort of speculated maybe it could get up to 10,000, but just falling short of that 9203 is the latest number that I imagine Russell Tick's may have a final count. This is not a final count, but this is as of yesterday afternoon as I believe. So not a great number, but it's certainly far better than any of the other collision numbers that are out there so far. Next week is Toronto. It'll be interesting to see what the crowd reaction is in Toronto away from Chicago, but the night before for Bindor, where that event is gonna have more than 10,000 people at it. It's gonna be virtually sold out in the Scotiabank Arena, 2,523 for the Saturday night collision. So I don't know, a quarter of the audience will be an attendance. It looks like for that one. Yeah, so the first thing talking about this collision taping in Chicago, I think it's a testament to seeing a punk's drawing power in the city of Chicago. I know people might see that 9200 number and say, well, they didn't sell the United Center, like they did two years ago or whatever, but I don't think anyone really realistically thought that was an expectation that they could hit. I think if you look at it just in the vacuum, it's AW's largest attendance this year so far, I believe. I believe it is has an outside chance of probably being their largest attendance in the United States this year. Which shows are gonna be that we don't have a maybe all out, maybe full gear, perhaps grand slam, which I don't think they've announced yet, but I'd be surprised if they weren't doing grand slam. You're saying the highest attendance for AW so far this year? I think that's right, isn't it? No, double or nothing. Let me look, I'm looking now. Oh, double or nothing. It's constantly up there. Double or nothing, Russell takes it as at 10,550. Now, maybe that's with comps. I don't know. That's a pretty big difference though. 9200 versus 10,500. Yeah, I'm sorry. I was just counting that double. I'm just counting though, like the late sales for double or nothing. In my mind, double or nothing was still at like the 8500 mark, but it is higher than revolution though at 8900. Yeah, so let's say second highest, you know, for a television taping not for a pay-per-view, probably not a lot of fly-in fans for disclosures. Maybe there was some, but probably not as much as there would be for a couple or nothing. Yeah, as far as other teams that are high, I've got Winnipeg 7400 if you round it in March. Yeah, and there was like the Seattle show, which is probably close to this number. You are right, 9121 for Seattle on January 4th. Well, Anglewood, 9,636 for Anglewood on January 11th. So that would be the next highest TV. And this would be higher than that by a slight margin. Probably. Well, so I think that's the success. I think if I was looking at the show going forward, what is holding collision back wire, some of these ticket sales, I think it's a pointing, I think a primary thing would be a concern about collision just feeling like a B-show, feeling like it's not as important as dynamite, feeling like rampage, feeling like a show that people can skip and they're not going to miss anything. And what I'll say about last night's show was that it was a show where stuff happens, right? See a punk return, cut his big promo, had a big match in the main event. They had a title change between, you know, word low and Luchasaurus slash Christian. I don't know how that's going to shake out, but there was a title change. You know, they had the return, you have the head returning matches with, you know, Andrade coming back, Miro coming back. So it did definitely, at least for one week, felt like a major show stuff happened and felt like it had, you know, it had a really great crowd. Obviously there were really into CM Punk. You guys, I am pop when he came out. So it felt like an important show that you had to watch Fear and AEW fan and you want to stay in the loop. Whether or not it stays that way, we're going to, it's going to be week by week. Maybe what it's going to look like in a few weeks and a few months or in a few months. But I do think that that would be, I do think the show, on Saturday sets a positive note, and perhaps maybe increases, helps contribute to stronger ticket sales for collision over the next six or seven weeks. Because, and now at least for one week so far, it has felt like a really important show that fans should need to see. Yeah, I think Lavi Marguelenna on Twitter raised the point that it would be interesting to see if they continue to book large scale hockey-sized arenas, like the Prudential Center. If they're only, I mean, it's currently the Prudential Center is the highest collision event that is yet to take place 4,500. I mean, I imagine it will be a little bit higher. Let's say it gets to five or six thousand. Do you need to be booking the Prudential Center if you want to run it in Newark? Is there not a smaller venue that would cost less? So be interested to see if, I mean, don't wait for that matter. If they continue to always book these basketball hockey, you know, NHL NBA venues. Yeah, and obviously the Scotiabank Arena is a very large NBA NHL-sized arena in Toronto. I believe the Saddle Dome also is around the same size as those other buildings. Yeah. The flames. We've talked about the first Ontario Center. I think it's a little bit smaller than a Cops Coliseum. Yeah. I think it's like what, 10,000 capacity or something like that. The Brand Center is a more typical dynamite-sized building. I think it's like 6,500 or something for attendance. So you see kind of a mix on here as far as the size of the buildings. But I mean, they have not been deterred by, you know, lower dynamite ticket sales. They're still, you know, running more of those NBA-sized arenas. I know they're coming to Boston, the TD Garden. They were in Washington, D.C. For this, was it just past Wednesday, right? They were in Washington, D.C. Yes. And they ran the capital, Wanerina, which is the NBA arena in that city. And they had previously been in a much smaller venue. I think they ran like a 3,500 C2 venue for the last few times. They had been in Washington, D.C. So they're not deterred by, they feel like being in those big buildings, even if they're only doing, you know, 4,000, 5,000 fans is still worth it to them. So if I share this one, this shows that dynamite, according to Russell Thick's numbers, is averaging in Q2 to date, which is almost, almost done with Q2. Can you believe it? 5,000 is the average currently for dynamite tapings, which is last quarter, Q1 was 5,600, quarter before that, and Q4 was at 4,300. So it's, it's kind of a decline. If you look, certainly if you look back to Q3 2021, where the average almost 7,000 and that would include Arthur Ash, a big Newark show, I believe a big Long Island show, but it is coming down to around the 5,000 range here for dynamite. And you look at it in a lot of ways, a lot of the ticket sale fluctuation can be based on how frequently they've been to a market. I think you look at part of the issue, I think, with quarter four of 2022, was that they were running in a lot of markets they had run a lot before. I know they were in Boston, they were in like Philadelphia, they were in Pittsburgh. They were in a lot of the markets that they've been in several times, if I recall correctly. And then in quarter one of this year, one of the reasons I think attendance was up was because they hit a lot of markets they had been in. We already mentioned some of them, right? The big Winnipeg show, the big Seattle show. They were in Inglewood, California for only the second time. That helped, I think, quarter one really, you know, boost up their attendance. In quarter two, we're starting to see, I think, a mix. We saw some first time markets. We saw them like in San Diego, California. But now they're starting to go back to, I think, the same kind of markets. They've been to, and with the addition of collision, you're now going to theoretically go through your markets at double speed. Because now you have two touring shows instead of one. And they're doing a dynamite in Winchester in Chicago, again, already. And then they're probably probably going to do all out, I think, in Chicago in September. So that's a lot of Chicago in a short amount of time. In any case, yeah. What do you think of good strategy for collision? Because you're trying to get it up and running is to kind of run the smaller college arenas. Like they didn't the beginning of dynamite. Or most of them were those exactly what I'm saying. Yeah, I think so. Same. Same. Like, like, you know, you, you want to you're creating like you're creating a new brand. So you have to obviously grow it. And if you, if the majority arenas are these large arenas, and the attendance numbers, you know, come out and they don't look good because of what you're putting out there. But it's like, hey, we ran mostly 6,000 sea arenas. We're averaging 5,000 seats. That's, that's a lot better than averaging 5,000 seats for mostly running 10,000 sea arenas. It just, unless expensive property. Yeah, it's a, and it's a popularity perception. Because, you know, people will take any ball they can run with. I don't see a W's dying in popularity, you know, like, I don't know. And I'm sure they don't really care about the PR aspect, but. I think this pros and cons. I think most wrestling fans would say aesthetically from a viewer experience. I'd rather have like a full building of 5,000 fans than even like 5,500 fans at a 14,000 seat building, right? The, it's going to sound louder when you have a building full. You can have, you know, you don't have to move everyone to the hard camp side if you're in a large arena. But I also think that AW does care about the perception of the sense of. We are going to have, we have, we're a big wrestling company where we want to compete with WWE. We want to be seen as a viable entertainment brand at the level of WWE. That means running the same buildings that WWE runs. Even if you maybe are paying more for those buildings that you would be for smaller venues. Even if you're maybe aesthetically presenting a more challenging for your experience. Because you're going to have a lot of empty seats. But the idea is to make it a big show. I think collision. It's a bigger show just because it's in a bigger building, even if that building is half full. I think that's the impression they want to give off. I think that like collision with like seeing, it's going to be the CM Punk show. It's with one bill fill. Let me tell you something. One bill fill ain't running little college aren't it? One bill fill is going into the capital one arena. He's running the United Center. He's running the potential center in Newark, New Jersey. He's running the Scotiabank Arena. It is the big show CM Punk, the big star. And they're in the biggest arena is that they can find for that. Whether or not that makes sense. I have no idea from their bottom line perspective. But I do think that the perception is we're big. We're major league. We're going to run the biggest bill buildings we can run. Even if we're not selling, not filling them. I feel like that's been a strategic change for AEW. That's why they're in so many of these larger venues. Okay. So that's the live attendance. More importantly, more importantly. We will get not on Tuesday morning, which will be the normal schedule going forward. But this week because of the Juneteenth holiday, Nielsen ratings are delayed by one day for the most part. And it's going to be available Wednesday morning. The TV rating is. Well, there's a fast national around there. But I haven't heard anything this morning so far. So the AEW collision rating should be out on Wednesday morning. So what was the competition last night? Yeah, not on NBC broadcast. US Open Golf was on Foxhead baseball with. No, that game was out. It was rained out. Did they play any any, but the other game, because I know some of the South West markets had a Padres game, I think. They might have done that then, but I was on. I wasn't watching. I wasn't watching Fox. I can't tell you. I just know that the Red Sox game was free. It was just porn, right? Yeah, at room. Tell us what was on Fox last night, if you know global monitor. So nothing, something was on something else was on Fox. A college world series on ESPN UFC fight night prelims on ESPN 2. So, so maybe not as tough competition. If there was no Yankees Red Sox game, pre game broadcast, actually, the US Open Golf. Was that running in the prime time at this? Yes, because it's because it's in California, I believe. It's in that way. Okay. So yeah. That's what was on the TV guide schedule. So I put out a poll with four possible options. What do you think the AW collision, P18 to 49 TV rating is going to be 0.25 or lower, 0.26 to 0.29, 0.30 to 0.33, 0.34 or higher, for reference dynamite has been doing about a 0.30 in the demo of late. What did it do most recently this past Wednesday? It did a 0.30. Before that, it did a 0.33. Before that, it a 0.29. And the plurality of responses say 0.25 or lower. So I apparently did not provide a set of options that resulted in the most popular choice being the one that was in the middle. What were your guys predictions last week? I believe I set up 0.27. 0.27. Okay. 0.20. 0.20. Yeah. Yeah, I was doing the haters. It was all says dude for a free. Saturday nights, man. Let me ask both of you. I guess go first. Just yesterday leading up to the show and maybe when the show was on and maybe when the show was over, just did you get the vibe that people will really interested in collision on social media? Do you feel like collision felt this vibe here. Like a big deal? Honestly, not as much as a dynamite. know. I mean, I check Twitter to get especially see what people pay about CM Punk and stuff, but it seems a lot less busy, especially from your typical people that tweet about wrestling, like on a dynamite. It didn't seem as active. I mean, I, you know, I'm not following everybody and there's some people I'd rather not follow, but it just didn't seem as active as like on a Wednesday night. Yeah. Talked about you for a little bit about EW. I did have thoughts along along these lines for raising my my Bible meter antenna. It's a far cry is not saying much, but it's a far cry from Punk's return in August 2021. What's the question exactly? What was kind of the vibe you got from social media and wherever else here? You're as far as like social or seeing wrestling Twitter? I guess I would say this was more than a dynamite. I don't know if that's indicative of a rating though. Well, yeah, I know. Obviously, I don't know what the rating is going to be. I felt like I got the vibe that this felt like a big deal. It felt almost like a kind of like an AW paper view in some sense. Maybe it's just because it was on the weekend, but I felt like people were really interested in seeing CM Punk and really interested in seeing what he was going to say. Doesn't necessarily mean anything long term for collision, but I thought that collision in general was a success in feet the debut episode of collision felt like an important thing that you should be watching, I guess. And I think that's a positive vibe, just, you know, for collision and also for, you know, this rating, whatever it's going to be. I feel like it's probably at the level of at least a dynamite. So I would say I'm probably a little low with a point 27. I wouldn't be surprised if it's higher, but maybe we'll all learn a lesson on how difficult it is for them to do a rating on Saturday nights. For what it's worth, the if we go into Google trends and just isolate the United States and look over the past seven days at eight o'clock, yeah, I'm looking at the past seven days, so that includes dynamite on Wednesday and Saturday night last night. And we get, you know, that the peak for Wednesday for AEW is at nine o'clock where it did about 58% of what the peak was for Saturday. So it was any means that that that when collision started, searches related to AEW were almost double that of the highest hour during Wednesday night. Does that mean anything for a rating? I don't know, but it's encouraging. Because if certainly if the rating was going to be terrible, it's you would not see more web search interest, right? You know, then Wednesday night, I would think. But that I guess that's encouraging. We'll see what the number is though. What do these ratings on Saturday usually do for the broader television landscape? We've got the last two Saturdays here from Shobas on the screen and the last two Saturdays had a Stanley Cup finals game on TNT, which did a 0.58 and a 0.50. That's obviously not the case now. Stanley Cup finals are over. So we've got the UFC prelims last Saturday, the PVV prelims, did a 0.40, top rank boxing, did a 0.22. So I've, you know, anything above a 0.20 is probably going to be in the top five to win. This is just cable, cable originals. So not including anything that was on broadcast. ESPN College World Series is probably going to, is there anything else out there? Is there news? I can't imagine this competition among the Shobas table, cable originals in the demo is going to be that tough. If it's if it's above a 0.3, I could be number one. Yeah, I mean, there's really no scripted television competition on Saturdays, especially in the summertime. I'm just not going to be a night that's going to have it sports. Absolutely. But the sports is kind of going to kind of vary. You know, they'll be they'll be nights where they'll be NASCAR races in the summer on Saturday nights. That will probably be on cable. UFC like prelims and stuff like that might be a consistent competitor. But like you said, like there's going to be no stay on the Cup finals. So you could take that right out. There was, well, there's Formula One qualifying and stuff like that. I see Formula One qualifying is here on the June 3rd. That would be on ESPN, right? So the what was on ESPN last night was what was in the slide there. UFC flight night prelims and College World Series. So I don't think there's any Formula One to go up against. Right. And the College World Series was earlier in the day. And the College World Series isn't going to be consistent throughout the summer either. It's going to be wrapping up pretty soon. So what time do the Formula One races are earlier in the day? So I might be completely out. But I believe they were in them. I think they were in Canada for this race. Usually, you know, if they're in Europe or Asia, they're obviously going to be at earlier time slots. But I believe since the race was in Canada, I don't know if it was a race or a qualifying or whatever, but this week, I believe they're in Canada. So it's maybe in a more prime time or late afternoon slot. Okay. Well, anyway, if you're waiting for the wrestling discourse, the ratings discourse, excuse me, Wednesday, Wednesday afternoon, there will be an episode of Pollock and Thurston. We will be talked just after the rating is out, presumably, unless there's some Nielsen technical delays, we should have a AW collision rating in hand on Wednesday afternoon, as we will be joined by Jesse's very own uncle, Dave Meltzer. So we will be talking the three of us about the Wednesday rating, or I'm sorry, the the collision rating and whatever else is in the wrestling business news by that time. So I have a funny Dave story for I'll tell off air. You just enraged the chat and rage all of yours now. So anyway, by the way, if you want to participate today with the Super Chat, you're more than welcome to and we will respond to your question or your comment if you're watching live on YouTube. In other news, according to Andrew Martianne, Martianne, Martianne of the newer post, he had a report this week saying that the headline is why FX is a contender for for WB's broadcast rights. And I have some notes here from Andrew Martianne's report here. He writes that the WWE has the WWE, the world wrestling entertainment, has finished its exclusive negotiating window with Fox and Comcast slash USA Network without a deal. The post is learned that's not surprising though. He goes on to say, and the incumbents, which is Fox and NBCU slash USA Network, the incumbents remain the favorites. There's a there's a million dollar man Teddy Viasi quote in the story. Thank you, Andrew. One party that does have interest in adding the WWE is Disney, according to sources, the potential cable placement would not be ESPN, but rather FX. Besides FX, the biggest new player could be Amazon Prime video, something we've talked about here in this program a number of times. He goes on to say, the reason FX makes more sense than ESPN is ESPN can't guarantee a night of the week to WWE. And he goes on to say, Nikon has a strong relationship with Jimmy Patara who is the ESPN chairman, as well as the ESPN president of content, Burke, Burke Magnus, and of course, is a connection between Disney slash ESPN between Endeavor slash UFC, which W is obviously emerging with sometime this year probably. One nugget. Oh, here it is. One nugget that Andrew Martian was told was that that may interest wrestling fans is that Warner Bros. Discovery does not have to stay exclusive to AEW. It would be something if it got in on WWE, but he doesn't even see that. He also mentioned Apple as a dark course along with WBD. So FX, I'm disappointed in myself for not realizing FX was a possibility here. We've talked about ESPN a number of times, and I've said ESPN is not going to fit in WWE for 52 weeks a year. ESPN 2, maybe, but ESPN 2 is a lower power network, but maybe FX is a good alternative. Jesse is frozen in time. You have Thockel? Yeah, so first off, over the years, over the years, how many times have we heard that, oh, FX is interested in wrestling? Now, granted, they were owned by Fox most of those times. Have you heard that before? You may know more than I have. I mean, WCW towards the end. That was a big thing. Bishop was trying to get a deal there, and then I feel like when SmackDown was bought by Fox, there was like talks of something about maybe them getting and trying to get raw on FX or something. I do remember hearing something about FX in the recent years, too. But we've heard that over the years, but just on top of that, too, is the household reach very similar to USA? Very similar. I figured it was, but I mean, Disney, I mean, I'm not totally surprised, but I don't, I don't know how serious they are. And just to clear up the ownership timeline for people, people may think of FX as being a Fox network. That was the case until late last decade, and now it's a Disney network, which was acquired along the 21st century Fox number of other assets. It thoughts, Jesse? Who do you think Andrew Mershant sources are for this story? I don't source guests on this program. Right. But I would, when I saw this, I said, well, this very well could be someone in WWE telling Andrew Mershant, oh, yes, these people are interested in this FX Amazon Prime. Now maybe Andrew Mershant is double sourcing and going to. He certainly, I would certainly think he has the ability to ask people who would know outside of WWE. Yeah, right. So that's possible. It's obviously, but realistically, right? WWE Raw and SmackDown, if they were to both be on cable or even with SmackDown on network television, are amongst the most highly rated programs of the week, every week that they're on. So it makes perfectly logical sense that they would have many people pursuing them because of how powerful they have emerged as a distinct entity on cable television in terms of being able to consistently be number one every week, 52 weeks a year. FX to my knowledge doesn't have any live sports or live programming really at all. FX is kind of strange in its presentation of its cable network. It's really like a like this, there's really no other network. I don't like it to me. It's like almost like a vehicle for their streaming platform in a way. Yeah, Disney, the FX brand because of some success they've had with prestige television. The FX brand is used almost as one in sense for hulu branding, which is like FX is going to produce the bear. FX produces, right? Some of the shows that are on hulu. Oh yeah, it's a very good show. The brand in F2Bare was. Yeah, no, it's coming. The bear is coming back like next week or something like that, but they have other shows that I can't think of off top in my head, but if you go on some of like the most popular shows on hulu or FX branded shows and so they kind of like use it as like a prestige drama kind of wing of Disney. Yeah, and because Disney Plus is very restrictive and what kind of content they want to put out there, they wanted to basically all be family friendly. That's why hulu has some sort of value to Disney still because it's basically a place where they can park mature contents that is still the label to them and FX is kind of the brand for that. FX is all the TVMA shows. So if WWE were to be affiliated with Disney in some capacity, if they didn't want to have pro wrestling, even WWE is relatively family friendly presentation of pro wrestling associated with the Disney brand or even the SPN brand, FX does make sense as a similar kind of entity to like say USA or TBS or TNT to put back kind of content on there. Yeah. And like I said, FX doesn't have any really thing on the network like a live wrestling show or live sports, but obviously being affiliated with Disney and certainly with the SPN, they have the capacity to do that. It wouldn't be impossible for the company to be able to produce a live, they wouldn't be learning on the fly is what I guess I mean. Yeah. So the coverage is about the same between say FX and any other top cable network, which is I believe according to sports TV ratings on Twitter, we're at about 74 million homes or so that have cable in the United States out of like 120 million or something like that. Yeah. I know. I'm sorry, like on every cable package that I've ever had access to, like FX USA, TBS and TNT are all like right in a row. They're all very similar like kind of standard basic cable packages channels. So I think, you know, over the years, the B content is pretty much proven that, you know, when they change networks, whether it's, I mean, USA has pretty much always had raw with the exception of the time where they were on TNN with a Viacom. But Smackdown has jumped around quite a bit. So I think there's a pretty good chance that that, you know, nearly 100% of the viewership will transfer. The viewership rankings, according to varieties, end of the year, postings. The viewership rankings that separate, say, USA Network and FX is pretty wide. This is for prime times what they measure. But a lot of that is overwhelmingly driven by RAW and to some extent, NXC. So how much of that difference? I think it's something like 700,000 viewers. What USA averages in prime time versus like something like 400,000 for FX in prime time. So I could see the majority, at least of that difference being driven by WD content. So if you took, which I doubt, I think it's the less likely case. But if you took RAW away from USA Network and put it on FX, I think, you know, a lot of that difference would transfer. Smackdown seems like the more likely option, but still a lot of that difference would transfer. If you took it off of FOX and onto FX, what about just NXT? What if the, you know, Nik Kahn's trying to sell the media rates for NXT separately and maybe that's something FX gets? Maybe, but I think that the play, why this would make sense for FX is, Chris Gole, where do cable networks especially get the majority of their revenue? I mean, it's a big group change. The big ones, the big ones. So I, and I guess as you guys pointed out, FX has maybe no live content, no sports. So I would imagine that FX, unlike maybe the USA Network, definitely TNT and TBS. FX is probably not driving a lot of carriage revenue for carriage fees for cable systems to carry FX. But if they had a really popular TV show that was live and they were a more highly ranked network, they could probably drive more carriage fees. So I don't think NXT will suffice for that strategy. You've got to have where our Smackdown, that's going to help your carriage fees. If you can enhance an area of revenue for this network that is probably close to non-existent. So that's why I think it would make sense. And in W's case, the big question for Smackdown, we've discussed is that FOX is maybe not that interested. I mean, Endeavor executives felt it was important enough to tell their investors that FOX might not bid strongly, something to that effect. FOX might not bid strongly for Smackdown, so just be prepared for that. So if that's the case, what's going to drive that price up is at least another competitive bid. Is that going to come from Amazon Prime Video? Maybe. The risk with Amazon Prime Video is you're taking one of your core shows and putting it onto a platform that's going to have a lot lower reach. Despite the fact that yes, there are probably 80 million homes or something like that that have Amazon Prime. It's still not a very strong network as evidenced by the pretty good, but still not comparable well behind the TV ratings that NFL games did on Thursday night on Amazon Prime. They're well behind what the other NFL games are doing on traditional TV. The safety of being on FOX is that you're on FX is that you're still on a pretty strong traditional TV network that's going to have strong reach that's going to help your downstream businesses, such as ticket sales, such as sponsorships, and things like that, consumer products. So it makes sense and it's a stronger, it's another potentially strong bid that might force the hand of FOX to bid strongly and give WB an upgrade. And WW's, you know, the next day rights are still on Hulu for now. Yes. And so that already, that already has some level of business relationship between like Disney and the FX brand in some ways and Disney owns, I believe three quarters, Comcast owns a quarter something or it might be two thirds one third in any case. And I think so there is a revealing wisdom now. The prevailing wisdom is that Disney is going to, going to take full ownership because I think there's a contract that's coming up where NBC has to decide whether to keep it or not. I think they're also like merging it into Disney Plus where it's like it will be its own separate app, but it will be on Disney Plus. If I'm like a red report. It's all in Bobbi or sans color. I'm looking just like FX's TV schedule. It seems like they pretty much just show movies, especially in part. We got the new justified series coming out soon. So, but is that even, is that airing on FX or is that on? I don't know that might be a Hulu thing because I'm looking at this, I'm looking at their schedule like and it's obviously this summertime. In like every night, it's almost all like they're showing, you know, fast the furious and Thor and Captain America and Spider-Man, like they're showing, you know, big action movies basically around the clock. I can't think of the name, Jesse, but the Andrew Garfield series about the Mormons was that exclusive to like Hulu. I can't remember. I feel like I feel like I always thought that sometimes they would air on FX like and then they then they'd be on Hulu like the next day, but now I feel like they don't even air on FX. Yeah, they just go on Hulu directly and they're called like FX shows, but they're on Hulu. Like the FX is used as a branding mechanism for certain shows under the banner. How then is what I was talking about? Yeah, I think I watched most of that. I don't know. I watched. It was really good, but yeah, I couldn't tell if it was a Hulu exclusive or aired on FX before. Yes. Okay, let's get on a similar super chat. We will answer your question before the end of the program. We got a big ruling come down Thursday afternoon, just after I wrote my news report that the judge in the MLW versus WW case has decided that the lawsuit will continue. What's happened here is so in January 2022, this is when this lawsuit was filed more than a year, about a year and a half ago, and an MLW for those who are just catching up is alleging that W is a monopoly, has monopoly power, and they interfered especially in a TV deal that MLW was allegedly about to announce. Stephanie McMahon allegedly spoke with a A2B executive, and the deal was cancelled the night before it was about to be announced. And MLW alleges a number of other ways that WB has supposedly interfered with MLW's business. So there was one complaint that had flaws in it that the judge said, if you cure this, we'll look at it again. That initial complaint was dismissed, the rest of the media seemed to think that it was all over, but MLW submitted a first amended complaint, which is what it is referred to throughout these documents. It submitted a amended complaint, so it improved its arguments apparently. And the judge made a decision on Thursday to continue to not dismiss the lawsuit. So WB has argued that the lawsuit should be dismissed. They've gone back and forth a few times on this, and the judge made his decision to let it go forward, which means that there will be discovery scheduled soon, and probably a prospective trial date set soon. So this raises the likelihood that this is going to be settled, as it's ultimately up to WBs and their lawyer's judgment about what the costs and risks are here. How confident do they feel in their argument that they could win in a trial? How damaging do they estimate discovery will be? Will the B information that paints WB in a negative light or whatever, if they want to avoid that, they might settle, but we'll see what happens here. But for the lawsuit to continue, in order for the judge to deny W's motion to dismiss, it had the MLW lawsuit had to meet four criteria, which are relevant market, monopoly power, anti-competitive conduct, and antitrust injury. Go, are you an expert on the antitrust act? I mean a little bit, yeah, we've discussed it before, but that was obviously created to stop the monopolies of the Rockefellers and JP Morgan and all that. They were just buying out small competitors because they had the money and they would use tactics to drive a business away from those competitors as well. So one issue that's been argued in this case is what is the relevant market? So you have to prove one that you even have a relevant market here, and MLW is alleging that the relevant market is live, pro-wrestling TV rights in the United States, and W's trying to argue that that's not a relevant market that you can't plausibly allege that such a market even exists because there are all these other programs that we compete with, and there's all these other programs that could potentially substitute any pro-wrestling content. And the judge has basically said, according to my notes here, W argues that MLW does not sufficiently allege that purchasers of the relevant product, purchasers are TV networks and streaming services. W argues that the purchasers have no reasonably interchangeable content alternatives to wrestling programming. W says that the small fraction of media platforms that air pro-wrestling content confirms that the majority of platforms view other content as reasonable alternatives for professional wrestling. W also says that to define a relevant market, MLW must plausibly allege that men age 35 to 44, which is the key demographic that they're pointing out, excuse towards. W says that you must plausibly allege that men 35 to 44 only watch pro-wrestling, not with the addition of A to B collision. I think that the case may be stronger, but in any case, 35 to 44 year olds who are men only watch pro-wrestling, and thus networks and streamers must purchase professional wrestling content in order to attract those years. Obviously that's not the case, but the judge disagrees with that argument by WB. The judge says that although pro-wrestling media rights may be a narrow market, the court may reasonably infer from MLW's allegations that other forms of programming content are not economic substitutes for pro-wrestling. MLW alleges pro-wrestling programming is a niche market segment distinct from say comedy, drama, reality news, or sports shows, and MLW alleges pro-wrestling's audience is demographically distinct from the general audience, and that it skews male and towards 35 to 44. So I guess the judge is saying here, hey, look, we can define a pro-wrestling media rights market because there's a difference, a distinction that you can make from other types of shows, like comedy, drama, sports, reality news, and that it has a particular demographic that it tends to capture. So that's number one. They're saying, yes, it does have a relevant market. Number two, you have to at least plausible alleged. And again, this is not the judge agreeing that MLW has successfully argued this, but this is the judge saying that MLW has plausibly alleged these four criteria. The court finds that MLW has sufficiently pleaded circumstantial evidence of W's monopoly power alleging that WB captures 92% of the revenue generated from the sale of media rights for pro-wrestling programming. MLW did some calculations here based on TV viewership to argue that 92% of all the TV rights for revenue is being captured by WB. We'd know what a W's deal is worth. They also give, like, wow credit for, based on its viewership. It gives wow credit for some sort of media rights for revenue, which is probably, in my view, well in excess of what it's actually generating, if anything, at all, beyond like an ad revenue share. In any case, 92% could be low, could be accurate, if anything, it might even be low. But anyway, number three, anti-competitive conduct. Because the mere possession of monopoly power is not unlawful and antitrust plaintive must show a defendant engaged in anti-competitive conduct. So you don't have to, it's not that you just have monopoly power. It's that you have to show that the defendant actually engaged in anti-competitive conduct. Basically, the judge is saying that the exclusivity agreements that WB has with MSU Universal with Fox, which MLW alleges exist. We haven't seen TV contracts here or anything. Maybe we will in discovery, I don't know. But MLW alleges that there are exclusivity contracts. The notion that reels when it was streamed and is streamed on peacock when reels was airing MLW underground. The fact that it didn't air during that stream, the Tuesday, 10 o'clock time slot that included MLW underground, that certainly lends credence to the notion that there is an exclusivity agreement at least between NBC Universal and WWE. We sort of raised some questions about are there risks around having such exclusivity agreements in these TV rights contracts? In any case, that's number three. Number four, antitrust injury. So MLW has to be plausibly alleged that that WB actually caused antitrust injury. The court finds that MLW has sufficiently alleged antitrust injury alleging that WB engaged in exclusionary conduct, including foreclosure of primary content distribution channels and attempts to continue to dominate the processing media market. So that's basically what's happening there. So it goes on. Like I said, this might lead to a settlement and it doesn't. It'll lead to discovery, which I would look forward to researching. And maybe we would get, I don't know if we would get, or if WB could potentially seal some of this information and discover if it got that far. But it seems we may be getting as close as we've ever gotten to actually seeing some of these contracts. So we'll be interesting to fall. What do you think the end game is? Do you think we'll end up with court power? He owns WWE now. And you have Zee, he owns Never? No, I don't, I don't think that Jerry McDivitt will offer court power to, we'll give you WB ownership if you drop your lawsuit. I don't think that's going to happen though. It's going to be like the old rustic promoter thing. Well, what would we send a couple of tantalists to a show? Like any time Hayman would sue WB like here, here's our Nanderson version. I feel like people speculate that maybe this, maybe this leads to some negotiation of WWE acquiring MLW. I think that's less likely. Can you clarify what Stephanie McMahon's role is alleged to have been? It's allegedly called or spoke with, I don't know who called who, but spoke with it to be executive. So to be, go is owned by who? It's owned by Fox. What's W's relationship with Fox? Well, obviously Smackdown every Friday night. And they may or may not have an exclusivity agreement with Fox that would encompass Tubi, I suppose, in the same way that the Peacock, you know, in the same way that MLW was not allowed to air on Peacock as part of the real stream. Stephanie McMahon is alleged to have spoke with a Tubi executive the night before MLW and Tubi. We're going to announce some sort of distribution deal to put MLW content on Tubi. And Stephanie McMahon spoke with the Tubi executive and allegedly got the deal killed the night before it was going to be announced. Right. And Stephanie McMahon, of course, is no longer associated with WWE really in any capacity, correct? She's not on the board anymore. She doesn't have that. She's not executive. She's not on the board. She owns a large amount of stock. She is behind Vince the biggest personal owner. Many institutions have more shares than she has though. Right. But is it possible that Stephanie is, I don't know, as a culpability, but her involvement in this lawsuit perhaps has led to her no longer having a position with the company. It seems more directly tied to Vince's return to power since she was, you know, hired as what the CEO or president during Vince's absence. But is it possible to think that her involvement with this potential, you know, Tubi MLW situation has led to her no longer being associated with the company in any formal capacity? It's possible and it couldn't have helped. I tend to think that the more primary factors that led to her no longer being with the company are her political struggles with Vince and maybe other, I wonder how involved she was with selecting Christina Salon who didn't work out as a CFO. I think there's probably issues at play related to the sexual misconduct allegations, which she left temporarily just before those were made public. I have to think that that was a factor in her temporarily absence and his return directly resulted in her leaving the company. Right, the timeline of her leaving the company coming back and leaving the company again would seem to suggest it's tied more towards Vince in the power play involved, the over-controlled company, but I just wanted to play out maybe there could be a factor there involving this tubi lawsuit. Yeah, I mean, I don't know how much this is really going to cost them. A lot of money to MLW is not a lot of money to WWE, so I don't know what the real cost of this is, but it doesn't help, right? But I mean, Vince's, there are allegations here against Vince too that supposedly Vince directed to then head of W Studios to call somebody from Vice and to try to get MLW's relationship with Vice killed when they were airing their one episode special on Vice a couple years ago. There's allegations that seem more thin to me about WWE supposedly interfering with MLW's relationship with fight, which is apparently repaired enough that they have a new deal now as we sit here. So, yeah, anything else there? No, I'll take that as a no. Goal? No? Okay. Okay. Moving on to some TV ratings analysis here. I wanted to look at, you know, we know that WTB ratings are up as indicated for people watching YouTube by this chart here. They are up a whole 100,000 viewers versus last year on average year to date. But what are the demos within that total audience that are actually up year-to-year? So what we're looking at here on the screen here are a bunch of charts looking at all the five big WNW TV programs and saying, okay, Q1 and Q2 since we're only, you know, only three-lose quarters here. Let's look at last year's Q1 and Q2 basically the first six months of last year, 2022. Look at that first half of the year versus this almost complete first half of this year and say what are the demographic differences here in viewership? What's up? What's down? And what we see here is for WB which whose whose ratings are up, you know, almost totally across the board. What's up? More than anything. I mean, everything is up almost everything is absolutely almost everything. We got a couple demos here that are down for even for WB. But what's up more than anything? Young males, young men, I should say, 18 to 34, men 18 to 34. NXT is up 67% in that demo. Raw is up 32% in that demo. Smackdown is up 26% in that demo. Dunno what is actually flat, up 2% in that demo. And the demo that is down the least for rampage is that demo as well. So it sort of suggests to me that I mean, I don't know, I can't speak for the men 18 to 34 as you can, Jesse. It's no longer including that group. A class of people who famously supposedly don't watch cable, right? Young people don't watch cable. Young adults don't watch cable. You would think the headwins would be stronger for young viewers than older viewers, certainly. Right. And these other other demos are up to, I mean, the female demos are, you know, are up 12%, 17%, 10%, 4%, 5%, actually down slightly for Smackdown women 35 to 49. But the older half of the male demo for NXT is actually down 14% for Raw. It's up 15% for Smackdown. It's up 25%. Can we ascribe a narrative here? Like, my, the first thing that comes in line for me is that, well, you're producing better content and better storylines that are attracting viewers. Even on Raw, it's not just the bloodline apparently, but even on Raw up 32%. It tells me that, you know, the core audience, which is, you know, statistically been men in younger demographics, relatively speaking, under 60, under 50, at least, that core audience has large part returned to W programming. Yeah, I think that's part of it. I think just to maybe think of one thing, I think Logan Paul and Bad Bunny both being involved in storylines in WWE so far this year. And in doing well, like, critically, being in, in doing memorable moments and matches and things like that, maybe plays a role in not necessarily like their programs alone, drawing huge interests, but helping sell WWE as baby being cool and relevant to this, to people in that age frame. And I think Cody's is, is not worthy here too. Yeah, I'm not thinking, I think, look, I think Cody being over, I think Sami Zayn being over, I think the bloodline, you know, dissolution, you know, getting over, I think that's all factors, but those are in some ways kind of universal factors across the board. I think that's just seen as quality content for WWE fans, so they're responding well to that. But I was saying specifically 18 to 34, perhaps it's those things. I mean, the NXT number is interesting now. I know that they're, they had kind of lost a lot of 18 to 34 fans over last few years so they can, they have room to gain them back. NXT is intentionally aimed at younger people. I know that they have the oldest skewing fan base of the, the core WWE shows, but the idea of why NXT is the cater towards younger people, they work hard to push younger talent that are in the 18 to 34 demographic range. They give them what I WWE views as, as young hip gimmicks to try to speak to that demographic. So that's a show that's kind of intentionally aimed at younger viewers or at least to try, that's trying to, I don't know, how successful it's been in the past, but the median age of NXT viewership is going down. It's almost as young as SmackDown now, which is, right, 55. It's still the oldest out of the WWE shows, correct? The WWE shows, it is now by Slim Margin above SmackDown as the oldest. Do you think a focus on the in-ring product is increasing this 18 to 34? We're seeing like longer matches and more, you know, goon through matches usually don't disappoint and triple H obviously took a more of approach on the in-ring product. Do you think that is for 18 to 34? Increasing? I think that the 18 to 34 demographic compared to maybe some other demographics are more online than the older demographics obviously, like 35 to 49, 49-year-olds are still online people too. Maybe not the 50 plus, maybe not as much, but 18 to 34 are definitely more online, probably more intuned just by being active on social media with some of the news behind the scenes and perhaps are disproportionately people that would be excited for triple H to take over from Vince McMahon. Maybe they're a little bit more frustrated with Vince McMahon than the older demographics might be. And so they'd respond better to a triple H that product. Maybe it might be something. And what do you make of, look at Dynamite. Dynamite is down in every demo we're looking at here, except for men 18 to 34, which is actually up 2%. Now this is January to June of 2022 versus January to today of this year. So we're talking about last year, which is a six month period that included CM Punk appearing frequently on Dynamite, because whenever he got injured in June and then he was absent, then he was around for like the middle of August and very early part of September. So this is the period last year where CM Punk was present versus a six month period in Dynamite where he has definitely not been present. Yet younger male viewership is very slightly up while these other demos are down. Is there meaning there? Like what does that mean? Well, look at the WWE 18 to 34 data tell us. Men are watching that show. Well, men in that demo. Everybody's watching that show more almost. People are watching WWE more, specifically 18 to 34 people in that demographic are watching WWE again. Like you said, kind of regaining some of the audience, the rising tide lifting all boats. Well, I think part of it might be that people are getting back into wrestling, and that these... What's good for WWE is good for AEW in this game. Not necessarily. It's not as you know, one to one is that, but I do think perhaps that people get enthusiastic about wrestling. Maybe they went a few years without watching it and they come back and they say, oh yeah, like I started watching wrestling again and maybe they hear about, you know, oh AEW, I don't really remember that. Maybe that maybe they weren't watching WWE when AEW first launched, but it's possible that once you get people kind of back into the wrestling mood, they maybe some of them are sampling Dynamite before when they maybe weren't watching wrestling at all a few years ago. Okay, another takeaway, sir. I mean the NXT number will be interesting to see, I think, Seth Rollins is going to be on... I think he's wrestling Bronn Breaker on Tuesday, which would be kind of an interesting test to see, you know, Seth Rollins is an individual star, can he... It's time to sprint towards that TV deal for NXT, which is expiring this September October. Yeah, and it's, you know, it's very interesting, I think it's very interesting to see how what the plan is long term for NXT, because they seem to be focusing again on bless, I guess, on let's get a bunch of new talent on television and more on like, let's try to put on like a product that's as good and it has some star power to it, so we're seeing a lot more of your veteran, you know, wrestlers, whether they're people that have always been NXT or people that are coming in for one shot deals like Seth Rollins is taking more time. I remember I was looking at the takeover card from a few weeks ago and there's like four wrestlers on that takeover card that could be considered, you know, trained by the performance center, everyone else was really a veteran from from other places. It's starting to feel a little bit like the NXT of Old as opposed to the full blown like we can't worry about really, we're not going to worry about like presenting a lot of star power, we're not going to worry about like the shows being as awesome as possible. NXT is a training center for talent that we are going to try to push in the future, so it's going to be a lot of green people, it's going to be a lot of people that, you know, were college athletes only a few years ago and have been training for six months or less, it's going to be that, it seems like it's shifting more back towards, we're trying to put out a serious television product that can do as big of a rating as possible. Now, is that just for TV rights negotiations because Nikon has said multiple times that he wants, he views NXT as a third brand, he views NXT as something that should be seen as very valuable for TV networks to want to have, the ratings have improved, I think because of that, because they're taking it more seriously, because they're committing more towards an in-rate product and focusing on star power that just getting reps for young wrestlers. Training on wrestlers to be wrestlers turns out to not be a great TV rights strategy. Well, everyone's a non-wrestler at some time, at some point in time, but putting people on television that are very early in their careers with little experience, and even to me, to me, that's not even the off-putting stuff but NXT, the off-putting stuff but NXT is like the gimmicks and the over-the-top kind of have those gimmicks lessened in these six months versus last year's January to June. I think probably, I think some of the ones that were really bad have been phased down in favor of a few other people, and then you've seen the talent get phased, and like you still see, you know, Braun Breaker, they're so obviously very high on, they're still high on the Tiffany Stratton, obviously, they're high on, you know, the Crete brothers, some of them they're still, you know, high on, but you're seeing, I think, less and less of the, you know, endless stream of just, you know, here's, you know, a former college football player, and they've got some weird NXT-generated name, and they have some weird gimmick, seeing kind of, I think, less and less as they focus more on people with a little, I think, they've identified a few of the people with, but they view as real star potential, and then everyone else has kind of taken a back seat with, you know, your Apollo cruises, in your hijacks, in your kind of veteran wrestlers coming back down through NXT, and they're the ones who are feuding with the, yeah, the few, you know, real prospects that they feel like they have down there. Cool. I also feel like the utilization of NXT talent recently over the last six months or so on the main roster has probably garnered interest in the product. I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, so Losecoa, NXT, and then he's part of the, you know, the biggest storyline in pro wrestling, and then now you're seeing like Zoe Stark's going to be in money in the bank, and they're utilizing a lot of these recent NXT call-ups in really prominent roles, and I feel like if you're a WWE fan, they're like, wow, I should probably watch this because all these people are coming up to the main roster and doing big things, where, when it was mostly Vince led creative, it was, oh, yeah, they came from NXT, but they're, they're on main event mostly, it's okay, we had, I don't have to go, I'm not missing anything. Okay. And what else we have here? I, let me just look at this really briefly, this is the demographic breakdown of the WWE shows. Dynamite and Rampage continue to the, not quite the majority, right? We're now at a point where the majority of all of these shows is outside the demo, largely 50-plus, but AW and AW Dynamite and Rampage are a little bit more actually raw, that's right, and that's consistent. Raw is now, now has a larger percentage of its viewership within the demo than Rampage, which is consistent with what we've seen in the median age trends. There's that. So, I was thinking, if we look at the long range of raw ratings, which is the most consistent data set that we have, right? Raw has been around since 1993. Raw has, with a few years of exception, been on one network, and certainly been in one time slot, well, it's been, the time is, the length of it has been changed, but it's been in a similar time slot for 30 years, so I just have the 30th anniversary, right? So, I wanted to look at that, and look at that against SportsMediaWatch.com, put out two charts here showing the average viewership for the NBA Finals and for the Stanley Cup Finals, and looking at that over almost the same timeline. And looking at how much has that difference changed, because obviously we have TV viewership traditionally just going down across time because of poor cutting and streaming and whatever. And if you look at, okay, let's say in the NBA Finals, well, way back in 93 for the Bulls and the Suns, Charles Barclay versus Michael Jordan, you did have 27 million viewers, and for this year, the nuggets and the heat you had about 12 million viewers. So, that's less than half. This is not a consistent decline. It's jumping up and down all over the place, probably, depending on matchups or depending on what else is going on in the world and TV. But it is down a lot, right? I guess we could say it is down, you know, in most years, it's around 12 million, 18 million, which is in some years, half of what it was doing in the 90s, which is what I want to look at for WWE. In the case of the Stanley Cup, we had 2.6 million viewers with the average for the Las Vegas versus Florida Stanley Cup Finals this year versus prior years doing four or five million, sometimes as low as three million. So, a substantial loss there too. Versus RAW now doing about 1.8 million viewers on average year to date versus in the really hot period, obviously doing as much as seven million viewers. But in, you know, say, the early 90s, where I don't think of that as a terribly hot period, certainly in the mid 90s, where I was doing 3 million. So, almost now, double what it's doing today. So, anyway, do I draw strong conclusions from this? I guess the answer is not really. In the only that, you know, TV, you know, sports TV ratings for at least in this case, the most important matchup has been similar to the decline in RAW's ratings in some ways. Although this is much more consistent of the decline from say 2009 to today. But I did want to make the point too that this is a truly remarkable moment in wrestling TV ratings history. I think that we're seeing here in that ratings for RAW are up 3%, 3% for RAW. This is based on a median, by the way, which has basically never happened since 2009. Apparently, ratings were up 8% that year versus the year prior. It was flat in 2014 coinciding, I would note, with the launch of the W network. But other than that, it's been nothing but negative declines for like 10 years in a row. So, this has never happened before. Well, this has not happened in 10 years, probably since, you know, since I've been writing about wrestling and doing Polish work of our wrestling, there has never been an increase like this in RAW's TV ratings, which I think is reflective of a genuine increase in popularity. Yeah, I mean, there's no other way to really look at it, right? Especially when you consider that they're fighting the trends of cable decline, right? And you could say like even like the last few years, if you go back to like the, they've kind of stopped the bleeding a lot of ways. Is it possible that around 2020, especially during the pandemic, especially during even the pre-thunder dome era where you were just watching that show. The COVID definitely hurt wrestling ratings in a big way. Right. And I know like there wasn't as much stuff happening in people's lives during that period. So, maybe that didn't impact television as much as possible, it possibly could have. But you watched those RAW's just, oh my god, like the presentation of the product was so hard. It was such a tough watch, quiet that you're a pin drop during matches and segments. And I do feel like that kind of led us to like, this is a baseline of people that will literally always watch no matter what. And it's by the way, it's it's up, but it has not recovered to anywhere near the 2019 level as we can see here. 2.4 million was the median for 2019. It's only at 1.8 million right now. So it's up, but not up to the pre-pandemic level, certainly. But does that, does that 1.8, 1.7 million number roughly? Obviously, that's a year average. It's, you know, often. It's a median to be clear, but yes. Is that really the baseline of just lifelong WWE fans that are pretty much always going to watch, did at some, the pandemic rush us into the, the, the, the, the baseline for what WWE ratings can do? And is, is that really like, I don't want to say like it's rock bottom, because that gives it more of a negative connotation than I want to kind of go with, but is that your base for these people are going to watch pretty much no matter what. And then this year, because the product has improved and because there's more, much more enthusiasm and optimism for certain characters into the direct, overall direction of storylines in the company, you've been able to see an increase from what I would consider like the bottom baseline. I think it's what like was COVID look the lowest it could possibly go? I think COVID accelerated us to like, especially the period like I said, pre Thunderdome where they were just watched the shows and they're just so, they're so difficult to watch. I implore anybody who has forgotten them, like go back and try to watch wrestling like that. It was so such a tough watch and the product was also even lousier than it is now. So, I mean, that makes sense, get given that, that big year, year-to-year change. Yeah. And I think just bring us down to this is the base level of people that are going to watch WWE pretty much no matter what. And that's kind of reflected in, they haven't lost, they didn't lose anyone in 2021, it was anyone in 2022. And now they're sticking, they have room to go up because they're at basically the baseline of these are the absolute hardcore, hardcore fans that are going to watch no matter what. Well, I think what happened in 2022 is in the middle of 2021, they went back to touring and ratings somewhat improved. And I think there was sort of a tailwind in those comparisons year-to-year because you had live fans there in full capacity buildings. So, there was a benefit in that way, but there was also still a content problem, fans, at that time, that was offsetting that. And that resulted in what would otherwise be rating better, you know, what would be higher ratings, being lower ratings and being essentially flat ratings. And I think similar happens in 2022, where you have about six and a half months of that year are benefiting from live audience, whereas the first six months of the prior year was not. So, I think if you don't have the content problem, there's an increase in 2022 and probably in 2021 too. If your business earns millions or tens of millions in revenue, stop what you're doing and take a listen. Because NetSuite by Oracle has just rolled out the best offer we've ever seen. NetSuite gives you the visibility and control you need to make better decisions faster. And for the first time in NetSuite's 22 years as the number one cloud financial system, you can defer payments of a full NetSuite implementation for six months. That's no payment and no interest for six months, and you can take advantage of this special financing offer today. NetSuite is number one, because they give your business everything you need in real time, all in one place. To reduce manual processes, boost efficiency, build forecasts, and increase productivity across every department. 33,000 companies have already upgraded to NetSuite, gaining visibility and control over their financials, inventory, HR, e-commerce, and more. If you've been sizing NetSuite up to make the switch, then you know this deal is unprecedented. No interest, no payments. Take advantage of this special financing offer at NetSuite.com slash strategy. NetSuite.com slash strategy to get the visibility and control you need to weather any storm. NetSuite.com slash strategy. Okay, I think that's all I have for today, unless there's questions which I haven't seen yet. So if you guys have anything else, do you think, just think about this leading up to collision, obviously, there's a story about CM Punk, about this explosive interview with ESPN, and it's going to be trouble. People are going to be really mad about it. That was the rumor going around the wrestling internet circles, and certain media members like Wade Keller were saying it might be one of those weeks. It's going to be one of those weeks, maybe W, which is what Wade said. And of course, the interview dropped. I guess it's up to each individual person, whether or not they thought it was a big deal or not. It seemed to it was probably more tame than maybe people expected. Maybe we were led to believe. And there was this whole argument about, well, who was telling the media it was a big deal? Who were the people out there that were leaking it? And all those things said, who was culpable for that? And I think a lot of what this CM Punk reporting, and we can go all the way back to CM Punk believing that the executive vice presidents were the young box for it. We're leaking to the media that CM Punk got culpable and fired and things like that. I was thinking that the standard and wrestling media being that nobody is ever sourced for their comments. Nobody goes on the record and says what they actually think for the most part, especially relative to normal media, sports media in general. Because of all that, we're kind of in this mess where nobody knows who's giving information to anyone, and it leads to people, thinking people are gaslighting other people, and we never know who's really responsible for shaping our media narratives at all. It's all just leaked through anonymous sources that are never ever named. And I was just thinking that a lot of this can be cleared up, a lot of this drama, all of everything dating back to CM Punk's meltdown at all out, and even before that, all of that can be traced back to and certainly be rectified in some ways if people actually went on the record and put their name on stuff. So we wouldn't have to play the guessing game, and we wouldn't have to make up conspiracy theories for who said what, or who do we think these sources are? And I just think that becoming the standard and wrestling media to be no one ever has to go on the record, but we'll publish whatever you say anyway, has led to a lot of that unnecessary drama and unnecessary aspects of the wrestling industry. And I think that it's bad for everyone and it's bad for fans because they never quite know who's being responsible for potential misinformation. And the major players in wrestling media are happy to use all those anonymous sources because they want scoops, they want content, even if it means sometimes they're being worked or sometimes they're being misled. I like, I question like how much wrestling is really different from other areas of reporting in that in this way, especially if we're talking about what I would maybe call insider reporting. And we've read portions of the New York Post article from Andrew Monshawn today where he's citing on-name sources related to a TV deal. And we could speculate whether people involved in WWE were feeding him that information or not or whatever. Is it that much different than other media entertainment sports reporting? Obviously, like insider reporting does rely a lot on the similar methods, right? And I would say, if you want people to go on the record, I think the incentive and social media age for people to go on the record is pretty low whenever when these people think it just tweet or they could post a Instagram story. If they want to see something on the record, why go through a media outlet to do that, I guess? And but I think in insider reporting, like if the guy going, Woj does in the NBA or something like that, yes, he's relying a lot on anonymous sources or a sort of urges fakely saying, you know, a source tells us, you know, the pelicans are looking at trading science, Williamson or something like that. And that does happen. But you also just have way more on the record conversations in sports media. There'll be long stories with people going on the record with whether it's agents, whether it's players themselves, whether it's coaches, whether it's- And that's as a result of interviews. I don't know. Is that a result of interviews that are being done for the article or is that a result of like scrums and media access? Both, both, both is certainly a lot of it comes from, you know, in real sports, most athletes and coaches are, you know, bound to have to fan face questions from the media after games and things like that, which gives you a lot more on the record content than we do in wrestling. And a lot of it also- A lot of that for them. Like they are commit, they are the- I don't know if it's legal. But there's contractual, there's contractual obligations. It's in like players contracts. You have to be presented for the media. If everyone famously remembers Marshall and Lynch's thing where he answered every question by saying, I'm just here because so I don't get fines. Like that's because he had a contract. He didn't do it. He would be fines. Yeah. Whereas in wrestling, I mean, the notion that they're being press conferences is relatively new emergence and the people who are participating and that are just doing it to be cooperative with, you know, with their employees. Yeah. And like, you know, to punk's credit in this instance, like, punk went on the record and did a long interview with Mark Raymond Dionis Pianon. And those are punk's quotes. We don't have to play the guessing game of who said these things about the elite, who said these things about hanging in page, punk put his name on it. So at least in that one instance, we know, but I also think that there's a lot of it going around where, you know, everyone, whether they're wrestlers, whether they're, you know, people, other people associated with the company, whether it's the bookers, whether it's people and other companies that are, that are, you know, being sources for drama in companies. I think all of that is coming into play and the wrestling fans have absolutely no idea who any of these people are, who's presenting these information. I just think that being the standard for wrestling media has caused a lot of these issues. I don't think you would have the CM Punk accuses the young bucks or hangman page or whoever of leaking, oh, um, you know, CM Punk is responsible for co-cuban and no longer being with the company. That wouldn't happen, I think, in like real sports or in real reporting. And when you say, because people, there's accusations, we're talking about fans who are making accusations as opposed to like, punk alluding to certainly in the all-out press conference last year, alluding to the EVPs. Punk accused the young bucks of leaking the co-cubana rumor to the media. And I just, I think if that, and that was largely, why did he do that? Well, he probably really believed it. And why did he really believe it? Because there were rumors out there that people were reporting that co-cuban, you know, there's a feeling backstage that CM Punk got co-cubana fired. And according to that, you know, names interview, like he believed, he believed, he believed it following, I mean, according to him, hangman says to him after the worker's rights face-to-face promo that the reason why he said that is because he believes, according to punk, hangman believed that punk got co-cubana removed or fired or promoted or whatever. Right. And because those aren't those comments are not sourced to anyone, CM Punk can create any conspiracy theory or whether he or whether it's true or not. We, I guess we don't still know it's true. I know like people like Dave and Sean have denied that, you know, the young bucks were the people with the source for that information. But CM, but it leaves room for CM Punk or wrestling fans themselves to believe that because the standard is nobody goes on the record, nobody's name is ever attached to any of these rumors. And every day there's a new story where someone said something, but we don't know who that person is. And it's not an effective way to communicate and it leads to a lot of unnecessary draw, both for the wrestlers in the wrestling company itself and for fans who are forced to kind of part of the reason I think you see a lot of tribalism and you see people taking sides is because there's no clear line between who said what, it's all allows people to let their fandom get the best of them when it comes to evaluating something. Do you think so a lot some mess to do with the organizations themselves and not really acknowledging the rumors and trying to nip them in the bud much like so let's do. Like the bills just have this with Stefan Diggs and they addressed it head on, you know. All right, how about the bills difference? Well, the bills, you know, said Stefan Diggs wasn't a practice, so they were concerned about it and then he showed up the next day to many camp and they said, hey, he's here. We talked it out. Josh Allen, Brandon being in high profile. Yeah, yeah, explain the situation. Do we know why Stefan was upset? No, we still do not know that. But is he mad because of the playoff game? They addressed it head on and you know, I don't think like Tony Khan, I don't think he really addressed the situation to head on as far as what was really going on with the box. Oh my god, yeah. How about he's not made comments on the record to the fact of you acknowledging that there was a fight? How about this? How about this guys? This is if I had one question to ask you to Tony Khan, this is what I would ask him. Okay, a couple of weeks ago, there was a rumor going on online, some, you know, not super trustworthy new site was pushing this rumor that Jao Paulina, who is arguably full of his best player, one of full of his best players basically, he had a clause in his contract that's basically if a another team agrees to pay a certain amount of money, they can then negotiate with the player directly so they don't have to haggle over a transfer fee with Fulham. So basically what it was, a rumor that basically said that Paulina is at risk of leaving Fulham because he has this clause in his contract, it's called the release clause, where if a team offers, I think it was like 40 million pounds, team offers to pay 40 million pounds, they can basically take Paulina without Fulham really having to negotiate a higher fee. Tony Khan quote tweets the new source that was pushing this rumor and says, flatly, there is no reserved clause or there is no release clause in his contract. So this is Tony Khan seeing a, a, a, a, a false rumor about one of his star players and he's immediately flatly, you know, putting it out there absolutely not true. And I think he must see stuff like that about a W all the time, but he doesn't address it head on like that. He could easily kill a lot of rumors that go along with a W by doing a very similar method by seeing it and then quote tweeting and saying, that's totally not true. But he almost never does that. Despite the fact that he's the same person, but it's because one of them is he's working operating in real sports. And one of them is he's in the wacky world of professional wrestling where you don't, you just don't do that. And my question for him would be, why don't you do that with wrestling? Because I'm sure he did that with the soul story. Yeah, that soul is like the only one time I ever, I was thinking about that. That's like one of the only times he ever did it. But I'm sure he must see it every day with, with, with, with, I mean, like, is it, is, does this case not apply to where he went after Mike Coppinger for saying that, you know, about the Wembley attendance? I think to an extent, that's more of like a personal thing, I think, with warrior Hawani or, but I'm talking about like, this is a, this is like a, um, Zhao Polynia is like, you know, a star AEW wrestler in the terms of where he is for full of them. And if there was a rumor about a contract situation that was wrong, which I'm sure happens a lot with AEW wrestlers, why isn't he, you know, out there quashing those rumors? And it's like, he conducts themselves in two different ways, one for pro wrestling and one for real sports. And the real sports way is much more transparent and much more direct. And in wrestling, it's all kind of part of a show and it's all kind of part of a work. And it's strange, like, Gullum mentioned how the bulls handled the Stefan dig situation much more direct than you would see a wrestling company do it. And it's like, this is Tony Khan. He's the same person. I think the absent person for the full employer is the TV deal. The rumored $1 billion TV deal. Like, why didn't somebody kill that? At least on the background. I don't know. It's better to get people wondering and guessing and wrestling that it is in real sports. And I was part of that because I think from a PR perspective, it leaves what, what happened was, was that, oh, they don't have a deal. And then it looks like there's egg on AW's face. And the assumption would be, I think the assumption would be, if in real sports, you have much more robust, especially, you know, soccer or football, which is going to be very extremely well covered by many, many institutions. There's going, since there's a lot higher of a media coverage standard for what they're producing, there's more of an emphasis on, we've got to make sure we squash any rumors because we don't want, you know, the guardian to report it or we don't want the BBC or we don't want Sky Sports or the athletic or whoever, you're big, you know, prestigious media sources for soccer coverage reporting it as opposed to wrestling. It's a guy we don't really care if there's speculation on fightful sports about this. So we don't feel like we need to address it. And is this meat wrestling media and wrestling aggregation, according to our conversation with Richard Deach, is an animal unlike any other, right? Like, I know there's football aggregation, but it's not what wrestling aggregation is where any fact, I was, it was interesting for me to watch how our interview with Tony was aggregated. There was at least one story saying, you know, Tony responds to whether or not there's an exclusivity deal, you know, according to the New York Post, which he didn't answer. He didn't answer the question. Like, his response was not a response. Like, but that was angry with the headline that suggested he had some answer to it. Yeah, I mean, aggregation is a major problem across all media. And whatever I listen to, like, you know, prominent sports writers and people who have podcasts and stuff like that, absolutely, absolutely hate it. Zadlow, who is a very mild mannered, a very highly respected NBA reporter for ESPN. Like, you bring up aggregators to him. And he just blows a gasket because everyone now has to be super careful with what they say. Everyone has to be super careful with. I think that's a huge influence in why Tony has gravitated to be on, his on the record self has become the way that it has, which is very good. Yeah. And a lot of that comes back to wrestling media, not necessarily being the most professional wrestling media, you know, just semi-pro's and amateurs. And catering to the lowest comments in the dominated with clickbait headlines. And that kind of aspect of it. So there's a reason, there's a rational reason to that, for sure. I guess my feeling on this stupid drama or surrounding the lead up to the ESPN article, I guess one. And maybe this is just my personal interest in biases of somebody who focuses on business is like, what's somebody's sentiment is? What's somebody's concern is? In most cases, I don't think it's reportable. I don't, it's not certainly not something that I'm interested in in reading about. It's not something that I'm interested in reporting. Just because somebody's worried about an interview that's coming out, it's fine information to have on background to inform your subsequent reporting, I think, but I don't think it's something that needs to be or should be reported, I guess. And secondly, I would say CM Punk being on the record in the ESPN article, it's not coincidence at all that that's with the SPN as opposed to he's never going to give a quote on the record to fight full or to the observer or to Peter Insider. He's going to only give quotes on the record to outlets with a high reach that are going to help them promote something, which is exactly what that exactly why that interview was happening. I mean, I understand, AWS wanted it to be with the SPN for obvious reasons, for that reason. Right. And CM Punk has been, I mean, there's allegedly, there's NDAs and stuff regarding the field lead in front fight and how much respectfully everyone can comment on it. It seems like very little, obviously, Tony Connison said, peeped about it just by being asked, dozens and dozens of times in various interviews, settings. This is the closest we've come to someone addressing it. Yeah. Right. It tells me that the degree to which he addressed it and even the degree to which kind of address it, which is not deeply, like they didn't talk about the details of the fight and what happened, but it tells me that Tony could have said something, something more substantive than what he has, which would improve or prevent from damaging his relationship with media and fans, damaging damaging is relationship with media is probably strong. But I think damaging the brand perception of AWS fans as being, you know, as AWS, avoiding reality, avoiding the truth and to, you know, to an extent, insulting people's intelligence. I mean, I go back to that, that dynamite in Buffalo that happened after the brawl out incident and he got booed for the first time you've ever seen him get booed because he was just talking about the title tournament. He didn't address anything that happened that weekend. Okay. Anything else? We got a couple super chats. Oh, we do. Okay. Yeah. We got some here. So this is from Tim B has cable home has cable been reduced to 1998, 99 levels yet. I seem to remember that that time being about 62 million cable homes. I don't know. Obviously, the population has grown. Therefore households have grown. Okay. I will, I will look this up while I'll go to the next question. Okay. All right. And our next super chat here is from Nick MP. The next TV levels for each promotion should be linear streaming simulcast since we don't know what cable will look like in five years time. There's more of a comment from Nick a prediction. I think there's going to be some kind of streaming some kind of maybe simulcast with, you know, maybe some episodes on the USA network and peacock some episodes being on streaming to to widen to widen the reach. I think that's something that's definitely going to happen in some capacity. Whether it's like every week it's going to be simulcast will be interesting to see, but I know particularly NBCU, especially with soccer games that are on USA network like the English Premier League, those games are very frequently simulcast both on peacock and on, you know, USA. So it's on linear and streaming. It wouldn't surprise me if something like that starts happening with raw that you could watch raw on either peacock or USA. So in 1998, according to the FCC, there were 66.1 million homes. The following year, 67.3 million homes. There are currently, you know, FX and USA are in 74 million homes. So more homes today for all these, the big networks, the big cable networks, than the attitude here, which I think shouldn't form how we look at those ratings, right? And like, I think other things have competed with television, including streaming and other forms of entertainment, but it's similar coverage, right? It's anything it's higher coverage by several million today versus then. Okay, anything else? Yeah. I think that's everything here. I think it's plug. I'll be bringing out to this weekend for ESW Friday night heat, other than that, light summer so far so. Okay, that's in Niagara Falls, right? Yeah, it's Niagara Falls here. Yeah. Okay, thanks. We're going to do this program at the normal time next week, I think, because I will be going to forebending door like as soon as we're done recording next week. So we'll talk to you then, and I will be back on Wednesday with John Pollock. We'll be talking to Dave Meltzer, ratings discourse. See you then. Bye.