Was WCW still salvageable from a business perspective in 01?

[The Rick Jericho]

So knowing what we know today. Plus we've seen other companies bought and sold or merged. And we see the WWE being sold this week.

When you look back to 2001 and WCW being sold to the WWF. Did you think it was still salvageable from a business point of view?

We know that when they were sold, they had no TV deal, which some said is why Bischoff didn't want it anymore. Could they have shopped the TV rights to another network? It just feels like the WWE quit too soon on the WCW brand, when they could've done a little better if they tried harder?

The one thing I don't get though, all those guys that were tied to the big WCW contracts still, the guys under contract. Hogan, Nash, Goldberg, Sting, etc.... why didn't they just relaunch WCW and bring them all back to work? I get not working for the WWF because that's another company and a whole different contract. But if they just relaunched WCW, these guys would be back on TV, no problem right?

[Baldobomb-22-OH-MAN!!!]

Absolutely. The shows were actually getting pretty decent again and it still had a market visibility even AEW would kill for today (hell WWE would probably kill for a 2.6 weekly average rating...). The main thing pulling WCW down at the end was the sheer amount of money Eric Bischoff and company had wasted over the years. If you put it in the hands of somebody who both had the money and also the brains to spend it wisely, WCW could easily claw its way back. Especially considering they were going to be going head to head with a company who just turned it's biggest face heel right when the other biggest face stepped back to make movies.

[Mozenrath]

With the amount of debt they were racking up? Not likely.

The ratings were one thing, but the problem was revenue. WCW was far behind WWF in t-shirt sales at that point, with the nWo glory days a few years removed. They'd fumbled and lost the THQ video game partnership. They had done severe damage to their house show sales. Their PPV sales had dropped considerably due to bad promotion, prioritizing TV over PPV, and often failing to explain to audiences watching what even happened on the PPVs on the shows coming after.

Even at their height, WCW had gotten into the habit of borrowing from Peter to pay Paul, and when the money stopped flowing as much, that only got worse. The deck was stacked high against them, and if WCW were to live, they'd have needed to basically slash and burn and hope for the best.

WWF got WCW for real cheap so losses could be cut, but it was also because it was of no value to anyone else without the TNT timeslot, something WWF would discover when their first plan, of continuing it on as a brand, ran into a brick wall with major stations having no real interest in picking it up, and anyone else being too small or cheap to make it worth WWF's time and effort. It was a different landscape, and the Monday Night Wars had filled WCW with bullet holes and printed "DAMAGED GOODS" on its side. The rehabilitation would have needed to be damn near miraculous.

[Ben Wyatt]

I think so. I've always argued that if they were starting to find their footing and needed like, 6 more months to be "credible" again

[tafkaga]

It was certainly salvageable if AOL Time Warner had wanted to continue to invest in it. They had the resources to continue to keep it going indefinitely, but they chose not to do that.

It's often overlooked that it was the IP and tape library that got sold, not the subsidiary itself. The big contracts stayed with AOL Time Warner. What was lacking was a buyer that was interested in the IP without the TV time slot. Had a buyer been found, they could have relaunched WCW, but essentially as a brand new company.

[Jindrak Mark]

Apparently they couldn't find a TV deal so probably not. Bischoff/Fusient pulled out of buying the company when they couldn't get a TV deal then after WWE bought it they also shipped it around to different places but no one wanted it.

In an alternate timeline with them staying on Turner they could have survived but there would have to have been massive changes. The way the ratings plummeted in their final 18-24 months wasn't sustainable. This wasn't 2023 when it's kind of expected that less people each year have cable. This was cable still at its peak yet they were hemorrhaging viewers not only yearly, but every quarter. The numbers in March 2001 were way down from even summer 2000. If that kept up they would probably only have survived an extra year or two anyway before it would have to have been cancelled.

[Deleted]

It's really hard to say.

They didn't have a TV deal, that was the biggest hurdle. Turner was out of the wrestling business, and I don't think it would have been on TNT even if WCW were privately produced and paid for, and without somewhere to show your product that has a pretty decent level of market penetration, you have nothing.

The other problem is that the biggest stars of WCW were under Warner contracts, NOT WCW. You might have scrambled the money to buy out A Sting, or A Goldberg, or A Kevin Nash, etc... but you weren't going to get all of them.

The brand itself was fine and perfectly salvageable, although there would have been leaner times in the rebuilding, I'm sure.

So... maybe? But not likely.

[kingoftheindies]

Will always point out that the reason Fusient backed out of the deal was more because of them just being tired of Jaime Kellner who legit changed the deal consistently including the final straw being Kellner refusing to let them keep their tv spot after initially agreeing to it.

But also worth mentioning that WCW was going to go on hiatus either way. The plan was to move everything to Vegas (which people like Nash and DDP have said Eric had deals ready for that) but also they'd have to buy people out of their contracts.

["Playboy" Don Douglas]

Apr 7, 2023 14:05:15 GMT -5 The Rick Jericho said:

So knowing what we know today. Plus we've seen other companies bought and sold or merged. And we see the WWE being sold this week.

When you look back to 2001 and WCW being sold to the WWF. Did you think it was still salvageable from a business point of view?

We know that when they were sold, they had no TV deal, which some said is why Bischoff didn't want it anymore. Could they have shopped the TV rights to another network? It just feels like the WWE quit too soon on the WCW brand, when they could've done a little better if they tried harder?

The one thing I don't get though, all those guys that were tied to the big WCW contracts still, the guys under contract. Hogan, Nash, Goldberg, Sting, etc.... why didn't they just relaunch WCW and bring them all back to work? I get not working for the WWF because that's another company and a whole different contract. But if they just relaunched WCW, these guys would be back on TV, no problem right?

The issue with the contracts of those big names is that they weren’t WCW contracts, they were Turner Broadcasting contracts. Someone else could have bought WCW, found a TV slot, and relaunched the company and they still would have had to buy out those contracts and those guys weren’t having it to go to the WWF which was still doing great business. There’s no way they were doing it for a relaunch of a company that just failed.

[Red Mage Riot]

Apr 7, 2023 15:00:33 GMT -5 tafkaga said:

It was certainly salvageable if AOL Time Warner had wanted to continue to invest in it. They had the resources to continue to keep it going indefinitely, but they chose not to do that.

It's often overlooked that it was the IP and tape library that got sold, not the subsidiary itself. The big contracts stayed with AOL Time Warner. What was lacking was a buyer that was interested in the IP without the TV time slot. Had a buyer been found, they could have relaunched WCW, but essentially as a brand new company.

Doesn't WCW still technically exist, "on paper", under some generic name on the corporate books somewhere?

[Oh Cry Me a Screwball]

Apr 7, 2023 14:20:03 GMT -5 Mozenrath said:

With the amount of debt they were racking up? Not likely.

The ratings were one thing, but the problem was revenue. WCW was far behind WWF in t-shirt sales at that point, with the nWo glory days a few years removed. They'd fumbled and lost the THQ video game partnership. They had done severe damage to their house show sales. Their PPV sales had dropped considerably due to bad promotion, prioritizing TV over PPV, and often failing to explain to audiences watching what even happened on the PPVs on the shows coming after.

Even at their height, WCW had gotten into the habit of borrowing from Peter to pay Paul, and when the money stopped flowing as much, that only got worse. The deck was stacked high against them, and if WCW were to live, they'd have needed to basically slash and burn and hope for the best.

WWF got WCW for real cheap so losses could be cut, but it was also because it was of no value to anyone else without the TNT timeslot, something WWF would discover when their first plan, of continuing it on as a brand, ran into a brick wall with major stations having no real interest in picking it up, and anyone else being too small or cheap to make it worth WWF's time and effort. It was a different landscape, and the Monday Night Wars had filled WCW with bullet holes and printed "DAMAGED GOODS" on its side. The rehabilitation would have needed to be damn near miraculous.

Bingo. You can say what you want about whether WCW was on the mend creatively in 2001, but without those TV slots and all that debt, it couldn't do anything to generate money. We were still a few years away from the advent of DVD players providing a solid way to monetize the tape library, much less livestreaming that could have taken off some of the dependence of the TV networks.

[cjh]

Apr 7, 2023 16:54:57 GMT -5 Red Mage Riot said:

Apr 7, 2023 15:00:33 GMT -5 tafkaga said:

It was certainly salvageable if AOL Time Warner had wanted to continue to invest in it. They had the resources to continue to keep it going indefinitely, but they chose not to do that.

It's often overlooked that it was the IP and tape library that got sold, not the subsidiary itself. The big contracts stayed with AOL Time Warner. What was lacking was a buyer that was interested in the IP without the TV time slot. Had a buyer been found, they could have relaunched WCW, but essentially as a brand new company.

Doesn't WCW still technically exist, "on paper", under some generic name on the corporate books somewhere?

That was the case until 2017, then Turner Broadcasting officially closed it.

[Red Mage Riot]

Apr 7, 2023 18:00:30 GMT -5 cjh said:

Apr 7, 2023 16:54:57 GMT -5 Red Mage Riot said:

Doesn't WCW still technically exist, "on paper", under some generic name on the corporate books somewhere?

That was the case until 2017, then Turner Broadcasting officially closed it.

Aww, that's a shame, I always enjoyed that little piece of minutae.

[XIII]

man, I don't know. WCW was dying the death out there at that time. A bunch of young no names and a handful of guys that were on Turner contracts and likely would have sat out anyways. It would have been a tough sell.

[cjh]

Regarding "WCW" contracts vs. "AOL Time Warner" deals, Hulk Hogan, who had the biggest deal in the history of the company, was under contract to WCW itself.

[KAMALARAMBO: BOOMSHAKALAKA!!!]

Apr 7, 2023 18:02:44 GMT -5 Red Mage Riot said:

Apr 7, 2023 18:00:30 GMT -5 cjh said:

That was the case until 2017, then Turner Broadcasting officially closed it.

Aww, that's a shame, I always enjoyed that little piece of minutae.

Here’s an old thread about it apparently just prior to it being officially closed: officialfan.proboards.com/thread/546369/wcw-exists

[sfvega]

Yes and no. As it was, absolutely not. They had established a price for their top end talent that they would have never been able to bankroll without a media giant behind them. The production costs, the touring costs. As it was, WCW was inevitably going bankrupt.

Now from just the naming rights, sure you could have ran with it. Get Eric and the brand and a handful of familiar faces (marketable guys who won't break the bank: Sting, DDP, Lance Storm) and a bunch of new guys that ended up being in ROH and TNA for reasonable costs at the time running a weekly show out of a home base. It's funny, because it would have taken Eric full circle from where WCW was when he had the vision of taking it to the top. He'd have to start all the way back at the bottom, and he probably wouldn't last because he was so obsessed with big moves and the whole corporate game. He's not a D'Amore or Cornette, who is going to run a smaller promotion that is more a labor of love than a gigantic financial endeavor. But I think that the biggest issue was WCW's rush to sell. It all seemed to happen very quickly, and I don't think Bisch and crew got a reasonable amount of time to market it. Wrestling has always been kind of niche, but the ratings that they were still getting at the time would be valuable to some networks. But everything in the business is so deliberate and everything is thought so far ahead when dealing with TV networks and greenlighting shows and budgets and timeslots. It's not really a process you can do on the fly. Given a year to find a home, I think WCW could stay alive.

["Playboy" Don Douglas]

Apr 7, 2023 20:26:07 GMT -5 sfvega said:

Yes and no. As it was, absolutely not. They had established a price for their top end talent that they would have never been able to bankroll without a media giant behind them. The production costs, the touring costs. As it was, WCW was inevitably going bankrupt.

Now from just the naming rights, sure you could have ran with it. Get Eric and the brand and a handful of familiar faces (marketable guys who won't break the bank: Sting, DDP, Lance Storm) and a bunch of new guys that ended up being in ROH and TNA for reasonable costs at the time running a weekly show out of a home base. It's funny, because it would have taken Eric full circle from where WCW was when he had the vision of taking it to the top. He'd have to start all the way back at the bottom, and he probably wouldn't last because he was so obsessed with big moves and the whole corporate game. He's not a D'Amore or Cornette, who is going to run a smaller promotion that is more a labor of love than a gigantic financial endeavor. But I think that the biggest issue was WCW's rush to sell. It all seemed to happen very quickly, and I don't think Bisch and crew got a reasonable amount of time to market it. Wrestling has always been kind of niche, but the ratings that they were still getting at the time would be valuable to some networks. But everything in the business is so deliberate and everything is thought so far ahead when dealing with TV networks and greenlighting shows and budgets and timeslots. It's not really a process you can do on the fly. Given a year to find a home, I think WCW could stay alive.

Even Sting and DDP weren't cheap, and Sting opted to wait out his deal after the WWF purchase. DDP took the buyout, I've heard various figures from 50 cents on the dollar on down, to join the WWF and be jobbed out to Undertaker's then wife. Really, the best bet for star power on that front would have been Booker T and Lance Storm, and while both guys were awesome and main eventers in the right circumstances, it's not a guaranteed great start to relaunching a formerly global company.

[Sephiroth]

If Bischoff has managed to find a new network to call home they would have chugged along for a year, maybe two, before folding. They were carrying just wast sustainable, particularly not when they no longer had time Warner’s coffers to draw off.

[Lizuka #BLM]

It could have maybe survived in the way Impact has, majorly downgraded in relevance while being so stripped down from what it was as to be virtually unrecognizable, but it certainly was not going to stay a viable alternative product.