A question
 

How come WCW in early 1999 was losing money when its ratings were about 4.5 million, while WWE can make £20million a quater when its ratings are about 3.4-3.8 million?

My guess would be that they were paying their wrestlers a tonne of money.

Operating costs were much higher for WCW.

Also, the WWE has always sold merchindise a lot better than WCW, which is a huge money maker. Being a publicly traded stock helps the WWE too.

Its mostly about keeping salaries and operating costs in line.

WCW had guaranteed contracts, so when business (talking house shows and PPV) went down, the money payed out stayed the same. Whereas in the WWE, the company is still turning a good profit but Vince is screwing the wrestlers by not having to pay out bonuses and cutting downside guarantees because there iswhere else to go. At least Vince still makes his $8 mil+ salary though.

Does anyone why?
I've heard this before but cant understand why one would be much higher than the other.

Contract money as has already been stated is one of the operating costs

Bischoff doesn't know how to manage money.

Does anyone know how much money it takes to put on a Raw or Smackdown? roughly?
Does anyone how much money WCW made in 1997?

Yes let me just get out my copy of the accounts that i carry around with me everywhere

Well what do your accounts say?
I know how WCW did in 1999 and 2000, and i know how ECW did in 1999-2001
And I know WWE from about 2000. What did the WWF make in 99? Ive heard it was about a billion. is this true?

Random post:

XFL!

:lol:

NO WAY. Nowhere close. The most money Vince ever had TOTAL was somthing like $1.3 billion, which he didn't even have for that long of a time. Never made anywhere near a billion in one year.

I can't tell if that is sarcasm or not. I am really hoping it is not.

So Vince hasnt made a billion in a year. Looking at the financial reports it is hard to tell because I cant understand them.

Why did someone post "XFL"?

I dont understand the last post about sarcasm.

So no one knows about WCW and financial reports in 1997.

What is up with the post count?
I registered months ago but had to re-register and its now saying I registered in Dec 2003 while others registered in 2000. How come my post count is so low and some have got thousands.

The TPWW forums were redone and if you don't have your old post count then you didn't post to have them added after you re-registered.

The WWE's been losing money too...

You know, I posted to have mine added after I re-registered, but nobody did it. What a shame.....oh wait, nobody cares, my bad.

You STUPID NOOB!!! :p Naw... j/k.

PR was being sarcastic. How would he happen to know how much the WWE made during a specific year? Thus, he was teasing you for asking a dumb question, and people laughed at you for apparently failing to get his sarcasm.

Geez, explaining these things is tiring, even if it is just three sentences.

Ye, i started fresh. Besides I only had 13 posts before the forums changed. They made it too hard anyway.

<font color=#33ffff>What, to get your post count back? It was a piece of piss.</font>

WCW losing money for paying wrestlers was definately not the main reason that they lost money. At their worst period of losses in 2000, WCW's talent pay roll was about $18 million (I have no idea what a normal company's payroll is by the way so I don't know if that's high or ok) but they lost over $200 million that year. The company was just badly managed.

Remember, had WWE not made various budget cuts over the last 2 years, they would be a very non profitable company right now. That's the difference between good and bad management though.

In 1997, WCW made a profit in the area of $80 million. I don't have the exact number that was the first year that company ever made money. They made over double that over the next two years before Eric Bischoff was fired.

Well...

In fairness, the real measure of good versus bad management isn't just whether they can make cuts to stem the losses, but also whether they can enact changes that positively affect their company, thus ending any such losses.

Budget cuts can keep even a bad management team afloat for a while.

If the WWE are forced to continue to make cuts, it may be indicitive that their management isn't all that good after all.

Agreed but in fairness, aside from cutting the developmentals, most of their cuts have been in the right area and not affecting the short or long term future of the company.