New AEW TV deal to be announced

At Progressive, we know how much you love your recreational vehicles, so we decided to record this commercial in an RV. With a family on vacation. Mom, who are these people? Oh, that's Chloe and Jamie. They're recording a commercial, sweetie. Don't they do that in the studio? Oh, normally. But we wanted a feature of family who bundled their home in RV and saved with Progressive. Um, yeah, it looks like you're all out of chips. Okay, I think we'll just drop you off to the next gas station. Bundle your home into other vehicles with Progressive. Progressive casualty insurance company affiliates and other insurers does come not available in all states or situations. Hello everybody and welcome to another edition of Russell on the trade. I'm Brandon Thurston broadcasting live on the Man for Buffalo, New York. We're today is Sunday, March 14th, 2023. And we are joined today by who many people are calling one of the leading voices among the AEW freakazoid community. Jesse Collins. Hello. March, March 14th. Are we ever we talking some some? Did I say March? Are we going to talk about how my tickets are out for WrestleMania? Are we going to be talking about WrestleMania? Um, St. Patrick's Day Slam. It's May 14th. AEW Dynamite. It's May 14th. The up front of this week. And um, I hope you have your, your checkered flags ready at home because we are going to talk about the possible upcoming announcement of an AEW TV deal. Um, and just how right we are. Um, but first we do have, um, the NFV. The F.L. Schedule came out this past week. And among the top draws and all of the National Football League, it has been confirmed among the 14s only that have six prime time games. The New England, no, the Buffalo Bills are among the top, the top four along with the Kansas City Chiefs, the Dallas Cowboys, the San Diego Lightning Bolts. And uh, next down with five is the new, no, no, it's still not the New England Patriots they're down in number four. So, um, Darth Bill Belichick, uh, is in the mud this week for this year, really, all this year as a New England Patriots. Not what they once were. Uh, they, they used to be better, I guess, for the New England Patriots, your comments. You know how they, uh, they'd be the schedule on the NFL, right? How did they just, they had rolled dice or what? So if you finish first in your division, you then pl, next season, you then play the other first place teams in your conference that were in other divisions. Um, so if you finish first, that means you basically play other, outside of your division opponents, you play twice every year. Um, and outside of another, uh, conference's division, which you also will play every year on a rotating basis, your games will always be against other top finishing teams the following year, which is why I like the Bills and Chiefs play every year for last few years because the Bills finish first in AFC East, the Chiefs finish first in AFC West. And so it kind of allows the first place teams to get marquee games. So if you finish first in your division, you're much more likely to get prime time games because those games are most likely to be good. Patriots, of course, I believe finished year. Do the Patriots not not finish first? They always, I believe they finished third or four right last year. So therefore, how many teams are in the AFC four? They finished last place. So they have, so they're probably not playing many interesting opponents outside of their division this season. Okay. Um, there is some solace though if you are a Boston sports fan. Game seven this afternoon, are you watching it? The Celtics and the 76ers. This is, it was Alan Iverson and Larry Bird, one on one. Is that right? Um, I actually believe pitching Paul Arison is playing for the 76ers. Will, will Chamberlain be playing today? Will Chamberlain might suit up his questionable with, he played for the 76ers before the Lakers. Right? Am I getting that right? Yes. Well, Chamberlain, he starts with the Philadelphia Warriors, which is actually who Paul Arison played for two. Then the Warriors moved to San Francisco and he played for the San Francisco Warriors for a while. And then he moved, he got traded back to Philadelphia who had moved to Syracuse nationals had moved down to Philadelphia to become the Philadelphia 76ers. And then after he played for the 76ers, he played with the Lakers where he finishes career. Will Robert Parrish be in attendance today? Robert Parrish is still playing. So he could, he might be on the court. He might, if Alportford gets in foul trouble, Robert Parrish might be brought into guard. Joel and B. Okay. You know, it's interesting. It's this game's on at three 30 in the afternoon. I do feel like maybe this existed before, but I do feel like this is the first year I've noticed other sports harnessing the power of the Sunday afternoon block that the NFL obviously is dominated. And once the NFL season is over, I've seen other, we've seen some other sports snap into that position. Like, I think that the woman's college basketball national championship game, which I think previously would take place like on a weekday night or maybe a Sunday night took place at like Sunday at three 30. The NBA has put their marquee playoff games. Like they only have one game today. This is their only game seven for this round of the playoffs. And they could have easily put this game on in prime time Sunday night, but instead they're electing to put on at three 30 in the afternoon. And we've seen the NBA get some record ratings, the York highest ratings they've had in years with these three 30 Eastern time Sunday. Should wrestling should be collision error on Sunday afternoon? I think that's like a real possibility. I think it's a time people are around there with their families. But then to be going head to head with the Jaguar. Yeah, that's the problem is that the NFL season, you're getting absolutely annihilated because everyone's watching NFL. I think the reason Sunday time slot is such a good sports watching time slot is because the NFL has conditioned people to watch sports on Sunday. And the NBA immediately when the NFL season is over, the NBA starts running games on ABC on Sunday afternoons because they know that there's audience out there. NASCAR season starts right after the Super Bowl for probably similar reasons. All their races take place on Sunday afternoon for the most part. And that's why they do their best ratings as well. So it is I'll be interested in seeing what that one place stadium show, what it runs on. If it's on Macs, if it's on pay per view, if it's on TNT or TBS. Because that should be taking place on a Sunday after. That is a Sunday, right? 27th is a Sunday. It'll be probably starting about like one o'clock, I would think maybe two Eastern time. So it'll be interesting to kind of see you how because I do think that's a good time for watching something. Yeah, like eight o'clock in the UK is like three in US Eastern. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm just realizing the Lakers have eliminated the Warriors. The Nuggets with the Kembe Matumbo have eliminated the Suns with Charles Barkley, right? I have an advance past NBA Jam and the Heat are going on to face the winner of this series between the Celtics and the 76ers. Okay. So we'll keep you updated with the ratings there. If you want to participate today with the Super Chat, you're welcome to. We will respond to your question or comment. So coming up this week, it's, you know, they talk about how WrestleMania is a big deal. Double or nothing is a show that's coming up later on this month. That's all really small potatoes compared to this week in New York City, the up fronts for Fox for NBC Universal for Warner Brothers Discovery. That's all coming up. And we have some reports here, the Observer broke it. I think on Thursday, what did you start DMing me? About all these, these wicked rumors. Jesse, was that Thursday or was that Friday or no? Was that even? No, it was. That was Wednesday. I think it was Wednesday. Yeah. Yeah. Um, Fightful also had a report, uh, Fightful reporting that those they've spoken to say that collision on WBD in prime time in prime time. So not at six. That reads to me like at eight, presumably, uh, is part of a new cash infusion for AEW and an extension of the partnership between the two sides. WBE sources have long said nice things about AEW and the deal is planned for an announcement at the Warner up front, which is this coming Wednesday. There was a lot of discussion rumors, both online and within WBD and AEW about the deal, being a billion dollar deal over a few years. Um, and that that could be true if all the deals are extrapolated, uh, whatever that means. However, WBD sources had indicated that collision was the, the plan of coming in announcement as opposed to an all-encompassing deal involving dynamite, uh, AEW and WBD sources have not confirmed a dollar figure. There are already several Saturday dates set to film a W collision, but Fightful was told that when necessary, the company may book a venue, two straight days and film on Thursdays. Uh, so a billion dollar deal, some of the scuttle, but going around is five years, one billion dollars. And by my math, one billion divided by five is 200 million. And W, AEW's current deal is $44 million. We know that because Tony has tweeted 175 million over four years. That comes out to $43.75 million per year. Uh, $200 million per year would represent almost a five times increase in their current valuation. Um, we did a podcast on this podcast over a year ago going through sort of the, the way that we could take the number of hours that AEW and WB for that matter are delivering weekly. Look at what their viewership is sort of think of it as their ratings adjusted for time, adjusted for the weekly hours that they deliver. And I compared that to like NHL ratings and things like that. Anyway, we came out with a rough estimate of a 1.5 X increase for a WB that would put them at over $700 million a year. I feel a little bit more bullish about W.E. since then and a four X increase for AEW that would put them out about $175 million. Wasn't considering that there might be a new TV show and that this AEW collision show is probably not going to be one hour. I believe it's going to be more like two hours. So that, that's adding a lot of content on top of dynamite rampage. Now saying that AEW at that time a year ago was doing better ratings than it's doing now. Rampage was, was already pretty much doing what it's doing now, but dynamite was doing a little bit better. You still let CM Punk at that time. Wasn't quite June yet where he had his injury and then September when he had his big injury and anyone on his rant at the press conference. But piling on a lot more content, a lot more tonnage that helps justify a bigger deal. And what else do we have here? That's the formulation if you're watching a video where I got to like, I was saying three X to five X. I think that drove some people crazy that, that the notion that AEW and the stingy David's Azloff and the stingy Gunnar Weidenfelds could possibly give AEW such an upgrade. It looks like it's going to happen though. We'll see on Wednesday. We'll see if it actually gets reported just what the, the terms of the deal are. Usually these things get reported when we're talking about a deal that, that would be of this size. So we'll see what happens. And that would put, you know, that would put AEW on the level of the WBD NHL deal, which is an all linear deal. Of course, the NHL has an ESPN deal on top of that. That's like twice the size, $400 million a year. So it's not like AEW would be equal value in terms of media to the NHL in the United States that would not be the case. That's the NHL. So that's our assent deals. Right. For now anyway. But yeah, and, and, and, and I expect WBD for SmackDown and for Raw to get a pretty strong upgrade to, you know, 1.5 seems like the base case. If I were betting, I would say maybe 1.7, 1.8. I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility at all for them to get a doubling of their deals. We'll see what happens though. So WBD will still be in this scenario, would still be greatly more value than AEW. Um, and even when adjusting for the viewership that they get, even when adjusting for the number of hours of content that they deliver on a weekly basis, W would still be compensated at a higher rate than AEW. So it's not like you can't say that AEW would ever be compensated like WBD because W is such a, a much more established household name brand. No, they would still be, W would still be much more highly compensated, even adjusting for the ratings that they deliver, even adjusting for the more, I think it will still be more hours of content, right? If we're just talking the core main roster programs, five hours between SmackDown and Raw and we'd be up to, no, I think we'd be up to, it'd be equal at that point, wouldn't it? Plus two hours to die. My two hours is a two hours of collision, one hour of rampage. Plus WWE has such wrestlers regularly. There's two pictures of me on the screen right now. I apologize for that. Plus, WWE has access to such star powers on a regular basis such as Ronda Rousey, John Cena, Brock, Steve Boston. Dominic. Don? Dominic. What's Don's quarter hour just do we know if he's a draw yet? Look for some more quarter hour reports coming soon to the Wrestling OX Patreon. We will review those certainly in detail with the finest analysis. Yes, go on. No, I just, I mean, let me ask you this to go back a little bit to something you mentioned a couple of minutes ago. When you were talking about your May 1st, 2022 projections and dynamite ratings are down from that point last year. Do you think that has a really big impact on television rights or do you think the negotiations are relatively the same? Even the decline in cable and the wild dynamite has slipped from where they were last year. Do you really think that's like that big of a factor or do you think they're looking at where they're placing in cable each week? I think the ranking is what matters a lot more and luckily I had this slide ready. So this looks at, this is like looking at all the showbiz data and including broadcast in it too, which could argue whether that's completely relevant or not. But there's usually a similar number of broadcast programs that are happening and any given day. And the ranking is a little bit weaker for dynamite. So if we're looking at Q2, which we're currently in, we're about halfway through Q2 and we look at Q2 of last year, they were doing a median rank of number 10. And I think because we're dealing with showbiz data here, showbiz started to include telemundo and Univision around June of last year. So, so that's sort of padding the numbers in present times. In any case, it is weaker. And the ratings are weaker. It's not that bad though. They're still doing fairly well among programming generally on Wednesday. When the NBA playoffs are out of the way, they'll rank more highly than usual. I was surprised at how well the dynamite rating held up this past Wednesday given the NBA playoffs, the NHL playoffs, the CNN, Trump, Town Hall, still doing what was it like for you? I was going to bring that up briefly for this week's rating. I guess it's nice to see that AW can present to a big match on episode of dynamite and have that really make a difference in the rating. I think sometimes with WWE as well, you think that attracting an audience or popping a rating is kind of out of their control unless there's like, if you're WWE, it's like you do the draft or you do an nostalgia show or something like that. And with dynamite, it's really like, sometimes I feel like dynamite just sometimes shows that don't seem that loaded, will do a good rating and sometimes shows that do seem loaded, will do a disappointing rating. I think the fact that they gave away what would be considered a very big match for free on TV. This was a pay-per-view show someone was tweeting this multiple times in the days leading up to this show. Who was that person that was tweeting that branded? Somebody in the internet wrestling community that's very active and very online on Twitter. Tony Khan, Tony Khan is his name I think. Yes. But it's nice to see that make a difference that Kenny Omega and Jon Moxley in a cage match means something to people. Have you seen the quarter hours? I did see the quarter hours and you can obviously see that very unusual trend. But you can see that the main event helped boost the quarter hours and even in the persigments kind of leading up to the main event, you could see some growth as people were probably flipping over and getting ready to see when that match was actually going to start from whatever else they were watching. Usually, Dynamite starts out pretty high probably inheriting a lot of viewers from Big Bang Theory and just mostly declines quarter to quarter throughout the rest of the show hours. Usually you'll see a little pick up in the main event. Not that, not a huge bump but you're right. They started much lower than they normally do from the lead in. Right. That's true. It speaks to the competition that was on television. Now the really big NBA game which would have been the Lakers and Warriors game, that did not start till after 10 p.m. So it does not directly interfere with. They were going against the Celtics and Sixers though. Right? No. They played on... No. Yes they were. They were going against another NBA game. I'm trying to remember. I thought the Celtics and Sixers played on Thursday. They were going against the Leafs game which is less... I think they were going against the Heat. The ratings that game. That's... Yeah. You're probably right about that. They were going against another NBA playoff game is what I was trying to get at I guess. Yes, you're right. The Heat and the Knicks which is a 1.49 and 4.4 million viewers. The first two thirds or three quarters the show was going against Trump on CNN. But to answer the question I guess, you know, the Dynamite's carrying the bulk of the value here. Dynamite being pretty highly ranked on Wednesday still, still, you know, contributes a lot of value to AEW. And I would say if you look at... Look at what NXT is doing and I think NXT is a lot less valuable than any of these other three programs. I don't think Rampage is super valuable. But you know, NXT is not on the level of SmackDown and Raw obviously. It does a fraction of the viewership of SmackDown and Raw. And it doesn't rank that highly even though NXT ratings have improved over the last year along with the rest of W ratings. It's still, if you look at this rank here, we're in the thirties here for the last three quarters for NXT. And you know, Rampage is not much better. It's doing... We've only got I think we've got very few non-preemption data points that are being included in this table for Q2 in Rampage's case, which is not going to change anytime soon. But if you look before Q2, you know, they're in the forties and the thirties and before that they are in the twenties. And anyway, they're below the top 20, right? NXT is below the top 20. And I think if we're including broadcast in this, you know, the top 20, the top 15, certainly the top 10, I think you're looking at a lot of value. And Raw and SmackDown are almost always in the top 10 SmackDown. Basically, always in the top five, most weeks, number one, many weeks, I would say. Let's say, be careful. Many weeks, number one, SmackDown is in the demo. So I think that's, you know, that's enough to dynamite's ranking and where it's performing is enough to make it quite valuable. And when you stack a lot of tonnaging content on top of it, like Collision, and perhaps we'll learn on Wednesday as well some sort of AEW content on max, whether that's all in and maybe other a few live events per year happening on max on streaming. And maybe there's some sort of library or next day rights that are happy on max as well. And that's, all of this is additional justification for compensation. There is, we know that there's pretty wide disagreement across the wrestling community on what is considered like a good rating for dynamite. What is considered a bad rating, dynamite is dynamite doing good in the ratings, dynamite doing bad in the ratings. It's one of others discovery happy with what number is dynamite is doing. I mean, if it's not, you know, comparable to the money that it was, that could be a fail. Yeah. Could be perceived as a matter. So right. I don't want to say that this, I'm trying to be diplomatic and saying there's disagreements when I think some people know more about what is a good rating than others. But just in general, do you think we're going to see like, what would you toss out, I guess, and I don't even know if you could do this accurately at all, but what would you toss out is like a successful deal for this upcoming announcement? Is there a number that you think that dynamite hits we can consider it a success? Or when I say dynamite, like a money number? I mean, all of AW. Yeah. Like, because, right, okay, so this billion number is being tossed around, right? The rumor is the billion number, right? If they don't do a billion, if the new deal is not a billion, let's say it's five years and eight hundred and twenty five million dollars. Will people will, will surely some people will say, oh, what a disappointment because that billion number has now been tossed out. But would you consider that number a disappointment? Is there a per maybe a per year number that you would say like, if AW hits it, we can consider it a success within our analysts community? I think the question is how much does it cost to run AW as a viable business? That's got a modicum of profit to it. But that's not where they are right now. I'm confident that AW is losing a significant amount of money every year. They may have been more profitable or closer to profitable in 2020 when there was a pandemic and taping was cheaper. But now that's not the case, obviously. And when you're stacking another day of touring that they're going to do for a week, that's an increased expense even more. So the question is how much money do they need to run profitably? And I think they made it in 2022 around hundred million dollars in revenue or so. I think they still probably lost a lot of money. So it's hard for me to estimate what the expense is. I would guess several hundred millions of dollars is what you need to run a profitable business. If they get a billion dollar deal for over five years, that comes out to 200. And then you're probably just about there. That's just the US deal, which would be 200. And that math add on to it their international deals, their pay-per-view business, their live event, ticket sales and all that. Which I don't know. I haven't done a spreadsheet on. It could get them to like 300 million dollars a year or something like that in revenue. So I don't know. I think they need a lot to run profitably and sustainably. And I think that's what this entire AEW business plan is based on. It's not based on getting a $44 million dollar deal and some other supplemental revenue. It's based on getting this huge deal. This is the Super Bowl for AEW. This is like, if they don't get a great deal, what's a great deal? But if they don't get a great deal, then the whole business experiment was a failure. If they don't become profitable. What does that mean? I don't know. Hundred and hundred and fifty million dollars a year or something like that, I would think. Alright, we're looking at AEW as a vanity project for Tony Khan who's very wealthy and is willing to spend his own money to become a wrestling booker and present a wrestling product that large segment of fans do enjoy. But the idea is, like you said, that a non-WW wrestling company could run at what we would consider a major league level in the United States and be profitable. And that's not something that only Vince McMahon can do, which has been the message that has been sent out since WCW closed. That Vince McMahon is the only person that can run pro wrestling and make it a success. In ADF, you have your impacts where Anthem, its parent, is willing to absorb whatever costs you to have the programming. Yeah, we actually have a super chat related to that. Okay. I do not have that authority. This is from Danny who says, no one seems to know how impact wrestling makes money. What would be your best guess? Also how long do you think that is sustainable for impact specifically? I think it's fairly cheap because they're taping a lot of episodes in one sitting still. How do they make money? They probably get some budget from Anthem, sports and entertainment. And I think it's sustainable as long as Anthem thinks it's worth it to have the programming. Right. It's their value is based on them providing programming to Anthem, specifically AccessTV. Whether or not it's profitable has a totally different business model than like AEWE, which are trying to get paid by these networks for their content and will bid them against each other. This is a division of Anthem. How long do you think that is sustainable? I mean people have been asking that question about TNA and impact for over 20 years and it's still going. So, forever, forever is my guess. It wouldn't seem like it would be sustainable forever, but evidence has suggested that it somehow is as long as they continue to find people that want to spend money on it. And as long as they're not touring, they're not spending the kind of money that AEWE or certainly WBSE because the media expense becomes really huge at that point. So is that everything that I wanted to say here? Well, I guess we could say this. Here's David Zazloff, Kathleen Finch, these are the executives at WBD who oversee AEWE programming ultimately. Are they, is David Zazloff or Kathleen Finch, are they the second coming of Jamie Kellner? As we all know from our history that Jamie Kellner, who killed WCW, it was the executive Jamie Kellner who took over time Warner after the AEWE merger or something like that. And he, legend has that he decided that he didn't see wrestling as part of the vision for the network going forward in 2001 and he decided to not renew WCW. He's the only person responsible too. There was no one else who could have possibly had any hand in WCW with being cancelled. Only Jamie Kellner. Well, I'm not going to blame anybody else or you. I think WCW was a money making machine for AEWE time Warner. Their ratings were set, they were doing record ratings in 2001. I'm sure when Jamie Kellner killed them, it was totally unfair and there was no other reason for it. It wasn't because the company was doing record low ratings and was a complete embarrassment to pro wrestling and broader entertainment. The difference is in 2001, even with those diminished ratings and for those of us who can remember the times of the late 90s and 2000s and how the course of the wrestling war really changed and WCW in the ratings and WCW's creative was in constant disarray. It was doing much lower ratings than it had done at a previous point. But that was in an environment where cable TV was mostly supported by ad sales. And as we know, wrestling at least at that time and maybe somewhat true today does not do great ad rates. Since that time, live programming that includes wrestling has become the big value for cable TV. And in addition to that, cable networks no longer get, at least cable networks that have sports on them no longer get the majority of their revenue from ad sales. I'll say that again. Cable networks no longer get the majority of their revenue from ad sales. They get their money more so from the cable systems because they charge you, perhaps, the cable customer a lot of money to have all those networks on your cable system. So the economics of TV really changed from this time to that time. And W.R.A. might have some covenants that are tied to raw contributing to live sports. Maybe a Smackdown will have that in its new deal. Maybe A.W. will help contribute to the promises of live content that W.B.D. will make the various cable satellite distributors when they renew all those deals. So the economics of the media business have really changed. And which is while it may have made sense. Well it may have made sense for Jamie Kellener to say, hey look, this doesn't do great ad rates. We could have totally different content here on TNT and TBS and we could have a better business this way. That may have made sense in 2001. An executive in a similar situation in 2023. That makes a lot less sense because it's live content in an environment where live content is really important in a way that it wasn't that important in 2001. Which is why all the comparisons to W.C.W. and the TV landscape in 2001 just have no real bearing on what television exists in 2023. I think a lot of people have PTSD from W.C.W. going away and that has led to a lot of unnecessary fears about A.W. going away. And I think that's, but it's on the same networks. Right and I think that Tony Shimani is the commentator. Some people fancy themselves big students of history and they like to point, well you gotta look at what happened in the past. Look what happened in the past. You've got to learn from history. If you don't learn from history you're doomed to repeat it without accepting the caveat that the entire point of A.W. is based on a business model that just didn't exist during W.C.W.'s prime. David Zazloff is coming to Boston. Is it? Right after the, he's coming next weekend. He's going to be the speaker at Boston University's commencement ceremony and there has been a lot of controversy in the print news media in the Boston area about David Zazloff speaking during B.U.'s commencement speech. Will there be protests? Yes, there are because. From Adobe fans or what? No, no. People who are upset, they are supporting the Writers Guild of America and they are upset that the university would be bringing in a corporate television entertainment executive who of course is on the bad side of the WGA strike for students. Yes. And there has been several articles. Russell Homs contributor, Russell Homs contributor Chris Ealy was telling me, who lives in the LA area, he was telling me that traffic was backed up in LA the other day earlier this week I'll leave because there were protests happening because David Zazloff was in the area for some reason and or maybe the offices. People were protesting and it was causing traffic problems. Yes. But I was reading that in the globe last week that the students are not happy that David Zazloff is speaking up. Will he be covering it? Will I be covering it? No, I was thinking like, could I? What if I, what if I, how can I corner David Zazloff and ask him about the dynamite thing? What do you do with AEW? Do you think it's too violent? Look, why are you renewing here? A lot of blood and guts here. Don't forget about the Nick Cage pizza controversy. Come on. He's coming after the, the fronts. So I don't know how much I can get out of it. I will not be covering the used graduation. I might have somebody at the BU graduation because a big thing is that there are BUs interns working at every used publication, right across an area. So I could probably get somebody who could give me some inside scoop. That, that's, that's something that's happening locally. And I guess I, I didn't know he was also being processed in LA. I guess he's a, I don't know. Is he a particularly outspoken person against the WGA strike? What's so easy? He's a CEO. I know. What's so unique about him? He's a media company. He's a CEO of one of the biggest media companies who are opposing the product. Right. So is this something all, all the CEO is, you know, Bob Iger is being confronted with this. That's maybe Bob Bakish and Jeff Shell is out of the picture, I guess, but Brian Roberts. Yeah, not Jeff Shell anymore. Yes. Yes. The other thing I wanted to bring up is if, if David Tazloff is Jamie Kelmer, we probably wouldn't be getting this announcement. What do you mean? If David Tazloff and the new leadership at wire bars discovery was not a fan of, of AEW and what was going to kill it like Jamie Kelmer killed WCW, we probably wouldn't be getting an announcement about AEW's future on one of those discovery in May as part of the upfronts. I think one thing we can say is that David Tazloff and Kathleen Finch for that matter both came from discovery. They did not come from Warner media and Warner media was the company that had TNT and TBS, which are the networks that had the live sports. So Zazloff and Finch don't come from networks, at least recently, that had live sports. The discovery networks didn't have any live sports, at least not in the US, right? Like I'm not missing any in here, right? It's things like food network and... TLC. Reality TV show. Yeah. HGTV. Yes, TLC, the history channel, things like that. So there was a question about whether or not they would, to what extent they would embrace, and there still is, me, NBA still got to do their deal and who knows how much or if they're going to keep the NBA. But there's a question around how much they would see live sports as an important part of the networks like TNT and TBS that currently really rely on live sports. And those, again, live sports are what drive these carriage fees, which is why you're capable is so expensive. So they seem, if speculations are true, that this is going to be a big upgrade for EEW, that's some hint that they see some value in live content, even though you can debate about whether or not or to what extent AEW is really live sports. And it's a far cry in terms of the value that the NBA will be when they probably try to double or triple their current TV values. That's an enormously greater average annual value. It's like over a billion currently. I'm not looking right now, but it's a huge, it's the second biggest TV deal in sports. So we'll see how they handle that and how much NBA content they want to hold on to in the RSNs will come into play there, perhaps, because there'll be maybe more games on the table. There will probably be other players, including NBC and maybe Amazon and maybe others who will be interested in that content as well. So that's that. I guess if AEW gets a good deal, that's probably positive news for WWE, because it tells you that there's at least a healthy market for live content, more specifically, there's a healthy market for wrestling content. And that if nothing else, it's just a good signal for WWE's ability to negotiate a favorable increase for Ron Smackdown, which is coming up. My leaning is towards expecting WWE or Ron Smackdown to stay with the incumbents. I know we've earlier predicted or I've earlier predicted that maybe Smackdown will go with Amazon, but I'm less bullish about the value of the reach of Amazon and just how important the reach is to I think the reach for Fox, that Fox provides for Smackdown is really strong. And I think it's a good position that they're in in terms of they're not leaving Peacock anytime soon to probably stay with Peacock or, you know, if they leave Peacock, that content will go to some other streaming platform, like maybe ESPN plus after the merger or something like that. So I think it's a Nikon has talked about it this way for them to be on cable, throw to be on broadcast with Fox streaming with Peacock. It gives them really the maximum reach into everyone's homes. Do you believe that, right, if there's a if there's a line for a w's budget where this is what we need to make each year to be profitable, like you suggested? Do you believe that like logically, like why would Tony Khan or AEW sign a deal in May, perhaps as far as 18 months before their contract expires, depending on when their option, if the options picked up or not for a deal that would make them not profitable? You're presenting it as why would they accept it if it wasn't something that was going to make them profit? Yes. Is that what you're saying? Yeah. No, I think so. I mean, I think there's something to the notion that AEW, because it's a newer, more nascent, less proven brand, has less leverage than say, a w does to go and we'll play the open market. So that gives a w less leverage and less ability to trust that it's going to be able to get a better deal on the alternative and maybe more likely to just sort of acquiesce and try to be the best partner to their incumbent. Especially me. And I think there's a good chance that that WBD owns a piece of AEW, so they're very much aligned in their business interests. Wouldn't you want this thing to be profitable if you have a piece of it? Well, it's profitable because you're paying for it. Yes. So yeah, we'll make it profitable. We'll just take some of our money from here and pay over there and pay it over there. But right, that's the my question, which is like, if this was really the end of the negotiating window and they had maybe stiffed out other options and were getting an announcement, now the fact they were getting this announcement so far in advance of I think when we really expected to get this announcement, like if I asked you at the beginning of your brand and do you think we would get the AEW next contract announcement in May, you'd probably say no, right? I'm not, no, I think I would have said because the previous rounds of WBD usually happens around this time relative to when WB expires and WB expires only about three months earlier than AEW expires. So this is a little early, but only by a few months. This isn't way early. Right. And then the timing of the upfront kind of makes it like, all right, yeah, I mean, you got to get this message out to advertise. Do you think we're going to get this announcement during the upfronts? Do you think we'll get a press release? Maybe they're scheduling things all too. Before the upfronts. I don't know. I think at the upfronts, I mean, what happened with dynamite? I don't know. I barely remember. I don't know if you remember better. Dynamite was it was an upfront announcement. And it's, and I think Rampage was an upfront announcement too. So whatever happened with those, it may be similar. I imagine during, in the middle of the day, maybe there's a press release and there's a revelation at the upfront presentation itself. Do you think we'll get like, we'll get a wrestler making an appearance at the upfronts? They're going to, they're going to play someone's music. I expect there to be A.W. presence at, at the upfronts as there had been in the past when, you know, there's this picture of, you know, the fine, when, when I Google images of like Tony Khan and, and the bucks and Kenny Omega and Cody and Britt Baker all, all standing around arm and arm. I've heard that, I think it was on, I think someone mentioned it was on the cheap heat podcast that like someone suggested that Bill Goldberg is going to come out in the middle of the upfront, stuck on plays music and he's going to, he's going to come out and all the people are going to be really impressed by seeing him because he's going to be signing with A.W. As the, the executives are probably pushed for that. I mean, if you, if you want to have a big start, you got to have Bill Goldberg like back in the day with W.C.W. No, I don't think that's going to happen. Um, I think there's a good chance there will be a W. If this is, this deal is going to be announced, why wouldn't A.W. people be there? Where, where's, where's Dynamite on Wednesday? Do we know? It's an Austin Texas, I think. Um, that's a question. Which is not going to be close to where the upfronts are, which I'm assuming are either in New York or LA. Um, okay. Maybe just see him punkly there. He might be, if he's part of the, if he's, he's, or here's to be a key player and this deal and certainly seems to be right from what we know is going to be the face of A.W. collision, which I'm sure is part of this new announcement. So, um, I suppose there's no reason why he couldn't be there. Does this help CM Punk's? He doesn't have to be an off CM Punk is responsible, partially or, or responsible for it. Well, let's just say in general, let's say that they get a billion dollar deal. Mm hmm. Does this help the wrestling observer newsletter Hall of Fame case for the key players associated with A.W.? Yes. Absolutely. I mean, the key players? Yes. Puponk in particular? Absolutely. John Moxley. And, and I believe, sure. I, I think that there were probably conversations just because I see it in the analysis of ratings. I mean, look, Dynamite's down year every year. Something like 20%, 15% at least. Why is that? I think we would agree. Many factors, perhaps, but biggest factor, CM Punk's not, not around. Yes. Yeah. So it's easy to, to, to make a plan and be like, well, why isn't CM Punk around? Yeah. Well, there's this whole thing and then the, the, the seltzer's in the cupcakes and what not. And well, well, what does it take to bring him back? Well, what if he had a show that you, he could be separated into his own, own, own section here? It's like you have two teams or something like that. And that's part of a justification for a much better team. Should Tony Tom be on the ballot this year if they do get a sizable new contract? I don't know. I, I guess you could put him on there. That's, we're, we're getting into the territory of like, I don't want to vote for people who have, don't you have to have 15 years in the business though? Isn't that also a, a wrestler? Yes, for wrestlers. For wrestlers. Are you sure it's not for everybody? Um, I don't know. It might not even be a consistent thing for Dave, but it would be like an aguedo's in, aguedo's older and right. Guedo's got certain years, 30 years in the business. So what, um, the, uh, yeah. So I, it would probably be the fastest anyone has, has been inducted. Although when did Paul Hamie get inducted? Was Paul Hamie in the business 15 years when he got inducted? I feel like he was inducted in the early 2000s. And maybe he'd been around the business for 15 years at that point, but. Was he in the original? 96 class? No, no, no. I don't know. I don't, I, I would be very surprised when he was inducted in 96. I'm going to the, the official record of the wrestling's are all fame, which is at wikipedia.org. He was inducted in 2005. So at that point, I knew when it was, Ham and start, he had been a, he had been a manager, um, pre-1980s. Was he inducted as a, you believe he's in twice, he's in as both a, a booker, a, a manager, um, and a, actually I think he's in as a booker and a promoter. He's not in as a manager. He's listed here as promoting. Yeah. So 2005. So certainly, I mean, if, if you roll back 15 years, that's like, you know, but I mean, who, what individual has had a bigger impact on pro wrestling in the last 10 years than Tony Khan? Nick Khan. Maybe. I mean, does Nick, does Nick Khan? See, that's when we start getting cute with the Hall of Fame where people talk about, oh, Nick Khan should be. And he got them a billion dollar deal. Who else has gotten a billion dollar deal in wrestling has to be Nick Khan. I mean, if you're going to put Ted Turner, if you're going to put Ted Turner on his ballot. Ted Turner should not be in the, for that reason. For, I'm not a Ted Turner voter. That's consistent, but fair enough. Well, neither am I. I see the, I, but I think Ted Turner, I see a little bit more in the sense of there's, there's clear evidence where Ted Turner and people who were advocates of Ted Turner will say that the wrestling would have, would have died on, on, on, on cable outside of WWF. If it wasn't for Ted Turner, having a soft spot for pro wrestling, which is true, as opposed to Nick Khan is better at negotiating television deals than his predecessor was. But WWE would still be a hugely profitable company, whether or not Nick Khan was ever brought into the company or not. They're more profitable now because of Nick Khan. I think that's pretty safe to assume. But I personally think you have to be like in the wrestling business to, to, to, to go into pro wrestling. Oh, she, she just, she just, and Nick Khan's not in the wrestling business. He is to a degree, but he's not like Nick Khan's, he happens to be working. You probably tell you he's in the media business. Yeah. And he happens to be working in the pro wrestling field. He's definitely in the wrestling business. But to me, he's not like, even if I suppose, let's say, you know, his employment agreement is only five years. He may leave WWE after five years and maybe as a whole fan candidate, you say, well, five years is not long enough. I just think you have to be hands on with the wrestling product itself. Like I don't want to talk. That's why I'm not a big fan of Ted Turner. Like if Ted Turner, why can't Bonnie Hammer be in the hall of fame to turn us on the hall of fame? Who's, who's gotten wrestling? We agree on that though, but Bonnie Hammer doesn't work for a wrestling company. Well, yeah, neither did it. Yeah, for sure. But was she in the wrestling business? She paid not really. She was a soul. She worked with the wrestling business. But she's not a pro wrestling, make hundreds of millions of dollars. Yeah, but that's more like the Ted Turner case. That's not the Nikon case. Right, but I'm talking about, it's kind of like, to me, it's like these people are in a separate category of contributions to pro wrestling. You want to put Nikon with Bonnie Hammer and Ted Turner? I think that none of those people are defined by pro wrestling in their professional careers. But the obvious difference is Nikon is an executive for a wrestling company. Correct. Okay. Do we have anything more to add about AW? Not the moment. I have another thing I'll bring up that we could talk about similar stuff before. But I have kind of a question related to this, but it was better for like an end of the day discussion as opposed to right now. Okay, we do have a super chat from our team machine who says, do you think it would be smart for NBC to keep the raw rights and put raw on NBC, not USA? It's hard to say without knowing the books of like, is that going to make NBC more profitable to put raw on NBC? What airs on Monday nights on NBC right now? Can anyone answer that real quick? NBC TV schedule. I mean... The voice. The voice. That might be on Tuesday nights. Monday, Monday, May 15th. The voice, you're right. And then at 10, that's my jam, whatever that is. I think that's a music guessing game show kind of thing. I doubt that the voice and whatever comes on after the voice is a better strategy than raw. How many people watch the voice? Isn't that like a really big show? I think so. We could look that up. I mean, I understand the argument of like, hey, look, Fox and SmackDown has been pretty good for WWE. But I think there's, you know, what was on Fox on Friday before SmackDown like Hell's Kitchen or something like that, that's probably not it nearly the ratings draw that, the voices. The voice on Monday, May 8th did 5.47 million viewers. It did a .81 in the demo. I guess you think about it in terms of this. Raw, which does what, a .5 in the demo, what did it do on this May 8th? It did 545050. So it did just over a 5.0 on cable being on broadcast. It would do better. Would it do a .8 in the demo? Not sure. That's at least a gamble. I see how it makes sense. But when you have, unless the voice is going to end for some reason or there's some other night you want to argue that it would fit on. I don't know. Maybe not. I think combined the two shows. And it was like half-choice, half-life. Combined, Raj. Not enough. I mean, I think the myth has proved this past WrestleMania that wrestling should be adapted into musical theater. So I think there's something there. There's a pilot. Would NBC, would NBC be hesitant to put wrestling on its flagship network? Yes. You think Brian Roberts is probably not a big wrestling fan too. Right. And I think that might come into play. I think it's okay to have it on a USA on a cable network. I mean, part of the value is that basically the USA network is the WWE network as far as in terms of what is keeping that cable station afloat. And one of the reasons that NBC has been so aggressive in bidding to retain Raj's rights is because that cable station really needs Raj. And it's possible. There's some Premier League. There's some NASCAR. Right. And then it's been from being folded into from NBC sports going by by. So there's some live sports that stepped into the void. But as far as like original programming that USA used to have, that people would talk about seems pretty non-existent at this point. Welcome to Breeze Line, where you'll say, ta-ta, T-Mobile, because we have 99.9% network reliability and they don't. That's right, time, weather, or even streaming in a basement won't affect our superior service. That's because we have real internet backed by our fiber powered network. And T-Mobile, well, they just have a 5G cellular network. So for a limited time, find your perfect speed with prices starting at $19.99 a month for 24 months. Terms and conditions apply. Go to BreezeLine.com to learn more. So we will, again, if you want to throw in a super chat, we will respond to your questions. Question or comment. Just briefly, we'll talk about some of the things that are on the Patreon. Bad Bunny, barbers everywhere are pleased to know that Bad Bunny dominated the W shop list according to our network. Was your beard barber talking about this? Because mine was. As you can see, I'm clearly someone who goes to the beard barber barber. Well, I am my own beard barber and I was definitely talking about this. So yes. We've also got 8W Key Performance Indicators, an adaptation of the WWE Key Performance Indicators that you can find at corporate.w.com. This is to a upcoming and upcoming episode of Josh Nation's Punch Out that I recorded the other day that should be coming on the F4W website soon. Also have been putting news updates onto these. This is a big transition in the world of Russell Onyx Patreon where I'm now starting to put news, transform these TV ratings in reports into something more than TV ratings reports. So they will still be TV ratings reports. But with some news, often news that has not been reported elsewhere. Not that I'm getting this news from like inside sources, but this past week, it just so happened that there were like four legal stories that I don't think anybody had reported it on at that point. I will have some W news that will be exclusive news coming this week, I expect. So you can find that and more at patreon.com slash Russell Onyx. We also had, we talked to Richard Deach this past week, which is a great conversation with John Pollack and I talk about a lot about wrestling media. Getting rave reviews, I've heard in my corner of the internet. Have you had a chance to listen to the podcast? Did you? Okay. When we were done recording, I told John Pollack, well, I hope Jesse Collins will be satisfied with that. Oh, I was, it was all done to impress me. That's okay. I do things to impress you too. Good. But I was getting from my corner of the internet branded. I was, I was hearing all about this interview. You guys did. Really? Yeah, I had to, okay. I first thing I did when I got my car to drive home from work was put it on so I could listen to it. Well, I sat in traffic for 45 minutes. Yeah, he had a lot. I mean, I didn't expect to get into wrestling media as much as we did. I expected it to be more of a conversation about, you know, sports rights and how W and AEW would fit into that. Yes. I mean, he talked a lot about like aggregators in pro wrestling and how they're different than aggregation for other sports. He talks, you know, about press conferences and things like that. He definitely, he's definitely someone that's pretty observant of this stuff. Yeah. And he's a big serious wrestling fan too. He's not a helicoptering it. Yeah. That's what it might say. But that's on the free feed on the wrestling free feed and post wrestling feed and on both our YouTube channels as well. So you can check that out if you haven't already. This coming week, again, I said Monday tomorrow as we speak here today, Fox is up front and be used up front. And then on Wednesday is the, the much anticipated WBD up front. We will be talking to somebody who's going to be at the up fronts later in the week with with John Pollock and I so look for that. What now? We know that WrestleMania according to the Tennessee Titans CEO, am I saying this? Do you know this guy's name, Burke Nihill? Nihill? I've never heard his name really pronounced before. Anyway, he's the Titans president and CEO. He appeared on local radio in Nashville and said, WBD has committed to WrestleMania, not in 2025, not in 2026, in 2027, because they're building a new stadium in Nashville for the Titans. And according to him, they have WrestleMania in Nashville in 2027. So we know Philadelphia is next year and there's speculation whether 2025 could be Minnesota. There was talk at a at a at a at a political meeting and that Orlando might put a bit in. We don't know where 2025 is going to be though. We don't don't know where 2026 is going to be, but he knows that WrestleMania is going to happen in Nashville in 2027. So not, he has not been confirmed by WWE, right? There's been no follow up to. True claim by true. Yes. True. I mean, it would be strange to announce 2027 before 25 and 26. But it would it's also not super shocking. They had summer slam. This would be at their current slash old stadium last year. So there's already kind of a relationship with WWE running major show with the Tennessee Titans ownership group. So Nashville, they've never done WrestleMania before there. It is a growing tourist city. Otherwise should probably check out with running WrestleMania that time of year in Tennessee. So it wouldn't be a super surprising place. I do wonder about them doing it in a place they've never done it before. They've been pretty stagnant on where they've held WrestleMania over the last like 10 or 15 years. It feels like it's they'd like to go to a lot of the same spots for the most part. Yeah, I mean, LA was the first time WrestleMania, although it's the second biggest market in the country. But they've had WrestleMania like a bunch of times. Yeah, WrestleMania, the slaughter versus warrior. Seven. Okay. Then they were there and Russia, Anaheim WrestleMania, which is not which is the LA market. And there's WrestleMania 21, which they had the Staples Center. All right, let me rephrase. They have not done a a wrestling. Was it part of WrestleMania? The stadium. Was it part of WrestleMania two also in LA? I think you're right. Yes. But since the stadium era starting in like 2007 or so they had not done one in LA. Right. They were gonna do at the Rose Bowl for WrestleMania seven, but they couldn't because of terrorist threats. Because Sergeant Slaughter was getting a Dominic Mysterio level heat. So they had to hear what he'd got. Yes. Of course. But yeah, they haven't explained. They like Arlington, Texas, they like New Orleans. They've done New York Power Land, New York, New Jersey. And we know like it's gonna come, it's a bidding process now. So it's gonna be who can boo them? Who can give them the best deal to run there? It sounds like the Titans are very invested in it, but we'll see. So endeavor, N.W., are merging as we know. And this Friday, I thought my week was all done. Got home, five o'clock, stock market was closed. Walked up to my third floor apartment and then I saw the email alert. I saw my guy. It's another corporate.w.com email alerts, probably just, you know, some. Executive ownership filing. It's not a big deal. Much to the contrary. I click on this link. It opens up a PDF that is 550 pages. 550 pages. It is a prospectus, an S1, if you will, for the to be merged, to be named company. No, I don't think that new whale company is going to be the name, which I think we already knew. I saw some people saying this is the temporary new name. This is just the placeholder name, I think, but the prospectus for the merged company. And we got some interesting information. I mean, the biggest thing and I have now skimmed through it all. I have at least scrolled through all of it. And we get, most interestingly, that I've found is there's a narrative, basically, about how this transaction process went. I guess before we get into that, we can't mention they didn't just drop a 550 page PDF. They also dropped some other stuff too, including the disclosure of that. Vincent Bann basically settled a lawsuit, which we have here somewhere. Anyway, I guess I will talk about it now. Is it in here? Vincent Bann settled a lawsuit and paid $1.65 million in attorney's fees for a shareholder class action lawsuit because he, you know, alleging that he breached his fiduciary duties by through written consent, changing the bylaws to force his way back into the company. So that has cost in $1.6 million. I hope he can afford it. And I hope that his $3.4 million worth of dividends that he gets every quarter can help him pay for that. So, that did cost him something. Basically the lawsuit was rendered moot because once that lawsuit was filed, he immediately repealed the bylaws that allowed him to return to the company. That didn't undo his return to the company though. He only needed it once. He did that. He could afford to burn the bridge. Right. Right. So it did cost, you could say, it did cost Vincent Bann had admission fee of $1.65 million to force his way back into the company. Not withstanding the investigation costs that he has had to cover for the company. But anyway, I did jump ahead here. According to W.E., well, according to this disclosure, that's I guess coming from both to be an endeavor, over 60 potential counter parties, our counterparty, Chris Gullo, I forgot to mention, he is like a good son spending the day with his mother here on Mother's Day. But over 60 potential counter parties, including strategic companies, financial sponsors, family offices and yes, sovereign wealth funds, they contacted or were contacted about this transaction. So, 60. Now, however, between February 6th and March 21st, they made a confidentiality agreements with 20 potential counter parties. So I don't know. It sounds like there were 60 parties that made contact about this. There were 20 that actually went so far as to have to make confidentiality, confidentiality agreements with W.E. to explore the possibility of some sort of transaction. I think it's important to note here that we're not just talking about 20 companies, but there's a lot of what they refer to as financial sponsors here. So I take these to be possibly private equity funds and things of that nature that would help potential counter parties make an acquisition, basically who would take on the financing for such a transaction. I've detailed the timeline on RussellAnox.com and on my Twitter if you want to take a look. It does look like though that if we have it in here. That Liberty Media is probably one of these strategic parties because they disclose that at a certain point, and I think you have here highlighted in yellow, right? Where is it? On March 26th, a party that is only referred to here as Strategic Party One. So their identity is not disclosed. Endeavour's identity is clearly disclosed where they are involved in this timeline. Strategic Party One, who was clearly in discussions to possibly acquire WV, they were provided tickets to a WV event. So not a TV event, not a pay-per-view, but a house show that was in Denver on the night of March 26th. So I think that's conspicuous and that it's not like they were being brought to WrestleMania or they were being brought to some really big production, but that house show, so that tells me that maybe they were already in the area, right? They probably weren't traveling to go see a house show in Denver. So maybe they were in the area and who might be in the area in Denver? Well, Liberty Media is headquartered in Inglewood, not California, but Inglewood, Colorado, which is just outside of Denver. So that would be consistent with, I don't know if there were reports where there were reports that Liberty Media was looking into it. But we could say that adds up, that I've heard that Liberty Media was interested and was exploring it. Are we sure it wasn't Raj Gary? You never know. I mean, he has run a number of very successful websites, so you never know. But most interestingly here, I would say, is that in this timeline, it's disclosed that in Denver comes to WV and says pretty early in this process says, okay, what if we merge and it's not clear if they're offering UFC to merge at this point and what the other conditions would be, but they give them a proposal to say, hey, WV, how about we merge and you get 46% of this merge company, we get 57% of this merge company. In Denver is a bigger company than WV, UFC is bigger than WV, so that kind of makes sense. We say 57, 43, you get 43, how does that sound? W comes back and says, how about 49 for us, 51 for you? And in Denver responds to that and says, well, okay, we'll accept your 49, 51, but only if Vince McMahon stays for life is essentially the conversation that you could almost paraphrase it as, you know, Aria Manuel saying, how about we merge 43, 49, Vince says, no, make it 49, 51, and then Ari says, okay, but you have to stay until you die or until you're incapacitated or you resign and Vince basically says, well, all right, if you insist, it's a deal. So we don't believe that. So we don't believe it. It couldn't have gone the other way in the sense of Vince was willing to give them majority control over the company as long as they gave him some sort of insulation to make sure that he'd still have a level of authority within some company. There's certainly, you know, belief for me that Vince would want to stay. Right. And the narrative that's being told to us is that our area was like, Vince, you've got to stay as opposed. And this is consistent with what he said in that CNBC. Right. That's why I said the narrative that's being sold is the idea. Instead of Vince being like, I have to stay on and this is the deal that needs to happen if you want me to stick around. Or if you want to happen, I have to be in charge. But it's much more pleasant to make it seem like areas really believe in Vince and that he believes only Vince can run this and he has to be part of the company and he'll do whatever Vince wants as long. His Vince is willing to work with him, which is maybe true to an extent, but I think it would be very naive to think that Vince went into negotiations for the merger or sale of his company without one of the most prominent reasons for him doing that being that he wanted to ensure that he would continue to have control and authority over WWE. I would say the structure and the truth of an SEC filing would be a very high risk thing to do. However, I mean, it's conspicuous that this narrative certainly protects them from shareholder class action. What you can't say now is as a shareholder filing a lawsuit if you assume this is the truth. You can't say, well, look, Vince, you could have made a better deal if you weren't so damn insistent on staying with the company. No, yeah, it was not Vince who insisted on staying. It was the counterparty who insisted on saying staying who said, it's part of our thesis to this company being really successful that Vince has to stay. He has to have a contract for life. And there's a lot of quote tweets on this portion of the tweet thread that I did about how he's staying for life. He's never going to leave. I don't know that he couldn't still be fired for cause. But he can, you know, if there's no cause, then perhaps he can stay for as long as he wants. Now, do we believe that Aria Manuel, do we believe this on its face that Aria Manuel observed the situation and said, the only way that I can make this deal work and make this resulting company really successful is if Vince McMahon is the executive chair, because that's how key and how important he is to this company. It's like the fact that this company operated with improving business results for the five or six months while he was gone. I believe Aria Manuel believes that Aria could see, oh, things are going well with Paula Vesc, you know, in the head of creative role, things are going well with Nikon as president and CEO. So why do we need to have Vince back? It would seem anti this, but I don't know. I don't know what those conversations were like between Vince and Ari and other WWE executives in the con in Aria. If any of them went to bat for Vince and said, Aria, you need to have this guy back. I don't know. Yeah. Aria Manuel's knowledge of WWE and his knowledge of the creative process. And if he would see, understand that Vince might be a hindrance to the creative process in the company, I don't know. But I would say on its face, it would seem unlikely that Aria would be so insistent on Vince sticking around given the success the company had displayed during the period of time. Vince was not with the company. My other plausible explanation that I could see, and just maybe getting into a little bit of 40 chess, but certainly Ari just saw that Vince forces way back into the company. He was, in essence, an activist shareholder who had enough control, certainly to do what he did. He was not disclosed here what the agreement would have been in the alternative in terms of if we ended up with a merged UFC and WWE that did not include an agreement that Vince would stay with the company. The question that I would want to know in the alternative is that what are Vince's voting rights in that scenario? Or was Vince staying with the company part of, or did it influence in any way the result that we have now where it's going to be one class of shares? Vince is not going to have controlling voting power like he has now and like he has since this company has been public. But maybe Aria observed that it's safer for me to have him inside and to not have him wreaking havoc on the outside. Yeah, I mean, that's pretty plausible, also a very plausible situation. Let's get Vince squared away so we don't have to worry about him, basically. And give him what he wants. I mean, the public message is that Vince is he's got some kind of, he has some creative influence, but still, Paul Lovesk is the main creative mind in WWE. I don't know how true that is. I know Dave Meltzer has said that it's back to what it was like before. And I mean, TV ratings for SmackDown were up from the pretty low rating that they did the week before still going to send me a playoffs. I'm talking about the overnight ratings. Yes, that's for SmackDown on Friday night. I mean, I guess we're still waiting for him to kind of settle into a post WrestleMania number. It seems like they might be sitting around like a little over 0.50 in a key demo for May and June, at least. They did have, you know, the, the, was it? What do you mean is the new title called? The World Heavyweight Champion? The World Title, I don't know. The WWE Consolation Prize. The Cockbeltzes, I've heard it's called. But the third World Title, they did have the title tournaments on matches on both Rides, SmackDown, which might have helped the rating a little bit. It's matches that were important that had big stars wrestling in them. So some other news that we learned from this disclosure is we got some actual financial data about UFC and some projections about what WWE believes WWE and UFC will, will generate in terms of financial results for years to come. I don't know if this stuff is super interesting to say in audio, but we do have, you know, almost $800 million in media rights. This is for UFC in 2022 and it's going three years back. So in any way, and I think we kind of knew this based on some slides that were published right after the announcement of the merger, but that UFC in 2022 made $1.1 billion in revenue. So that's a little bit under what WWE made, but UFC is more profitable as we can see here net income of $389 million. So that's, I believe, WWE reported around $200 million in that revenue, something like that. It's only less than the profitability of UFC. And these are their financial expectations, which is we never get anything that looks this deeply into the future from WWE. What we get from WWE is usually like, well, next quarter or for the full year of 2023, we expect, you know, this level of adjusted OEDA in our non gap profit metrics. But we do see what, what is WWE think they're going to make in this year of 2023 and for the rest of the year, they think they're going to make $615 million for the second half of the year. But for 2024, they think they're going to make $1.36, let's call it $1 billion. 2025, they think they're going to make $1.447 billion going all the way to 2027, where they think they're going to make $1.79 billion. And I guess that's in the scenario that they don't merge, I would think, different actual results, I suppose will be different because of the cost. And I'm saying, well, the revenue, I suppose, will be, I guess, could be better because perhaps there are ways in which UFC and W could be paired together both in terms of live events and in terms of certain media sales. But anyway, and they believe that for, you know, next year, $1.369 billion for UFC. Anyway, the rest of the numbers are there. If you're interested in looking at them, they're in the slides. So I think that that's almost all I have, except for that Kevin Owens and Sami Zener are going to Saudi Arabia. Sami Zener for the first time since the $100 million per year deal era, he was, he did go to Saudi Arabia in the, before this 2018 deal for some of the smaller house shows that they did. But Kevin Owens and Sami Zener, Kevin Owens has been going lately either. He did go to some of the early shows in this deal, but he has not been going lately. He will be going though to face the Tribal Chief Roman Reigns and Sol's Coa on May 27th in Jetta, Saudi Arabia at night of champions. So I don't know if that's related to the recent improvement, right, of diplomatic relations between Syria and Saudi Arabia. I don't know if that comes into play at all here. I'm seeing the, I mean, unusual coincidence. Yeah. Is it Roman Reigns going to be just a big enough star that they, they, you know, came to some agreement here? Is it Roman Reigns going to, isn't this like the day he hits 1000 days as champion? I believe that was discussed like leading up WrestleMania, which is if he wins at WrestleMania, his 1000th day of champion would be with one of the titles, right? Yeah, with one, but as this is 1000th day as a world champion would be the day of this event, which I don't understand why he wouldn't defend the title on that. If you're going to, if you're want the 1000 days to actually mean something while not build a match leading up to him, if he defends the title, he'll officially be at 1000 days as champion seems like a missed opportunity there. But I think they're going for Bruno's record at this point. So yes. So there's that. And just one more thing to add here is that in our wrestling, I did run the numbers again and we do have this, this script is, is alive and kicking. So we are, I don't have to do surgery on, on our, on our script here. We do have numbers moving apparently in accordance to match results where John Moxley's number has improved. I have John Moxley and I'm still in the lead here because I picked people who have higher yellows to begin with. Jesse did see higher yellow ratings from Athena and from Bianca Belair. So that's from Athena must have won some ring of honor taping match or something and Bianca Belair won the backlash match against Eoskai. And Orange Cassidy who belongs to Gullo did defeat down Garcia on Wednesday and his rating improved slightly. Yeah. I need to, so there's that. Need a Nick Aldous to start wrestling. Yes. We got that big, big bet on Nick Aldous with a sub 1600 yellow. So we'll, we'll see what happens with the rest of the year for him. Anything else? For the yellow or just in general? In general. So to get back to AEW, I was thinking about this the other day. That's hypothetically, let's say that at AEW signs of a $1 billion deal for five years, they're profitable. Whenever that's number may be, they send a very, very good deal for them that ensures all of us that AEW is going to be around for a long period of time. Do you think that changes the way people discuss AEW to a degree where I feel like a lot of the discussion around AEW's product is based around the idea of they need to find ways to grow their business because they need to become bigger and bigger and more successful if they want to make it in pro wrestling? And they've got to do, or they've got to do something big to stop whatever business slide that they might currently in, like a rating slump, because one of our discoveries not happy with that. But let's, if they were to sign this big deal that gives them a new level of security and firm establishments within the pro wrestling sphere, do we think that has a tangible effect on the way people focus on AEW's business metrics? Do you think they become more like WWE in the sense of, I think the general sense in WWE is where ambivalent about a lot of creative decisions or ideas for things because ultimately that money is coming in guaranteed. And it doesn't really matter if they're booking us this or that because ultimately that money is coming in no matter what. Does AEW's position within pro wrestling change once they get this level of security? And does that change the way people react and talk about AEW? Maybe not as immediate in reacting to a bad dynamite or a pay per view that fell, feels flat. Do you think we eventually see like a tangible change in the way? Just we discussed AEW as a company. Because there won't be what I would call the AEW existential crisis. There won't be this concern that AEW is going to go away if they don't turn things around. There wouldn't be this incredible focus on, they got to bring in this new star, they got to sign this star, they got to bring this Goldberg into popa rating and they need to do this and that to impress Warner Bros. Discovery or anything like that. What do you think, I'm thinking like can AEW become more, can our focus on AEW's as a company focus more I guess on the actual product as opposed to wondering how they can grow their business constantly. Which seems to be a lot of how AEW's. What's the difference between those two things? So focusing on the product and wondering how the business can develop. Like aren't those the same things? They are to an extent. But I think of the idea is a lot of the arguments you see in regards to AEW are not necessarily based around the idea of I think this would be good or I think this would be good. It would be bad. A lot of it is based around they need to do this to attract the casual fan. They can't do this because the casual fan will be turned away. This idea that AEW is in this fledgling state and needs to do all of these things to make sure that they grow and become big and survive on their own. But AEW signs this deal will we see less discussion based around those aspects of the business. This deal should validate the creative philosophy that has been criticized for the last four years or so. I think that's one way to phrase what I'm saying. I think you're hitting, I think you capture a lot of it in that statement. But I think it's more of on the focus of not validating what they've already done. But just from a week to week how are we going to analyze what they're doing on Dynamite or what they do on collision or what they're building up for the pay-per-view. It's more on the quality of the product and what we're actually seeing on screen as opposed to looking at it from a bigger picture perspective where we're looking at, is this going to draw? Is this going to pop a rating? Can they main it in a pay-per-view with this wrestler on top even if it doesn't do that well? Which is kind of the way people talk about WWE. I think the discourse that you're talking about is largely driven by emotion with a semblance of logical cover story. And I think the biggest piece that will keep things more like the way they are now is you've still got the goalpost of whatever WWE is doing out there. And AEW is closer than anybody's ever been since WCW. Right. So it could still be held to that. Right. And I'm focusing, there's always going to be trolls and engrafters or whoever you want to describe people who are always going to be, who have made AEW pessimism, a cottage industry for themselves. And those people cannot be helped and those people cannot be saved. But I'm talking about from people who aren't doing it in bad faith, I guess. And I'm focusing more on people who are concerned that AEW might not be around for the long haul. And if these deals kind of confuse people beyond health. Yeah, I mean, I'm not going to focus on what they're going to say because they're not people who are operating in good faith. I'm thinking more of your regular fan who likes AEW and wants to see it succeed, but is hung up on fear that it might go away the same way WCW did. And does the new deal confirming that AEW has this new level of security ease that kind of anxiety and allows them in the discussions that they have to focus more on personal taste within the product and what they really want to see or enjoy and less of a focus on, oh, man, I'm worried that this rating is going to be bad or oh, I'm worried that this pay review isn't going to do that well because they're pushing someone on this main event program or things like that. Because I do feel like AEW is held to a different standard than a WWE when it comes to evaluating individual things that it's going to do and how it impacts their drawing power. We're in WWE because of the guaranteed money that comes in from WWE and because of the long-standing established success that WWE has as a brand, people are less concerned about business from a week-to-week standpoint. I think at the risk of not answering your question, I think almost all business analysis that I see and that I assume exists is largely a conflation of that person's personal taste, which just happens in their view, coincidentally, by sheer luck to be the right strategy for business. So I think there's, I guess in my view, among this conversation that you're referring to, and I think there's just a tremendous lack of pulling those two things apart that's just totally not examined and internalized by the speakers or writers who are communicating. I don't think that anybody really identifies properly, almost anybody identifies properly, what they're really talking about is what they would prefer personally in their, what would make them enjoy wrestling more as a viewer, as opposed to what's really going to make the business better than it is otherwise. I don't think anybody's really having worthwhile conversations around that or a lot of people aren't. I just don't think it gets much more sophisticated than that in almost all cases. There's a good tweet, I think, from PWLoss who said that, the casual fan to wrestling fan, to wrestling pundits is me, is like the Midwestern factory worker to political speeches in the sense of, you can frame whatever the casual fan wants, happens to often coincide with whatever the speaker thinks is right for wrestling. So if you want to attract the casual fan, you need to do this thing and someone else can say, well, if you want to attract the casual fan, you have to do this thing. So often those two things are conflicting with one another. I think the casual fan is just me. It's what I want. What I want just happens to be with the casual fan. People use the casual fan as the silent majority that agrees with them when they're arguing this off. Just the way, just like the way politicians use the Midwestern factory worker as some sort of monolithic block that always agrees with my policies or my preferred candidates policies. But will there be less existential panic and anxiety around AEW if they get a deal that is as good as is rumored? Maybe less, but I think there's still, for a lot of people, people are looking for economic justice still. They're looking for economic justice for Vincent Mann. And what that means is another wrestling company to get in there and outdo him, which is more insurmountable than I think people are. Yeah, I guess. I mean, they're definitely our segment of AEW's fan base, right? That wants to see AEW beat WWE, want to see them make more money than WWE beat them in the ratings and do that. I don't think that's a lot of people though, realist. And look, they came close in the demo for four weeks or so. And even when, you know what, even when they came close in the demo, they're still WWE still making 14 times as much money as AEW is or whatever. That's the funny thing about it is people focus on the demo. It's like WWE's still making a lot more money when they're making just as much more money than AEW now as they were doing when AEW is much closer to the demo. But I think that will hopefully change, I think, I think the New Deals will hopefully change some of the discussions around AEW so people can allow themselves to focus more on the products as a standalone wrestling product as opposed to a company that needs to do certain things or make a broader statement. I guess what I'm saying is that in most people's cases that there just isn't a difference between those two things. Like just sitting back and enjoy, which I think is kind of what you're talking about, just talk about whether or not, I mean, I think you're talking about like an aesthetic analysis versus a business analysis. Right? And you're saying, well, people are analyzing the business and analyzing the business, which may be different from their aesthetic opinion. And that's because AEW's business is more so in jeopardy. If we arrive at a state where AEW's business is far more secure, can't they now finally focus on their aesthetic opinion? And I guess what I'm saying is I just don't think those two things are as separate as they might seem. Right. So it's kind of a pessimist view. Right. So the idea is that the people who are conflating business analysis are really just talking about their own personal preferences. Unwittingly. They're honest. What's that mean? With a thin, given the air of the idea that we're talking about business and saying, they just internalized it. Right. They shouldn't be putting Sammy Guevara on the main event because I don't like Sammy Guevara and he's obviously not going to drop into his house. Do you like Sammy Guevara? Like that's what I think you need to ask that person. Is that just happened to be what you think? What you would prefer? Right. And I think, but I do think a lot of, I think like AEW as a company has been held to an unfair standard in the sense of everything that they do is looked under the microscope of how can they grow their audience? And I think that hopefully maybe that can be removed to a degree once they reach a level of formal financial security. This new deal might be able to offer and that the standard that AEW is held towards can be I guess fairer in how people look at the company. It doesn't have to be this company that's people demand constant growth out of. They don't have to constantly be looking to build new star. Who are going to build? Who's going to start? But it's still way behind WWE. It's still, as frames are still going to be absolutely. This is the, and if they're ever going to get to that point, they got to do it. The part of this is the Monday Night War revivalist, which is like it's got to be, it's a war, we're battling, we got to beat those guys, which is not Tony Khan's business model. To an extent, the business model of AEW is not to beat WWE and put WWE out of business. That might be WWE's business model towards AEW, but AEW's business model is be successful enough and show people that our product is valuable. And even we don't have to get WWE's television deals. If we can get just a small amount of WWE's TV deals, we can be a successful, profitable company. And they're close to it. Like you said, this week is their Super Bowl. We're going to find out if that's true or not. But there are people stuck in the back. There are people stuck in the past. And even people that should know better that will constantly be talking about. You got Dave Meltzer saying that, you know, it's historically been very difficult to be a distant number two in pro wrestling, which is absolutely true from a historical perspective. But we're not living in the history books. We're living in 2023. And Tony Khan is banking on the concept that even if you are a distant number two, if you can still make a billion dollars on a five year TV deal, it's not going to be difficult to survive. You're going to thrive. You're going to be the second most profitable successful wrestling company in the history of the business. And I think if some people are still caught up in that outdated one night war mindset, that only there can only be one. And so those people are absolutely going to be like, well, they're still far behind WWE's. You know, they're they've signed a three billion dollar contracts. AEW is only making one billion or whatever they end up signing is probably even going to be bigger than that. But and there's these are these are two brands with fan bases behind them that are at war. Yeah, like I think like a percentage of the very online fans, that's true. Yeah. Yeah. Right. So I look out in the crowd at a W or a W show and like those are the constituents, but you're online. Yes. So I guess like, I don't know what I would suggest is people should listen to Wrestle Linux radio and take less seriously what what is set elsewhere, I guess. Well, depends on what you want, right? I think a lot of people will use ratings and business analysts as ways to support their argument, whatever argument they're making. Certainly I've done that plenty of times, but I guess there's a level of sincerity that you have to come across when it comes to that. Some people pick chart pick numbers and most people don't understand what numbers mean. They don't understand television ratings. They don't understand. They're not going to understand what this TV deal is. Like many people are going at your rooms no matter what this TV deal is for a W, you were going to see many, many very bad and correct analysis and takes on this TV deal on Wednesday. Yeah. And like I just think, I don't know, I've learned that like very few people in the wrestling space community really understand what's happening in the wrestling business to the degree that I would like them to, you know, so it's, I think certain people are really good at talking about the creative side of wrestling and talk and an evaluating talent and understanding what's happening on the programming. But the business has changed so much over the last certainly the last 25 years or so. And I think there's a lot of analysis that's still looking at wrestling through that lens. And the content matters to an extent, but it doesn't matter that much as much as sort of these more broader, more overriding factors. Although the content does matter a lot and the creative has been what has driven W's super metrics to improve and A W's creative has been good enough to deliver the ratings that they've delivered and to not turn off fans more than they have and maybe good enough to get a $200 million a year deal in the US. Not really an unrelated question. We've talked about before the belief that peacock's growing subscriber base in WWE paper reviews or PLE's running on peacock has helped increase WWE's popularity. The access to those paper views have maybe played a role in increasing viewership on Ron's SmackDown, maybe helping out live attendance, maybe helping out merchandise sales, all these other metrics are being aided by the fact that WWE paper view events are now more accessible than ever because they're in 20 million homes. If we see something like A W's paper view events switching towards being on max, which has many, many more subscribers, then peacock. Wouldn't that be hugely beneficial to A W in the sense that it may spark some more people to tune into A W to week? And the paper view specifically because the paper views, unless confident of the paper view is going to end up on max, but let's say they do, that's four or five a year as opposed to in WWE's case, 11 or 12 or 13 a year. I think that's an important difference that makes it more of a value to WWE than a max deal is that a paper views on max would be to A W. Now that said, I don't think that I think other stuff, not just maybe including all in on max is what's going to happen, but you might have the library there, you might have next day rights there, and that could be a similar and more comparable value to PLDs on peacock to W as whatever max is going to do for A W. So I think yes, I'm talking, yeah, I'm thinking of scenario where all the five or six paper views per year are on HBO max, similar to just like how they're on peacock. And you would probably get more people who are do be assessed going to have who have but you probably have more people who have sample data, be product for maybe their WWE fans primarily, and they will flip it on because they get gets good hype. Did you see in the observer has a number very interesting on the number of people who bought revel A W revolution, the most recent paper view after aired. I forget the number that Dave had in it, but it might have been like 16% of all buys came after the show ended. Where is this from? Other than the observer, what was he so sure. I forget. Probably nothing. So your do be is about if he's not going to describe what we're in even in an anonymized way where this information is from, I have trouble. Hi, I don't have it in front of me. I want to say it might have been from the TV, cable TV providers, paper view providers. But the idea of strong word or mouth selling a pay review after the facts, right? The reviews, the next day people are talking about the Ironman match or the tackle of the Texas death match and that is encouraging people to purchase the pay review. Does that help? I think there is something to show that is really well received driving a lot of buys. I believe that is what happened with Forbidden Door last year. If we go into a world where those events instead are now, you don't even have to buy them, you just have to turn them on to HBO Max if you're just Max now. If you're a subscriber already to that platform, that will probably drive even more people's interests in AEW because now it's again much like WWE, much very accessible. We have one more super chat from Dalmar who says is Dynamite's median age still 52 around 53 because in recent months it does look like 1849 and non-demo gap has narrowed and getting more balanced. I will see if I can look that up quickly here because Dynamite still has the lowest median age among the major wrestling shows. If we look at, this is not completely up to date, but if we look at the median age chart here from the, like this, we can still see this is through probably April that they're still among the younger shows and Raw has surpassed Rampage here. I believe that Raw, Rampage is now older. Raw has got no longer. Yeah. So, what can we attribute that to? It became a better show so younger people wanted to watch it more live. AEW still under 50 last few weeks to answer your question. At times it is over 50 which I don't think is out of the realm of its normal level if I'm looking at this chart here. Well there are instances like last week's rating where it was a .28 which was the same week number as the week prior but they had like 100,000 less viewers. So basically a lot of the viewers that they were burning, the total viewers are down but the 18 to 49 health relatively steady which would imply that the median age would get lower and that has been kind of the case. This is probably a slight trend over the last month or so where that's happened. So does that impact? I don't, if what Delmar is asking is has the median age of dynamite gotten older? I don't think so. Not of late. It seems like it's flat. It seems to be either just under 50 or just over 50 and that's what it's been in recent weeks as well. New Japan Pro Wrestling is the oldest audience. How much can we make of that? Is that just because access skewers much older? I think when, I would have to look but I think when they've done like the Russell Kingdom shows and stuff like that I think they have done a younger median age. I can scroll and give it a look. Look back to January. See what New Japan did. Yeah, it seems very hard to believe that there's anything we can actually draw. January 5th, January 5th, median age 47 which I think is one of the Russell Kingdom episodes. Probably the Kenny and Osprey. It seems unrealistic for us to be able to draw any conclusion from the New Japan number in the sense of, or even the impact. I'm sorry, that was the viewership 47,000 viewers by that. No, so it was 65 that day and then it was 64. Right. And it was 59 on January 19th. Yeah, but I guess like from like a product standpoint. It's a pretty small sample. But the fact that it is so old so consistently it's just not that important to younger viewers who are probably more, I mean certainly more likely to be consuming it on a new Japan world or other sources. It is access as a network skewer so old that I think anything with low viewership skews old and TV viewership in general is like 60. Right. I think, I'm trying to think of what else is on access forever. I haven't watched in a while but I believe that they still have the big interview with Dan Rather, is that on access? I'm sure that's the access to the demographics of the New Japan Prom wrestling. They had a lot of like classic rock documentaries. Yes, they do music stuff. But not new music. Music from like 50 years ago. Anything to plug before you wrap up? Nope. Gentleman's wrestling podcast. You can check it out on any place you get your podcast from Spotify, Apple Pods, anything like that. I have not had new episodes since last update but we'll have a new episodes coming later next week. It's probably like Friday, Saturday range. But yeah, I know that's still a thing. Okay. We will be back later in the week on this podcast via this YouTube channel with John Pollock and I probably Friday. So we'll talk to you then and see you again on Sunday 11 AM Eastern for WrestleX Radio. Thanks for listening.