With the news coming out over the last week that WWE has come to terms with NBC Universal to keep RAW on the USA Network, and that the company has reached a deal that will see SmackDown move to the FOX Network, both deals reportedly worth over $1 Billion for each program over a five year period, it has left many wondering how this might affect the independent wrestling scene.
With WWE looking at bringing in over $2 Billion dollars between 2019 and 2024 just for the rights to their two main television broadcast, they now have a virtually bottomless wallet to work with. It was discussed yesterday in a report that with the signing of these new TV deals, that WWE could pretty much do whatever they want going forward, as they no longer will need to heavily rely on ticket sales and merchandise revenue.
On the latest episode of Wrestling Observer Radio, Dave Meltzer discussed WWE’s new TV deals and how they may impact the future landscape of the independent wrestling scene. Meltzer said:
“There’s going to be a lot of dynamic changes. I think you know a lot of it’s up to WWE. Becuase it’s like do they want to stockpile 200 people in the Performance Center to keep everybody away from the indies just to have them. Do they want to do that? They may.”
“I’ll put it this way the indie wrestling itself on a small level doesn’t threaten WWE but as you can see from the UK situation loud and clear anyone getting any kind of a foothold they will spring into action and do everything in their power to make sure nobody gets a foothold.”
So you never know, the company may decide to go the route of stockpiling the WWE Performance Center with as many top independent talents as they can just to keep any other promotion from having the opportunity to gain any traction or a foothold.
It will be interesting to see what changes come to the wrestling business across the board now that WWE has signed their two new MASSIVE deals.
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(H/T our friends at Ringsidenews.com for the transcriptions.)
