Thread: All Elite Wrestling
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Old 02-17-2019, 01:21 AM   #654
Mr. Nerfect
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by xrodmuc316 View Post
If you take Eric Bischoff at his word, which I do cause his story hasn't changed in almost 20 years, and he did try to buy it for further proof, but he said WCW wasn't really losing that much money.

When the merger happened they classified WCW as "other" with a bunch of other things at Turner that were losing money also, with the intent of unless I adding all of it to make the merger look good.

WCW didn't go out of business like ECW did where they had to declare bankruptcy, AOL/Time Warner just didn't want wrestling in their portfolio so they pulled the TV deal and took nothing for it.

They could have sold WCW for $45 Million with its current TV deals, and instead they cancelled the TV deals and sold it to Vince instead for $40 Million less.

They were willing to lose all the ad revenue that Nitro and Thunder brought, and an additional $40 Million instead of airing wrestling. Plus they still had to keep paying the full contract of every single wrestler who didn't take a buyout so they could go work for Vince.

Vince only took on like 6 contracts when he bought WCW, Booker T, Chavo, 2 other really low paying guys, I think Hurricane might have been one, and 2 of them were Torrie and Stacy who weren't making crap either. Everybody else in the Invasion got a lump sum buyout from AOL/Time Warner, so that is also more money they gave away just to get rid of wrestling.

Hogan, Hall, Nash, Goldberg, Sting, Flair, Mysterio, Steiner, Savage, Mr Perfect, those guys all sat at home getting paid their full amount until their contracts expired.
I don’t take Bischoff on his word at all. Dude is a used car salesman that could only sell new cars.

If WCW was making money, and Bischoff was not a cunt to deal with, there is no way they would have chopped it. They chased away ad revenue, ratings, revenue streams, and all hope of it ever being profitable. Jamie Kellner didn’t shoot WCW in the head, he simply pulled the plug.

They could have sold WCW for more, but I’m willing to bet they just wanted it off their hands by then, and were ready to write off the loss. You also have to consider who would have even bought it. It was a dead brand, and when Vince tried to get it on networks later in 2001, no one was having it. And not even Vince was willing to buy those AOL-Time Warner contracts.

WCW had a lot of assets, but the value of what they could bring to TV. It cost more money to operate than it was making. That’s the ultimate factor there. There is no sane projection where WCW could come back.
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