Even though it’s been clear for a long time that WWE has a strategy for counterprogamming AEW, I still see plenty of wrestling fans in denial about what is staring them right in the face. Some of the skeptics roll their eyes at the notion that WWE is trying to significantly hurt AEW’s business, in part because WWE makes so much money that they can’t possibly see AEW as legit competition.
Even if that were true, I think TKO / WWE’s risky refusal to pull its upcoming Crown Jewel event out of a war zone
in Saudi Arabia shows that the almighty dollar rules all. With that extreme corporate greed in mind, I think one of the most obvious ways WWE can financially control the wrestling industry even more is to take measures that hurt AEW. That’s a primary motivation for all the counterprogramming we’ve seen.
On today’s Wrestling Observer Live, Bryan Alvarez explained that even though a lot of WWE’s recent attempts to counterprogram AEW haven’t worked very well, WWE is going to keep doing it because AEW’s future potentially hangs in the balance next year as everyone waits to see if Skydance will renew their lucrative TV deal or drop them.
“AEW is soon to be into a contract year. There has just been a sale. [The] fact of the matter is, no matter what anybody says, nobody knows the future…Whenever you have a merger like we’ve seen with Skydance / Paramount etc., and we’ve already seen this on the sports side of WBD, cuts are coming.
Is there a chance that they will not pick up AEW? Yeah, of course. Of course there is. And as long as there is that chance, WWE is gonna want to make that happen. And so they are going to counterprogram all these events. And if they can even take away 5% of viewership, 10% of viewership, they want to chip away as much as they can because that’s just what they do. So far it has been immensely ineffective, but they don’t give up.
…I would guess [AEW is] likely going to get a similar deal to what they’re getting right now, and it will be remaining on TBS and TNT. But WWE is gonna do everything they can to try to prevent that from happening.”
What do you think about WWE’s business strategy to chip away at AEW’s numbers via counterprogramming? Will WWE be more successful at this goal over the next year while there is so much uncertainty about AEW’s future with Skydance? Let me know in the comments, Cagesiders.
