The streaming landscape’s changing faster than most wrestling fed’s world title scenes do these days, but don’t worry, that’ll settle down once all the choices are owned by 3-5 billionaires or billion dollar corporations. Anyway…
One of those billionaires just made sure his son could combine two major entertainment industry players when database mogul Larry Ellison helped David Ellison’s Paramount Skydance price Netflix out of the running for Warner Bros Discovery. Which brings us to our first item…
During the same conference call where Ellison the younger talked about merging all the streaming platforms he’ll soon own, the only sub-brand he indicated would have any autonomy was HBO itself. He discussed the strength of a combined CBS/TNT Sports, but AEW didn’t come up there or elsewhere — despite the fact Paramount Skydance presumably bought WBD’s less-than-10% stake in AEW along with the rest of the company. It is possible that stake could be divested as part of the acquisition; that detail is probably low on the to-do list for Ellison’s team, however.
As is noted pretty much whenever this topic comes up, AEW isn’t too worried about this since they have a signed contract that runs through at least next year. So Tony Khan & company will get paid one way or the other. We’ll see what we end up having to pay to stream Dynamite on HBO Max (or Paramount+ if the services merge before the deal expires). It’ll probably start out seeming like a good deal before slowly and steadily increasing in price, a cycle that’s gotten familiar enough this century there’s now a word for it.
And that’s a perfect segue into our next item, which involves the head of TKO talking about the $30+ per month price tag a lot of fans in the United States face to get WWE premium live events now that they’re exclusive to the ESPN Unlimited app/service. ESPN parent company Disney is working with cable and internet TV carriers to ensure customers who pay for ESPN there get access to Unlimited at no extra cost, but some big players like YouTube and Dish TV remain in the works.
At the annual Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference, Mark Shapiro said ESPN Unlimited’s price is “somewhat prohibitive, especially in today’s economy and the struggles that certainly middle income and low income earners are having with affordability.” As they did with Comcast and Xfinity last week, Shapiro says Disney & ESPN “have to get those deals [with carriers like Dish and YouTubeTV] done. Until they do, that will affect our audience.”
Ari Emanuel’s right-hand man didn’t cite any numbers, but he wouldn’t be mentioning it if it weren’t effecting their numbers negatively in some way. He cited the fact WWE’s successfully brought their audience to other new platforms in the past, such as Peacock. And Shapiro said their trend is heading that way again, despite the increased cost for some:
“We saw a significant increase in audience from the first event, which was Wrestlepalooza. They’re already making strides. Are they where Netflix was and where Peacock was? Not yet, but I’m super encouraged by the numbers Nick Khan was sending me by the hour this past weekend.”
My main takeaway from these items? I don’t expect the cost of watching wrestling to go down in the future. Let us know what if anything you took from them in the comments below.
