Eric Bischoff Believes WarnerMedia-Discovery Merger Will Be A Good Thing For AEW

During the latest episode of his Strictly Business podcast, Eric Bischoff discussed the WarnerMedia merger with Discovery and why he thinks it will be good for All Elite Wrestling:

On why the merger is good for AEW:

“If I’m in AEW right now, I’m looking at it as a positive thing. In our conversation a couple of weeks ago on Strictly Business, we were talking about who knows what David Zaslav and company are going to do with TBS and TNT and I used Paramount TV as an example. One of the things we spoke about is what if Discovery leans into what’s made them successful which is non-scripted, call it a reality but docu-dramas, traditional documentaries. If that’s the direction that Discovery is going to lean into, I’d be happy and I’d love to hear that if I’m AEW. That means that they’re focusing on cost, don’t get me wrong they’re still going to focus on their audience and it’s too early to pop champagne corks over in AEW because there’s still so much we don’t know. We’re not going to have any clear indication as to the direction they’re going for at least six months to a year before we hear about it. It’s still early but if I’m in AEW right now, I’m feeling pretty good because they’re not going in the direction that Paramount went in. I would breathe a little bit of a sigh of relief, not getting too excited yet but I would also be anticipating what life is going to look like when I’ve got one or two or more executives wanting to know exactly what is going on on next week’s program.”

On why ad sales on television matter:

“It’s driven by ad sales and ad sales performance. The answer to your question is tied directly to how successful is Turner Ad Sales in selling that inventory. If the answer is they’re pretty happy with it and getting the kind of advertisers they’re hoping to attract and they’re getting CPMs or pricing that allows them to be profitable or competitive. If the answer to that is yes, they’re doing okay then the answer to your question is they’re really happy. Because now they’ve got a program that doesn’t cost them an arm and a leg to produce and in AEW’s case you’re looking at 45 million a year, from what I’ve read, in licensing fees for 104 hours of programming. As far as programming is concerned, that’s pretty cheap. But that doesn’t matter if you can’t sell the inventory or if they do sell the inventory it’s opportunistic bottom feeder pricing. If that’s the case then from a programming point of view you don’t want more, you want less. It’s all about making a return on the investment on that beach-front property that’s called prime time. If you’re in primetime it’s all about ad sales, it’s the only data point that really matters folks.”