The business of WWE Money in the Bank | Wrestlenomics Radio

Hello everybody and welcome to another edition of WrestleMania, I'm Brantherson Broadcasting live and on demand for Buffalo New York, where today is Sunday, July 2nd, 2023, is the night after money in the bank. The night after John Cena made his big pitch for his favorite city, London, England, United Kingdom. I'm joined today, not by Chris Gullough, he refuses to be in the same building as Jesse Collins today. So, hello. This week we had dressing rooms that were as far apart from each other as possible. Yes. We were on the show together. There was security involved to make sure that it was monitoring everyone at all times and make sure that your pads did not cross, so glad that worked out. Okay. Have you, Jesse, do you use Tweet Deck? I've used it before, but no, I wouldn't say use it. Have you heard about the crisis that is happening on Tweet Deck this morning? No, no, I'm aware that Twitter had some issues yesterday. I really wasn't around it all yesterday, and about six months ago, I deleted Twitter from my phone. So have you reinstalled it? No. You have upheld that deletion. No, I mean, because part of it was I just realized that I was wasting a lot of time aimlessly scrolling Twitter with no purpose, so that was really the reasons I got rid of it, so I really only, I'm kind of, I wouldn't say I'm off Twitter, but I pretty much only use Twitter to kind of tweak my own stuff out, and I don't really scroll anymore on it. So I miss a lot of some of the drama that I used to, I used to see a lot more of when I had it on my phone. Well, Tweet Deck this morning, if I can show everyone who's watching a video, this is what my Tweet Deck looks like this morning. It's basically just a bunch of white bars for people listening in audio. It's not loading any tweets. It is loading my home stream thing. Anyway, as people may know, Elon Musk has decided to do a great limit, which maybe is just a cover for him not paying his Amazon EWS bill, but anyway, I had some trouble scheduling the tweets. Why is I scheduled them okay? They seem to have gone through, but my usual Twitter experience is not happening. It would be a real service though, actually, I think, to global society in general if Twitter became unusable. And as I pulled people on Twitter, where I should post tweets if I do not post tweets on Twitter for the TV ratings, and the winning vote was a utility poll. So I might be, look for that, because Shobas Daily is out of business, and we'll talk about that later. But you may have to read your TV ratings at your local utility poll, or just find the utility poll in Buffalo, New York where I have posted the... Right, so we'll have to be traveling in Buffalo, New York to find the utility poll outside of your house, where you've stapled a chart with the latest TV ratings. Okay. Yes. Did you get a chance to watch Money in the Bank yesterday? I have not seen Money in the Bank yet. Yes. Have you heard about the John Cena promo, have you? Yes. I have seen the highlights. I have seen the major moments. I wouldn't say I've seen the show, but I have. I'm familiar with what happened on the show, for sure. Okay. Well, that will be our first topic, but we are... If you don't know, this podcast is going to Patreon, beginning next week. We are really going to be only on Patreon next week. So if you're listening to us on the free feed on us on radio, if you're listening to us watching us on YouTube, and you're not a subscriber, to listen to us next week, and a week after that, and a week after that, you have to be a subscriber at patreon.com slash us onomics. I think maybe I should rebrand this to the red color. Yeah. I know a lot of people are interested in seeing how this plays out for us. Yes. We'll see what the buys are like. I will say... Is it a test of... Is this a test of my drawing powers, a test of your drawing power? It's all going to be obscured, though. It's all going to be complicated, because with the timing of Shilba's daily going down, and the timing of A to B collision, you could really say, well, you can't really credit either of them for their drawing power, because I mean, there are just external factors that obscure and complicate all of this. I will say, subscribers have been doing well in the last week or so. I think some of that is because of Shilba's daily, which has not yet missed a day, but I think they have... I don't know if Friday is going to be the last day, or what they intend, but yeah, subscribe is gone up. Will we be covering the business of restonomics as part of restonomics? That's kind of like the ultimate self-fulfilling aspect of the show, right? We would be going over our trends. What's our Google search data looking like? We have no rules. We are too small of an entity to have a Google... Now we are. For now. Google trends. Maybe sometime in the future, though. But yes, if you want to listen to us next week, only on Patreon, and it will be in video and in audio for subscribers only, and we will give you instructions if you're listening live next week about how you can submit a question without having to pay any money for a super chat. We are accepting super chats today if you want to submit a question or a comment. Okay. A little bit to... There's stuff later. So, money in the bank. From the O2 arena in London, these are numbers from RussellTix, 17,000 plus for Smackdown on Friday, completely sold out according to RussellTix, and then the next night, money in the bank, the pay-per-view, excuse me, premium live event, RussellTix has the count at 17,617, Michael Colossus, otherwise, 18,885, he said, in any case, another sold-out show. So, two consecutive nights of sell-outs must have been pretty high ticket prices, because Triple H said that this was the... Money in the Bank was the highest grossing arena event in all of WWE history. Smackdown. The prior night was the highest grossing Smackdown. In WWE history, according to Triple H, more on that in a moment. We do have next week, Smackdown, Madison Square Garden, House that Roman built our Bruno built, that's basically sold out. What we're seeing here in video on the ticket map, you see some pink dots, those are all resales, so they've already been sold, they're being resold, and you do see some blue dots, which usually indicate tickets that have not been bought, and they do indicate tickets that have not been bought, but those are all platinum tickets that have been dynamically priced and jacked way up to adjust for demand. So, I would say this show is essentially sold out this next Friday, Smackdown. How many tickets is that? 12, I can look it up. Is it enough to say that Roman's a draw? Are you hearing me? Yeah, no, I can hear you. I guess, we think it's like 12,527 is the latest count. I don't think 12,000 tickets would be considered as sell out in Bruno's time. Well, you have to have that massive stage. Who knows how many tickets they would sell if they were just walking out through the curtain. We've got to have that massive stage for Roman Reigns to slow walk his way to the ring through. But I would say the biggest story for our world coming out of Money in the Bank, John Cena making a surprise appearance in London, coming out, and I'll read this report from Post Wrestling, written by Neil Flanagan. John Cena made an honest appearance in London at WWE Money in the Bank and urged the staging of WrestleMania in the United Kingdom. He got a huge baby face reaction as he took to the ring to cut a promo. Cena said, the quote unquote, decision makers got lots of booze, and he said decision makers. The decision makers did not know how to feel about the UK, saying that they were worried about the crowd taking over the show yet that the crowd did not take over the show, but he told them, God is the man of the people. You are the show, huge roars in cheers. After selling his fans, how much she appreciated them, he got a thank you Cena chant. He then told the crowd, he was there to try to bring WrestleMania to London. This got an enormous reaction. He added that he was not there for one more match, but to give the UK audience a chance to let them know what WrestleMania in London would sound like, and he was then interrupted by Grayson Waller, who I believe is from Australia, originally right, who was greeted with, who are you, a chance, and shut the F up, Waller wanted WrestleMania, not to be in the UK, but to be in Australia, and he said he thought he could get seen on the show. Anyway, they added to the adjustments to Grayson Waller, and the segment ended. What was the point of this? Why would you instigate this crowd that was kind of behaving and riled them up and make them think that WrestleMania is coming to London? Who were the decision makers he was referring to? Who do you think those people are? These vague people, you know, people with suits who sit in Titan Tower somewhere, they have no names or faces though. So you think that you think he's referring to WWE executives who are the decision makers? Yes, I think so. I mean, when he said that, he got to interpret this promo, he was mentioning a heel. Well, could you interpret this promo as in the decision makers being directed at WWE decision makers, but UK politicians and London decision makers, because how would a city get, how does the city get WrestleMania at now? What is the game plan for WWE when it comes to WrestleMania? And for pretty much all, especially international paid reviews, what are they looking for? A site fee, local governments like the local government and Cardiff in Wales, Puerto Rico, their tourism board paid $1.5 million, you don't know how much Cardiff paid, San Antonio paid some of money that they thought was so important that they not disclose, because they thought it would give them a competitive disadvantage, so they would not disclose that as part of my records request to the city of San Antonio, they got that approved to the state of Texas, but they did pay something, they bid something for it. And we saw Orlando discussing allocating money to bid on Royal Rumble this next year. There is also, it mentioned in passing a potential bid on WrestleMania at some point, I've never heard of a number on the bid for a WrestleMania event, but I do believe that Los Angeles and or Inglewood, probably Los Angeles, bid something on to get WrestleMania there this year. And I would imagine that's not the first time that that's happened either. So, and of course, the biggest government municipality that's paying money, the biggest one of all is Saudi Arabia, paying $15 million, $5,500 every time that WWE comes to either Riyadh or Jeddah, so they're looking for a site fee. And I think this was- Right, so right, so in this instance, Jad Sina could be referring to the decision makers as your UK government people, right? And so those are the people that are keeping WrestleMania from, you know, from London. And so, the idea was to get a video of fans going crazy for, you know, the possibility of WrestleMania in London, and then they can show that to government officials when they talk about when it comes to negotiating whether or not they want to put WrestleMania there. Or maybe a future event, because I don't think they got a site fee for running the bank and did that. I doubt it, because I would think that the biggest cities of all benefit the least from it, because they've got the most. They have the least need to offset some downturn and seasonality, I would think. The big cities like London and New York and LA, I would think they don't need to do what say Orlando was talking about doing, which is in January, which they showed a chart showing that this is not very busy time for hotels and things like that. They showed that this is a downturn for hospitality business around the time of Royal Rumble. Let's bid some amount of money here and give a boost to business and to the local economy at a time when business is not really strong. So Orlando's a fairly big city, but obviously London is bigger. Cities like New York and LA are bigger and they don't need the, they don't need the boost as much as I would think smaller cities do. So I think what's happening here is not unlike what happened with the New York post story that came out a couple of weeks ago about FX having interest in WBTV rights. I think there's a lot of similarities here in terms of, we've seen reports last month or two about WB talking with Perth, I believe, is the city that's been thrown out there in Australia? For a potential PLE in Australia and maybe a deal isn't done and I don't know, on one hand I don't think WrestleMania is coming to Australia any time soon. I'm sure the people in Australia and the government in Australia would love to have that because I would encourage tours into that region all the more. My suspicion is what's happening here is there's a deal being negotiated but a deal has not been completed yet and let's throw into the mix here some excitement about another player and the more you can get people talking about that and thinking about that or get the other potential bitter thinking about that somebody else is going to scoop them, it can only benefit the bidding process and leverage and even higher sight fee. I've heard talk online and John and Wade were talking about do they have already a WrestleMania booked for London? Why would you do this if you do not already have a WrestleMania booked for London? Maybe they do, who knows, but I doubt it and we did hear Cody in the press conference say maybe John knows something I don't as far as WrestleMania may be already being booked in London. But I think the point of this moment was to rally UK wrestling fans, we know how passionate they are. So I'm listening right now to rally UK wrestling fans to shake their local government officials to shake their members of parliament and say, hey, bring WrestleMania to London and that should only leverage whether that brings WrestleMania to London or not. That should leverage if it becomes a strong campaign should only help them leverage higher sight fees from wherever they do their shows. Do you think that AEW running Wembley Stadium has an influence on WWE sudden willingness to run potentially on WrestleMania in London? I'm disappointed and offended that you would even bring up AEW in this context. WWE's main competitors as we know are the national football league are, is Disney. And I think it is totally inappropriate to suggest that WWE would ever do anything in response to an independent wrestling company such as AEW, whether that's offering a discount on WWE 2K23, whether that's running in the UK ahead of AEW running some sort of show and is it wears in a banquet hall somewhere at a soccer field or something like that, right? I think there's, what do you think? Do you think, oh, the other thing would be would WWE would Vince want WrestleMania to be in London, which would mean would be airing in the afternoon, which we had always heard was kind of one of the reasons why Summer Slam 92 was never really followed up on was because of concern about the time difference and what that would impact on PPVB's, obviously the business is totally different now and they run PPV events like the one last night that were PLEs like the one last night, that air in the, you know, prime time UK time in the afternoon here, but do you think WrestleMania would be something that they'd be willing to move? As a viewer and just thinking like from the fans point of view, I don't think that that's a problem to run WrestleMania in the afternoon. These shows that happened now in the afternoon and we know how long they go, I mean, I just want to forbidden door and the thing was like five hours long wherever it was. I would be all for, and I think a lot of people would be all for these shows that are on the weekend anyway starting in the afternoon, if WrestleMania started at 3pm, okay, you do a five hour show, it's only 8pm and that's better than, you know, starting a show like 7 or 8 and going to midnight, so I don't think that's a problem. Right. I don't think it's a problem either. I think it's more of a Vince, like is this a weird Vince thing? Well, Vince has been talked out of doing the sun, staying on Sundays and he's been talking into doing Saturdays. So I think it's, it's possible, especially if there's, there's a sight fee and licensing fee that, that, you know, Nick is helping bring as a part of this. One drink from MJ is going off in the chat, having a monologue with himself. I think he wanted me to bring up something in the context of the exchange rate and whether the exchange rate makes this any more complicated. I'm not really sure, but over the course of time, what we have here is like 1980 to the present, the exchange rate between the British pound and the US dollar and it's, you know, it's the price of, the exchange rate is like 1.3 basically. 1.3 dollars to each pound, the Australian dollar is about two thirds of the American dollar and the Canadian dollar has been fairly flat at about, you know, 75 cents on the US dollar for the last 10 years or so. The main volatility I see here across all of these, I could be wrong, but just my layman view of looking at these line charts is that there's a big increase in everybody else's currency around the middle of the 2010s. I'm not sure what that could be about, but I hope that doesn't, something doesn't happen to cause that to happen again in a year or two from now. We're going to say, Jesse. I was going to ask about, to go back to obviously the money in the bank, like you said, according to WWE is the highest-cursing arena event that they've ever done, it was completely sold out pretty much in advance, I know the secondary ticket prices were very high and so I'd be very curious to know, like, it really seems like they undershot what they could have done for this show. I know they tried to do money in the bank in a stadium last year and it did not sell well at all, so they moved it to an arena, but given that this was in London, it does seem like that. It does seem like more intubate show. It probably could have run a stadium, right? So maybe they wanted to do that in London instead, but it does seem like they probably could have ran a stadium somewhere in London and there are plenty of available stadiums in London for them to choose from, from all sorts of sizes. It does seem like they probably could have done a major stadium event and doubled or tripled their gate. I guess so, and then where would they have ran at the Wembley Stadium? I guess they could have. I mean, there are stadiums all over London, I mean, if it's Wembley, it doesn't have to be Wembley. There's the Tottenham Potspur Stadium, which is slightly smaller than Wembley. There's West London Stadium or the London Stadium where West Ham United play, that's about the same size as the Tottenham Stadium. There's the Emirates Stadium or Arsenal play, which is again, there's about a 60,000 seat stadium. There's Tukinhan Stadium, which is like a 70,000 seat rugby venue. There's, you know, Stanford Bridge, there's 30,000 seat stadiums all over the city. There's plenty of options they could have ran for stadiums in London if they wanted to. Right, so if Wembley Stadium or something like that again, it would give them a chance to try to break their record of somewhere around 80,000 people from 1992 at Summerslam. According to Vince McMahon, 80,000, 355 in events we've never lied to us, but according to David is about 79,078,927, the number for Summerslam 1992. But do you think, how much do you think AEW's running Wembley plays into this, if at all? I would think that it probably does, if they are going to run a stadium show in London, I think that that AEW running a stadium show probably plays some role. But at the same time, you know, WWE did run the show in Cardiff, which was a stadium show. Last year, that was before Wembley and they did an obviously incredible business at the very high ticket prices for the Cardiff show. So in after the success of the Cardiff show, we talked about potentially doing other major stadium shows in Europe and in other markets. So it doesn't necessarily have to be directly tied to Wembley Stadium, but I do think that WWE knowing the way that they operate despite what they claim, they've seen the ticket sales for the Wembley Stadium show for AEW and they are, and there's other concerns that they have about AEW in the UK market in terms of its, well, it's as a competitor in the UK market to WWE, there probably makes them maybe a little bit more protective of their status in that country and that might mean running a rival show at Wembley Stadium. Could WWE run Wembley Stadium is probably a serious question? I mean, I can see them looking at it as, if they're able to book a show that's already a couple of months out, about two months out still, and they've already sold something like 65,000 tickets, does that speak to some untapped demand that WWE should have already tapped? I could see them viewing it that way. I do think it's not quite as simple as that. Part of this is largely, this is about AEW being in the UK for the first time ever. Well, I also think it's running a Wembley Stadium show for the first time since Summer Slam 92, the first wrestling show I think ever at the new Wembley Stadium. And like, the card of show, again, it was largely also because running a paper review event in the UK market in Europe was rare, right? And so that was one of the reasons that that show was successful. And subsequent shows in the UK, whether the Wembley Stadium show upcoming or just this money in the bank show that we just saw, those have been incredibly successful lucrative shows because it's a still an underserved market, even as more shows start to take place there. And we do already have, I don't know if Bob the Builder submitted the same question twice and paid for it twice. I hope you didn't pay for this twice. But Bob the Builder who submitted this super chat at 10 o'clock last night, he said that John Cena's segment translated to quote, AEW did 65,000 fans for all in and Wembley, so we need to one up them, but London needs to pay us for Mania. So I think that's, yeah, I don't know, I think it's maybe AEW's a tiny component of this, but it's this largely plays into Nikon's state of strategy about wanting to leverage site fees and you've got governments certainly buying into it and we've seen the presentation that was held in Florida for Orlando to pitch, to give us money, $800,000 or whatever it was to allocate for a bid towards Royal Rumble next year. So. And where's Russell? My name next year. Bill Delphier. And Russell, my name is 2025. Do we have a date for that? Or a location for that? I don't think so. I think that's, we have the rumor Nashville, or is that, is that 2026? That's, I think 2027. Yeah. So they need to build a new stadium in Nashville. The, the, the president of the stadium, they are building the stadium, yes, and he said that, I think it's 2027 that he said, so that's, but at, at, at a minimum, if we're looking at Blondon, WrestleMania, we're definitely looking at at least 2025. Yes, it's not, yeah, certainly not 24. That's, that's, that's, that's, that's a long time between like, you know, the, the, the AW Wempley show is going to be in the rear view before by the time you get to the 2025 WrestleMania, if you're looking to like, one up AW in that market, we're talking about, you know, more than a year after the event, it's place. Yeah. In, in a way, I thought the segment was smart, that like, I mean, it was smart, especially if it works out, I mean, we'll see what happens in terms of, I, I think it was meant to, to stimulate, yes, an organic media campaign, get people talking on social media or whatever get fans buzzing about it, but also, you know, does this lead to mainstream media articles? I haven't searched this morning, but I think I could see it, you know, I, I joked on on Twitter saying, you know, Chatchy P.D., write me up a mainstream article with a bunch of puns about W, you know, having its events bid for all globe. I think that's what it was intended to do is, and that's why you put somebody as recognizable as John Cena in there as part of it, he threw a graysome waller in there as a new talent to get the rub in the moment, and he's from another international market that we're going after for these events. So it was very, I would almost suggest it like Nikon wrote the segments, but I think his strategy certainly influenced it. Right. I think the place is like you mentioned earlier that have, you know, paid site fees for to WWE, San Antonio, Texas, Porto San Juan, Puerto Rico, even Philadelphia, WrestleMania. London is not like those cities, the sense of London seems to have no problem attracting major events. They hosted the Olympics, of course, in 2012. They hosted the UEFA Soccer World Championships back in 2021, our European Championships in 2021. They host Champions League Finals, they host major events all the time, it's one of the four or five most desirable cities probably to host a global major sporting event. They are not necessarily going to maybe bend over backwards to host WrestleMania, the way that a smaller city, a less attractive tourist destination would. And I think that one of the reasons that the clash of the castle took place in Cardiff and not in London, I'm sure they would have preferred it to have taken place in London, and had to have run Wembley City with it. And one of the reasons that it was that was because Cardiff offered the money in London dot. So I do think that's interesting. They're going to try to put pressure on London, but I don't know if London, kind of like New York City is kind of, you know, we don't have to necessarily pay site fees to host this kind of events. Bob the Builder is chimed in again here. He says, do you think all in will end up being the highest paid attendance for wrestling all this year? I think so, because WrestleMania, we kind of, we know WrestleMania, if I look at the pole star data, I don't think it quite did 65 on either day. I suppose you could argue that, well, that's just, I thought that's a two day event. So really added up and it's like 130,000 or something like that or 120,000 may be paid. But I don't think there's anything that would really come close to that other than WrestleMania right? No, because even there's no other real, I mean, like you have Summer Slam, which is not going to be close at all, unless they stick, I guess they could presumably sell it on the tickets for Summer Slam between Summer Slam's at 40, at about 41. And that's the street is not necessarily paid, so it's a little bit under that. So that's not going to get anywhere close to 65,000 paid, I mean, assuming that Tony's telling the truth. And I, you're really, you're really doubting Roman Reigns in J.U. Sois as a made event for Summer Slam. Yes. What we'll see, we'll see what happens. So on not just money in the bank, but throughout the week, WWE has been offering W2K23 at 33% off. This comes just after they offered it at 25% off. And I went back and looked and said, you know, what is the timing because I tweeted something about this? And I thought I had the most vociferous, vicious people after me already because of wrestling TV ratings. But I have learned there is, there is a contender, or maybe some of the same people who are viciously interested in video games coming after me. But for alluding to the reason why they did this as the timing of A to B fight forever, which we had Mike Straugh on Thursday. And on Paul Concerts, then we talked about it, and he seemed to think that, you know, the reason why they were discounting it as much as 33% anyway, I think, was because of the timing of A W's release, which was this past Thursday, the day that we talked to Mike. So I went back and looked and said, okay, for 2K 2022, because they do this every year, I've been informed by many people. They do this every year. To have their, there would be discounts on these games is not an unusual thing. So I went back and looked and said, when did they offer it at 33% off? And the closest I can find, they did do a 35% off at the end of July. So that's a little bit later. The games were released on almost the same day of March. They're like three days apart in March on 2K 2022 was released in March 2022, March 11th or something like that. This year's game 2023 was released on March 14th. So it's a little bit earlier than usually. Did Michael Cole plug it on a live broadcast? Did you plug the 2K sale last year? I don't know. I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if they also did ads during the PLD and during the TV shows. They did mention the Metacritic score in these commercials that they were running during the bank. The Metacritic score right now for W2K23, 82, 82 to AW Fight Forever's 65. So once again, proving that W is way better than AW. Let's be honest. You know, was there a, was it like a 12-hour, more Torian on people's ability to fix their rating? These are all professional critics of video games here. So no cage match inmates here. Do we have any kind of expectation or idea on what would be considered like successful sale figures for AW Fight Forever? I have no idea. Other than Mike said, if they come out with another release next year, that would be surprising and that would mean that the sales have done really well. And he said he didn't expect another release until like, you know, five years from now or something like that. Yeah, that's my impression of what other people have said as well in the sense of, it seems like a game more that they're going to, they might continue your support through DLC as opposed to WWE 2K games, which like all exports games, there's a new one every year. Right. What will change, you know, if you were to compare the sales figures between the two, it probably makes a difference that if AW is just going to be the only one in a four or five years span as opposed to WWE, which releases a new game every year. Yes. Okay. Did you watch the press conference? I, you're not going to believe this brand in, but I, I did not. You love the press conferences though. I hate them. Especially specifically the WWE ones. This was fun. I will say, I, I, I, I, I read your recap of it. You read my recap? Oh, you read all these notes in here? Yeah. Okay. These were furiously typed notes. This is not, that, that's the school you read. It's like, not necessarily for other people's consumption. There are notes. If you're a subscriber and you get the slides and you look at the Google slides version, you will see my furiously typed notes. I will say, you can, there's a big difference between WWE press conference and AW press conference in terms of like, as soon as this show ended, boom, that, that press conference was starting. Like it wasn't, but like, I would say five minutes before that press, the PLE ended, the press conference started. I sat in a non air conditioned room in Toronto the other night last week for like 20, 30 minutes before Tony Khan showed up or anybody showed up. I also sat, I sat in an air conditioned room by room that I'm in right now waiting for Tony Khan to show up watching a live stream. No, there was no air conditioning in this room. No air conditioning. Yeah. Why was there no air conditioning in that room? I don't know. It's like, it was in, it was in the, the Scotiabag arena like, yes, and it's always like the catering. You know, when they're done with catering, they also double this room as a, as a press room afterward. Anyway, this is obviously like a big production and there's a lot of production people running around and stuff and it's, you know, reflective of WWE, even much bigger company. So we had some talent here, we had Cody, who is, you know, interesting, we're not going to talk about all this. We had Danny, Danny and Prius, Neo Sky, one that, one of the brief cases, he had lived Morgan and Rock, Albert, Rodriguez, we had Seth Freakin, Rollins and, uh, but the thing that we care about is, um, chief content officer, Paul Beck came to the table, put on his reading glasses. Yes, he really did, but on his reading glasses. Um, he thanked the UK fans, yada yada, he said lots of gracious things about the UK fans and how great the tour is, how great it always is, how passionate the fans are. Um, he kind, it was interesting to me that he was kind of addressing, he was, he was saying you all to all, all these people in the press and, you know, it's this pretty full room it looked like in the times when the camera was in that direction, you know, dozens and dozens of people there. Um, he was kind of addressing them in a way as if they were fans themselves as opposed to media members who were covering and reporting on the business, which is strange. Why would he do that? Curious to me. Um, did he, um, do you accuse anyone of being friends with Scott Colton? No, no, he didn't. Um, more, more on Triple H's, um, implications about the media later. Um, he said this was the highest, if he said at the top, you're a high-scroasing event in W history, let that sink in, he said, um, so let's, uh, let's examine that now. And I, I, I don't doubt that he's telling the truth in terms of real-time dollars. Um, we'll talk about, uh, inflation adjustment. So I went through, Cory Gibson has done a great job of going through all these sources, including amusement magazine, uh, Jason Campbell's Pro Wrestling History.com, Matt Farmer's data, pole star, and data from, yes, these are a newsletter, uh, and we have a big spreadsheet and I filtered it down to WWE and I sorted it, I manually excluded all the stadium events and cause that's what he's saying. This is the highest arena gate ever in W history and I sorted it by real-time US dollars, how much money was it at the time, not adjusting for inflation. And the number one that I could find is a, is a Smackdown taping at the O2 arena in April 28, uh, 2008, 2008. So just after WrestleMania, when they usually do their European tour after WrestleMania, WrestleMania was at the end of March that year, um, $2.5 million in US dollars, uh, it's converted from the pound, of course. It's $2.5 million in real-time dollars in 2008. And then we have WrestleMania, I believe this is WrestleMania 22. These remember these three years where they did WrestleMania at, uh, at, uh, major market arenas where they did WrestleMania 20 at MSG and I believe the following year, 2021. That was like, yep, that was like my peak childhood wrestling watch. These are your child three years. Those three WrestleMania's 21, 22, uh, 2021 and 22, 23. You'd, you'd have been like, what, 10 years old or something? I would have been 2006, so it would have been 12, uh, I would have been 11 for WrestleMania big time. That's the one I remember the most, like all the angles, that's the BTS, the BTS one's the title from Triple H. That's WrestleMania 21. WrestleMania 22 is John Cena versus Triple H, um, and then Rey Mysterio, Radio Orn and Kurt Angle, okay. Uh, it's also the Shawn Michaels Vince McMahon street fight. And that that's the, is that, that's a Chicago style, the Chicago show, yes, okay. And that's a big, big, big time, $2.5 million, um, we could go on here, the 2004 WrestleMania were Benoit and Eddie Guerrero finished the show to 2.4 million. So those, obviously those, that's, you know, some 15 years or so ago. So we need to adjust for inflation and we've got, we've got, I don't know, we could be missing some stuff here, but, uh, of everything that's, that's, uh, in this data set that the query has been collected, um, if we adjust for inflation and sort, sort that way, we get the Trump 1989 Trump Plaza, WrestleMania, uh, WrestleMania 5, right? Yes. WrestleMania 5. The makeup power is explode. Yes. With, uh, match man, right? Match, he's not, he's not, he can't get that point. Randy Savage versus Hulk Hogan made about it, at the time, $1.6 million, $1.6 million in 1989, that comes out to just about $4 million today, it's like $3.99 million. Today. So that would be the adjusted from flation record. But anyway, I mean, as far as what this show, these two shows did, in fact, and I know people are telling me that there are combo tickets, I asked Russell Ticks, Russell Ticks, so yeah, that's true. There are combo tickets happening there, um, for Smackdown and the Bank and London, uh, this weekend. But, so, so curious how that's being calculated, but the implication here, if I got this data right, is that $2.5 million each night, because he said this was the highest grossing Smackdown ever and the highest grossing arena event ever, I mean, the highest grossing Smackdown event ever is, is, I mean, previous to this weekend, previous Friday, the highest grossing arena event ever, according to this list, is London Smackdown in 2008, $2.5 million. So that tells me that's, you know, that's the bar that they must have cleared, $2.5 million each night, total of $5 million, according to my sources, $2.5, $2.5, $5. And this all seems believable to me, at least, in the sense of ticket prices are much more expensive, um, over the last year, then they have been in previous time periods. Um, WWE is drawing better than they have during previous time periods, and it seems like each week that they are, uh, if you believe, uh, WWE sources from backstage, they are setting gate records and then highest grossing events in, in, in many of their markets that they've been in. So it makes sense for, they were to set it in London at the same building that their previous gate record was set at, it would make sense that they have, they've done it. They've all checked out to me, at least. Are you, are you dubious of this? No, no, I think, I think, you know, their attendances are creative, very creative. But they're, they're gate, when they talk about a gate, I think, yeah, they are including ticket fees, um, at times, and probably all the time is in terms of their public statements. But no, I think, I think, I think they know they, they can't, you know, be fictional about actual dollar figures. That would be a problem. Um, they, they, they can't count, you know, empty sweets and things like that, when it, like, like they do with attendance. Um, so there's that. Is, oh, there's, there's more here, I think, from the, uh, the press conference in my notes. So I have to scroll back to that. Uh, yes, was there other stuff here? Um, he was asked about WrestleMania in London. Um, he basically said, you know, he, he basically made it sound like it's probably not going to happen. He certainly didn't give it anybody hope or drop any hints as if, yeah, it's already booked. Um, he just went over the fact that, you know, look at the PLEs that we've done this year. Um, four of them, four last five, he said, we're international. So that's Montreal, record sales sold out. He said, Puerto Rico, record sales, Saudi Arabia, record sales. And then that night, yesterday, London, record sales, um, we intend to be global, but it's a lot more difficult than it appears. Um, there's a way to do it. They're hell bent. Um, anyone to the next question? And what is the way to do it? If there's a way to get a lot of these international events done, we're hell bent. Um, it's, it's for local governments to incentivize them to make sure that they do it. Right. This is John Cena coming out their biggest star in a complete surprise. Really no groomers of John Cena being in London or anything like that. And he's not like shooting a movie there or something I wouldn't know, but he could be. I don't know what his schedule is, but there was no like, like I heard nothing about John Cena potentially being on the show or anything like that. Um, but you have your big story either. Yeah. And you have your big star coming out, leading the chant or whatever and talking about kind of really randomly, like nobody really expected him to obviously no one expected him to come out, but certainly no one expected him to start like a campaign to get WrestleMania in London. His favorite city, by the way, yes, no longer Boston. Sorry. Yeah. That's a, that's not cool. But, you know, John Cena's not really from Boston, where's he from? He's from the greater Boston area. He's from a wall off suburb. Yes, he's, he's, he's from a well off suburb on hour in North of Boston. An hour like I don't think, I don't think John Cena was, you know, taking the, uh, taking the MBTA in to Boston all the time, I can tell you that. Okay. Um, he asked for the next, next question. He said, Frank Grimm independent, which I, I pop four, I will admit, um, he was asked about Drew McIntyre and, uh, whenever I, I, I like this, um, this phrase that, that Triple H uses when he's clearly a little, a little bit annoyed is, is, is probably, annoyed is probably too strong word. But he's a little bit, um, you know, well, he's his cast a little bit of shade. He says, you know, it's funny. He said, it's always a funny thing about the amount of speculation. I read stuff. We, we see stuff that's printed that says sources, sources say and 75% of that stuff is completely off base. Uh, I'm not fricking quoting read off my notes. It's not so paraphrasing, but he said, if Drew had had an issue, there, there were rumors of, um, Drew McIntyre, I don't know if he was being on happy with creative or whatever it was, but he, he was, uh, reportedly, I believe his, his contract was, was coming to an end and they were discussing renewal, which was taking some time, I guess. Um, he said, if, if Drew had any, any issues, it's news to me. And while he was out, he had something else he wanted to get fixed. So he did it and I guess he's referring to an injury. Maybe he had some sort of surgery. Um, so, um, would you agree with that? It's 75%, I think what he basically saying is 75% of the wrestling reporting that you read that is attributed to anonymous sources, or at least he's not attributed to anyone. You know, sometimes things are not attributed at all. Uh, that 75% of that information is in his, his words. This is, this is a phrase that he did use. 75% of it is completely off base. It's difficult to say who would you say is like the biggest contributor to anonymous sources? Uh, in wrestling. I do not source. Yes. Guess you're on wrestling. Are you? What, what, what, what, what entity, what entity do you think is, is, I think is communicating a lot anonymously through wrestling media sources. It couldn't possibly be WWE because, Jesse, he said 75%. And I think what he meant was that's the 25% that is accurate. Is, uh, right, because WWE, as we know, WWE's PR department is, is, is communicates frequently with many people in the wrestling media and they are always, almost always so, they're almost never attributed as a, as a, as a resource. It's always a backstage show where some sort of anonymous person. So if he has a problem with anonymous sources saying incorrect things to the media, then that's probably something that they should, uh, internally address. Maybe they are. Um, anyway. Well, in that way, I guess there was a report. I saw this morning, I think that Drew McIntyre has not signed to do contract with WWE. I think I saw that on Kultaholic, but I don't know how accurate that is. 25% chance is accurate. Yeah, I guess. Well, we'll find out, right? We'll find out if he's decided to contract or not. Um, it was interesting. And, and after this, he says, any women here, because he, I guess there's a roomful of men, which is, I'll look at the case in a roomful of wrestling media. Um, so there was a woman reporter who asked a question about, uh, basically she was asking about NXT Europe. What's the update on that? And she was talking about all the great British talent. When are they going to get an opportunity? Has the merger, she called it a takeover. Triple H took exceptions to that. Has the merger slowed things down? He said that the merger, um, yeah, it's slowed down the process. The merger with UFC Endeavor TKO has changed the time frame. The intent is still there for NXT Europe. We're a global company. Yeah, yeah, I've got a lot of amazing talent out there. It's just going to take a little bit of time. So, you know, putting some credibility towards reports that there's freeze on talent, hiring, um, which is believable, yes. Um, so we'll see when or if NXT Europe happens. In pretty much everyone has been pretty skeptical ever since NXT UK folded, and NXT Europe was kind of discussed that NXT Europe was going to take off anytime soon. Seems like the philosophy has changed around that. Uh, kind of related to that question, and this is maybe just kind of a little slightly authentic, but, uh, leave you. So, so they have this show in London, and you would think about WWE's roster, and who's going to be on this card. And people have discussed this for the Webly Stadium show, and for AEW, like, what kind of British talent can they, can they highlight? Who can they kind of have in in key spots, because they're going to be running a show in London? WWE runs this one in the back show, and they have one wrestler from the UK, uh, on the card, and that's Butch, uh, in the London. Did Drew McIntyre come out? Drew McIntyre does come out, but he was not on, obviously not on the card, and there's probably no reason for him to not be on the card if he was, if he's physically capable of running out. And I mean, you had Irish talent, you had like Finn Balor, Becky Lynch. Yes. Uh, and you had, you know, Walter, who's from Europe, but other than that. Austria, right? Yes. Who could forget his tag team with, uh, the Avalanche, the Otsiders in WWE? Yeah, I think that was the only, uh, yeah, just Pete Dunn. Excuse me, Butch, and, uh, and Drew McIntyre coming, you're running. Yeah, but I don't know. It's kind of notable, only one English, Englishman on the show. And you had NXT UK, not the longer, a whole promotion based on the UK. MJ from MJ wants us to know, WWE is on an all-time business run, at an all-time stock price, heading into a once-in-a-lifetime merger. Thank you, WWE Board acknowledged them. Um, I think MJ from MJ should acknowledge his stock positions. I think he's playing in options in WWE these days, which may, may account for, maybe a factor in his enthusiasm here. Um, so, uh, there you are. Would you say that the WWE is on an all-time business run? It's, uh, I mean, this is not the popularity, certainly, of the attitude era or the whole Camini era, but this is, um, this is definitely positive momentum. And we see, I would definitely, I would definitely say, like, if you're, I would definitely say if you're looking at like the last 10 years or so, um, yeah, like in business, and for a long time, we saw, like, you know, consistent declines and many of their, you know, popularity metrics. And the last, really, really, I would say, the last, probably a little bit before the last year, but really, the last year, a really big increase. Um, and that's probably due to a variety of factors, but overall, I would say yes. Um, and certainly, like, if you just, just, I mean, just the TV money alone in the Saudi Arabia deals, um, there's certainly an all-time revenue. And, and they were for these years that I would say 16, 16 to 19 when fan interest declined, but, but the nature of their economic situation, you know, improved. Um, that, yeah, TV ratings are up, ticket sales seem to be up. Um, um, MJ wants us to know that that super chat was paid for by 12th one, underdog live morgue last night, gambling will be the next big up ticket popular in W the next five years. I am skeptical that gambling will be legalized on professing the United States anytime soon, uh, even within the next five years, but, uh, good luck that. Um, so AEW collision aired last night. We don't know the rating yet. Uh, that was the third episode we do have two weeks of ratings so far for AEW collision. First week did 816,000 viewers, a point three, three in the demo week two, uh, something like 27 percent down. I got the number over here in a minute. I'll look at it. 595,000 viewers, 816 to 595. The demo was 133, I'm sorry, it was 0.33, down to 0.21, um, predictions. Did you watch collision first, Jesse? I, I actually for the first time watched collision live last night, but you did not watch money in the bank. I did not because I was at the beach all day. So I was not around for this 3 pm you were touching sand. I was touching sand. You know, it was, it was actually terrible because the air quality was awfully yesterday, the four Spires in Canada. It's been bad. You could feast again. Yeah, you could only see like at one point, you could only see like 75 feet in front of you, which on the beach is not very much like it was, it was pretty crazy, but, um, no, I was, I mean, I was out on Saturday afternoon and, uh, so I was actually home on Saturday night, so I was able to watch collision live while I was making dinner. Okay. So competition was about the same, I believe. Got baseball on Fox. Um, there's, there continues to be, I think soccer office one. Um, con app, con app, you probably know what that is. I don't know what that is. Conca Calf Gold Cup, you mean? Yeah. Thank you. Put some respect on Copa de Oro Brandon. Okay. Okay. Uh, prediction for this rating. Week three. Uh, 535,000. 0.20. Okay. Um, the rating will, oh, Fourth of July week, so that, that, that messes up the schedule. Um, the rating, what did I tweet yesterday? Uh, I can't even look at it. I don't think because, uh, because of, uh, you know, Twitter being Twitter, yes, I can. Uh, what did I tweet the other day? There's going to be no ratings on Tuesday. Usually collision ratings will come out on Tuesday morning. Um, but, uh, ratings are coming out for collision on Wednesday morning. Wednesday morning, it will be revealed. Um, history tells us that the week two rating is probably more closer to what they're going to settle in on than the week one rating. It should be. It should be. Um, I don't, I'm not optimistic about week three here. Uh, I expect it to be at least a little bit down. Um, so we'll see. You're, you're predicting what for the demo yet? 0.20. 0.20. Yeah. I wasn't really thinking about Fourth of July weekend, though. There we go. Fourth of July. You can't draw on Fourth of July weekend. Man, we'll see what Rod does, right? A lot of Rod's lowest ratings are on, yeah, or near Fourth of July weekend. It, it, it really depends. I think on where the, I mean, it's it's Fourth of July. So it, it falls in all different days of the week. But, um, but I, I, I, I guess like, I WWE being up in the ratings, both Bronze, Mac, down in the next teeth, uh, over the last. Down to the good rating. Uh, according to the fast. We'll see what the number really is on Monday. That will be on the normal schedule. But like, you know, their ratings being up over the last few months, uh, you know, despite the fact that court cutting has accelerated way fewer homes have cable, and they did like a few years ago, um, despite the fact that all of TV ratings are kind of down, yet when you put out a product that people want to see, suddenly those, those, those chords are plugged back in, people were able to find the outlet finally, uh, and people are watching again. So I do believe that people will tune in, uh, to something that they really want to see. And I think we're maybe too quick to dismiss all declines as, or, or most declines as just an inevitable trait of watching television. So if, if it comes out on Wednesday morning, the collision did a pretty weak rating. Um, what would you attribute that to? I would say to a decline in interest in collision. Okay. Um, I'm not, you know, this, this first month or so of collision ratings, you can't draw any major conclusions, just like we couldn't say, oh, a point three, three should be what they're going to do, or what they're going to do each week from week one. It's going to take time before us to really have an idea of what it is. I will say this. Didn't feel any buzz for collision this week. Didn't feel like there was anything major, really important on collision. And when I watched the show, while I thought it was a fine two hours of television, it did not feel like a really big happening show the way I think most dynamites feel. And that's just comparing one episode of dynamite this week to another, to the episode of collision that I saw. Week one, I thought collision felt super fuzzy and interesting. I was just, just when I watched it last night, I was thinking, you know, this is a fine solid two hours of wrestling, kind of like the way rampages. And yes, CM Punk is on the show and you get to see, you know, uh, you know, the Roger Stein versus Samo Joe is a cool match. And they're doing the Owen Hart Cup stuffs and MJF, you know, and Ethan Page did a surprise kind of title match. But it didn't feel like, um, kind of a really important happen in show the way dynamite does. But again, that's just a week comparison. We'll see what the kind of, the pacing of the show settle into. Who are the biggest stars on collision last night? MJF, CM Punk, who did not wrestle. I don't think CM Punk wrestled. Um, no, he didn't. He did commentary. And yeah, I would, I would say, uh, Jay White, um, uh, you could say, you know, Samo Joe, you know, Samo Joe and Roger Strong was the main event, which they did a good job hyping up. They had video packages. They had, you know, history of their old ROH feud. They had, CM Punk was on commentary in the main event. Um, but yeah, as far as, you know, and I think MJF being on the show for the first time and, you know, he wrestled technically two matches in the kind of first 30 minutes of the show were totally all MJF. Um, then so I would say that yeah, those would be your kind of big stars. I mean, and then I would compare this to what dynamite was this past. One is named him to star power, just to run through some names here. John Moxley, big Tom. Uh, but, but let's be serious. John Moxley, um, um, that's the six man did not do well in, in the car. Chris Jericho. Sting Chris Jericho. Yep. Um, the elite did a backstage thing, right? Did the lead had a blue? He had a match. Yeah, the young bucks and hangman wrestled the dark order. Yeah. Um, Jack Perry did his thing. I would, I would, but yeah, I would say Chris Jericho Sting, the elite John Moxley. I would say that's heavier on star power. And those guys all had matches like Jay White didn't have a match. Chris, CM Punk didn't have a match. Right. Right. Um, and those matches, I've been surprised. And in, you know, it was a six man and eight man, both of those matches did better than the CM Punk promo. I don't know if you did a promo on the second show. Anyway, um, I'm going to worry about the star power disparity there. And whether that, I mean, it's just just three weeks, but, um, and whether that continues. And this is my, my vibe of rampage here. Oh, my vibe on, on collision. My vibe on collision is for, especially if we're going to talk like a roster split or our soft roster split or kind of talent is going to be on collision. Collision to me has a lot of wrestlers that people are optimistic about, but are not yet established stars or established consistent performers. And the show is going to be geared a little bit more towards maybe helping those talent reach their potential, but as it stands, um, I think more of the superior wrestlers and superior acts in the show are, are waded towards dynamite. But again, we don't know how much the roster shake that's going to be, but feels like collision is, you know, focusing on word a little bit, focusing on powerhouse Hobbs, focusing on Ricky Starks. Um, I think Ricky Starks is probably closer to being all the way there than those other two guys, but it seems like there's some projects on collision that are going to get some time to try to, and people are optimistic about, but as far as like it's hard to compare them to like the elites and Chris Jericho and the members of the Blackpool Combat Club, that kind of established our power. Um, what would you say is the floor for success for the show for a rating? Can I just, I guess we don't know because the show was daily, but I would say finishing top one or two, top three of the night would be my success. I think it has to do better than what the movies have been doing in this time slot. And we will continue, we will continue to get that through, I mean, that was something through spoilers TV that show us daily who's not reporting at all. So, I mean, that's all in the past now. That's not going to be what's airing on Saturday nights. But we know that that at best did, and it needs to do better than what those at best did. I think those did, you know, point one, two, point one, four, something in that neighborhood. So I think it's got to do this decisively better than that. Yeah. And I think it's a top rated show on Saturday nights, whatever that number is would be considered successful. When college football season starts, you know, all hell is going to break loose. We're not going to have the charts anymore for college football season, but I would expect it to finish, you know, probably outside the top 10 during college football season. Now, a lot of that college football competition is not going to be head to head with collision. You know, they'll have a marquee game or one or two marquee games that are on at night, but most, but there'll be a lot of college football games that are on during the day and the afternoon that would be collision in the ratings. But not outside of college football season, I would say finishing in the top three of the night would probably be a goal. And I think this is going to weigh heavily into the value of AW's next TV deal. If this does a lot better than the movies do, it bodes well into AW getting a much better TV rights contract. If it does what the movies did, it doesn't help at all. So it's a lot more hours of content. So it better justify a lot more money. What else do I have in here? Collision ticket sales. Well, estimated tickets distributed. For Hamilton, the dreaded Hamilton show on a Thursday taped ahead of time. 3,840 was the last count that I have here from Russell Ticks. So it went from 800 to 3,840. Russell Ticks thinks there's probably a lot of comps there. Probably more higher comfort than usual here. So who knows what the paid is really looking like here. Next week will be Regina 1396 at the moment. So we'll see what these continue to do. It's pretty remarkable if you look at AW of the last two weeks, two or three weeks, I guess. But they have had all these major shows kind of in the month of June here. And they've really only banned it for the last two or three weeks in two markets. They ran Chicago and they ran Toronto. And they ran multiple shows in both those markets. And if you look at it, they sold a lot of tickets. At the end of the day, whether how successful the collision debut in the United Center or whatever you want to say, they sold like 17,000 or they distributed like 17,000. They distributed a lot of tickets. Yeah, they did like 17,000 tickets in Chicago for two shows. And then in the Toronto area, I haven't done all the math, but they have sold well over 20,000 tickets. For Toronto, I can tell you they did. Let's see here. You want to include Hamilton as part of Toronto? Yes. So let's four shows. And that's a sum of 20 and tickets distributed, 20,000, 28,000, 20,000 distributed over like what, 10 days from the 24th to the 29th. So five days, yeah. Yeah, 60s. So that's pretty good. I don't know. Any way you want a slice that I know it's distributed. I know you can say some of the shows are disappointing like the Hamilton show from overall standpoint, but hey, you sell 20,000, you distribute 28,000 tickets in one market in a five days. But that's pretty good, would you say? I would love to know what the sales actually are. So I don't know if that will ever know because I don't think I have been having Chris Cole complete a Google sheet detailing all the venues that we have. In fact, directly from the Russell Tech spreadsheet detailing what what venues are government owned. But yeah, this is I'm springing this on you. I don't know if you have it in your slides. Are you have you have you followed the blood and guts show at all? I have it in the sheet. Oh my god, I just closed it. The Boston show are you going to it? I have not decided if I am going to the Boston show or not because it's largely going to depend on if I have to work that night or not. That is July, July 19th. Same day. I would say I'm leaning towards yes. And I'll have to reach out to my good friends at all with the Russell to see what they could do about that. Last count a few days ago, 5,273. That is that is the big TD garden. So, but they they have moved tickets since since the Russell ticks of the game. Now it's notes that they have sold over a thousand tickets since the end of Wednesdays and tickets. They have to I said moved over 1000 tickets moved since the end. Immiguously moved. So, they're up to 5200, which will be their biggest crowd. It will be their biggest crowd ever in Boston because that's a little bit more than I think the aganis arena held when even when they sold it out. So, they're going to do more than they would have done at the aganis arena. Whether they're going to do enough to justify running the much larger TD garden remains to be seen. But I thought it was notable that, you know, there's probably not 20 matches that AWP could announce that would immediately sell tickets like that. So, move tickets like that. Not so. Gotta be careful. Depending on whether we should discuss this consolidation thing, just briefly some some big macro macro picture stuff here. I went through and I looked up what the enterprise value is of the major media companies to think about, you know, I mean, we not anytime soon, but maybe in a few years, NBC Universal and WBD ended up getting consolidated. Which would be a big deal. I don't know exactly what the implications would be. There'd be something for the rest of the business because obviously, WBD and AW are going to continue to do business. I would be shocked if they didn't NBC Universal and WB are going to continue to do business. I would be shocked if they didn't. So, I was looking at how big are these companies. And I've heard that in terms of market capital. So, not enterprise value, which is different. But in terms of market capital, Apple should do on some shares and still Apple reached, I believe, $3 trillion dollar a day. Anyway, they're the biggest company in the world. At least, I don't know, in the US. And they're way bigger, you know, than these media companies, Alphabet, which is the Google company's 1.5 trillion, Amazon's 1.4 trillion, WBD, enterprise value is just $27 billion. I'm easily $27 billion for David Zazzle. I'm good or wide and false. Comcast is way bigger because Comcast is also a telecom company in addition to being the parent of NBC Universal. NBC Universal in the acquired is worth roughly $30 billion. So, in the realm of what WBD is worth, they're roughly equal value, enterprise value, Comcast overall is worth $263 billion. But, you know, the four big media companies that we're looking at here, WBD, NBC Universal, Paramount, Fox, all in the, you know, $20 to $30 billion neighborhood. And as we mentioned on Thursday, there aren't many profitable TV businesses in the world these days. Cable TV is still profitable. Those profits are shrinking. Netflix is profitable. Basically, nobody else is streaming as profitable. Like, isn't they say HBO Max is getting close to profitability? So, I looked at what the profitability are of these companies that are standalone media companies that don't have a telecom company attached to them, like NBC Universal does. And their profits are dwindling too. So, Foxes, Foxes a lot of things, right? But, Foxes largely a TV company. Paramounts, the former buy ComCBS. And their, their net income has been decreasing over the years as well. And WBD has its own separate issues. They're not profitable at all. Overall, it's a company that I can, is above my head, but this seems related to the merger to me. So, eventually consolidation has to happen. People are saying. And I'm just trying to think about how this might happen. And that, maybe NBC Universal separates away from Comcast, merges in the years to come with WBD. So, you wins out between David Sazloff and Brian Roberts. And that sort of leaves, you know, the other two Foxes and Paramounts, it seems like those eventually have to be consolidated as well. And that's sort of why they're leaning down. And maybe that's part playing into why Belator is up for sale. Apparently, not by the con. Not going to be bought by the Con's according to Tony. Aril Hwani making it clear though that they might not have talked to Tony or Shad, but maybe they talked to their people with his response to that. But maybe Amazon ends up grabbing some of this people think that Fox News might go off to News Corp, which is not part of Fox. And maybe Fox can be grabbed up. I suspect that all this is going to be more complicated and then things might be broken down to greater fragments, you know, to further fragments than we're looking at here. Maybe Disney can continue to grab some of these assets as well from Paramount and Amazon or from Paramount. And Fox, which they already have grabbed a lot of it from Fox. So just some thoughts there. I don't know if you have any thoughts on that. I mean, the reason we're discussing this is because of the ultimate impact who could possibly bid for for television and content rights. Yes. Yeah. Right. And with the new TV deals both for AW and WWE coming up in the near future, if some of this consolidation were to happen, we'd be talking this is probably not really have any impact on the professional wrestling industry until later this decade, if not into the 2030s. Well, it could happen. It all depends on when and if live rights fees plateau. I think WWE and EW and macro scents are still safe for this round, you know, they're they're all, you know, eight, whether AW gets a huge upgrade or a little one is going to up to where how their performance goes, I think, but I think WWE will be okay depending on how many bitters are truly interested in them, whether FX is truly interested in them and who's going to bid aggressively and who's not. But if if in the next round though, you know, five years from now, if we're seeing sports rights deals being made that are flat or down broadly and that's happening more than just once, that could have they could have a big impact on wrestling, but I I expected it's not going to kill wrestling, but it's just going to flatten the growth. So our last topic, Shobu's Daily is according to Shobu's Daily coming to an end. They said this coming week would be our last week, that was last week. They did report ratings for Thursday. I don't know if the report ratings for Friday, but Shobu's Daily coming to an end. And they had a special thank you for wrestling fans and their, goodbye, a message. Yes, wrestling fans are terrible, which, you know, well, where I'm sure a lot, I did see at times, you know, a lot of the comments that they were getting in there and they're like, discus comments section below their articles, those people, you know, shouting about wrestling or requesting wrestling ratings. So there will be no more rankings. I think we might get some rankings from other sites and stuff like that, but we'll see. I will still report ratings, at least most of those times, I expect to be able to report ratings. I'm not completely reliant on Shobu's Daily. And the thing that I'm thinking about here is, we see all these numbers here, and we talk about ratings. And I sort of struggled with this on their hiatus in 2021 when Shobu was supposedly done at that time, is how to, how to, what metrics to report? Do we, we're looking at in video, a table here, is a Shobu's Daily table that shows all these demos, shows like eight or nine demos, right? It shows the total viewership, which is called P2 plus way on the end in thousands. And then everything else is illustrated as a rating. I think that's especially accommodating to the ad industry, the TV ad industry, that thinks about things more so in ratings than they do in terms of viewers. But do you happen to know, Jesse, what these ratings really represent? Like, you know, eight W did a .24 on Wednesday. What, what does that mean? .24? What? Isn't there, there's a total number of, it's a percent, it was a percentage of people who were watching television, is that it? It is in a certain demographic. So what, what Shobu's Daily has always reported are called national ratings. These decimal numbers, these are national ratings. What does that mean? This is representative of the people in these age groups or gender groups that are living in households with televisions. So basically what this means is .24% of people age 14, 18 to 49, .0.24%, so a quarter of a percent of all the people in the United States who live in a home with a television in it, or between the ages of 18 and 49, a quarter of a percent of them, watch Dynamite. And that's based off of sampling from people who have any else in the box, presumably, based on Nielsen Matthews. So I get viewership numbers, more than I get ratings numbers, and what I will do is calculate, and you can calculate these pretty reliably based on something called the universe estimate. I debate whether to, there will be no more Shobu's Daily, presumably, maybe let's say Shobu's Daily never comes back, which it sounds like it's not going to come back ever, should I continue to report these national ratings and calculate them out? It's basically just take the number of viewers in the case of 18 and 49, divided by like 1304.1 or something like that, and you get the national rating. I would only be doing that though, because that's what people are accustomed to, because they've read Shobu's Daily for all these years, as opposed to saying, which is something I think is much more intuitive and saying, Dynamite was viewed by 316,000 viewers in the demo, which is the number. But people have no context on that, because you know what a 0.24 is, but I bet you and people who pay attention to ratings don't know what like a context for like, what's 316,000 viewers in the demo? Is that good or bad, you know? Yeah. Do you think, I think if we're talking about like the end of Shobu's Daily, right? I hesitate even to bring this up, but you think this unfortunately has a negative impact on people, the discussions we're able to have around television ratings and wrestling, if we are now getting in from people like you or Meltzer, could be lying? No. What's the say the question again? The benefit of Shobu's Daily really was that it was an easy non-restling connected source that presented the ratings information and the rankings in a very easy to understand digestible format. And with its absence, while we will get the ratings from people like yourself, Broadway Keller, or Dave has the numbers or whoever, WWE decides to give the numbers to people. I don't know, while I do not have a distrust of people reporting ratings information, other people do, and there's a, I guess I got transparency that I appreciated with Shobu's Daily, in that sense that made it easy to kind of use for data points, and if you want to have conversations about ratings and demographics and things like that, Shobu's Daily was a really reliable format for that, and now we're shifting more towards the wrestling media, which as Tribal H told us that it's getting their information from some sources, and 75% of it is false. So, well, if somebody reports a rating falsely, or whatever you have, what if you report a rating and someone else to something else? What if Steve Fall has a different rating than you branded? Well, WWE and AEW have the numbers themselves, and they can give the numbers to whoever they want, and they have correct numbers. I mean, if somebody made up a number, if I wanted to report next next time in my rating, next time in my ratings, it's a 0.15, but it was really like a 0.28. I mean, I'm getting into stuff that I don't want to say on air, in terms of how this would be reacted to within media, and how people within the wrestling business would interact with people in media. But that would be corrected pretty quickly, I think. I could buy the companies telling reporters, no, this is the correct number. Right. I don't know. I guess I liked the idea that Shobu's Daily was, and maybe I'm being naive about where Shobu's Daily was getting the information, but I like the idea of Shobu's Daily being an openly source, unconnected to wrestling in any way, shape or form. And you still have, it's not as if only wrestling people care about ratings. You still have people who report on sports media. Oh, no, I totally understand that. I'm just, I'm saying from like the wrestling discussion. What I'm saying is, when Shobu's Daily was out, we still had on occasion, like John O'Rant would post like a tweet full of, you know, like six ratings for last night, let's say. And wrestling reporters are not the only reporters who have access to people who have access to Neilson data. No, and I don't mean to suggest that it is. But I'm saying people are going to wrestling media. The natural, I guess there's a natural distrust of wrestling media, even if they're just reporting numbers. And Shobu's Daily not being connected to wrestling media helps. I think presents data. And like I said, I'm easy to understand by just a way that made conversing about ratings easier. I guess that's what we're losing. Do we expect people to like falsely report wrestling ratings? I don't think that that's the case, but I think there'll be more room for interpretation without the charts from people who are dumb and biased and want to make a point. Why do you pay attention to them though? Why are you giving them your attention? I don't want to. I'm just saying that this is something that is going to happen. I told you I'm not really on, I told you I'm not really on Twitter anymore. I still be lost. Okay. Do we have any, I don't think we have any final super chats? Do you have anything to promote? Yes. The Gentleman's Wrestling Podcast, which you can find on all of your favorite podcast streaming apps. Brandon, do you know who my guest was this week on the Gentleman's Wrestling Podcast? Who was it? I love something good. It was a long time independent pro wrestler and former pro wrestling trainer Brandon Thurston was on the show. The guy who reports fake ratings? Yeah, the guy who reports fake ratings. And now we don't have the show buzz daily to to counteract him. But Brandon was on the show. We talked not about wrestle dynamics, but instead we talked a lot about talent development. We talked about kind of 10 years of the WWE performance center and kind of the results that WWE has gotten from those 10 years in the performance center and kind of speculated on some ideas on why they have gotten those results. We talked about kind of the way talent particulates through WWE and AEW, especially young talent with potential, kind of the differences in how talent is being developed now than versus 10 years ago before the WWE performance center. We talked about AEW signing a lot of young and perhaps unexperienced wrestlers and sometimes how they struggle to develop whilst being signed to AEW due to AEW having limited opportunities for that talent to perform. We also talked a little bit about independent wrestling and kind of the changes in what has gone on there and kind of what kind of motivations independent wrestlers have and how that kind of plays into how they develop as talents. So it's an interesting discussion that's getting where I refuse as most of them do. It is. It's some pretty big names Brandon have reached out to me and said this was great content. Who? Big names. Big names. Like like big names. They have long names, many letters in their names. Yeah, they're like from Thailand, so they got like really long names. Okay, and this is it. If you want to listen to us next week, you have to subscribe to patreon.com slash wrestle dynamics. You will get it in video. Well, I'll send you a link on unlisted YouTube link before we go live on the day on Sunday. Same time is always Sunday at 11 a.m. Eastern. I will also put in audio version. I'm going to put an audio version in the podcast feed this week first subscribers as well, just because that's what we're going to do normally. So sign up now. You get access to all my TV ratings reports, which I'm still going to tweet the demo and the total viewership assuming Twitter works. I'll report it somewhere else in public format. But I will I will have many demos. I expect not just pt. 49 pt. Plus, but I'll have many demos. That'll be in my TV ratings reports for subscribers. We've been reporting quarter hours. We've been beginning the months. I'll have I just did a merchandise report for the month of June. We should be having a Google trends report coming up. We should be having a tickets report, market market tickets report analysis relying on WrestleTik's data. We'll have a cage match. Most matches report who's working the most across the world according to cage match data. What else is on there? You get access to the viewership spreadsheet with thousands and thousands of wrestling ratings data points. All that and more at patreon.com slash restaurant. So thanks everybody for listening and we'll talk to you then. If you're not signed up, we'll talk to you in a month from now with the first episode of each month for us on our video still being for free. So thanks for listening. Bye.