Eric Bischoff On How WWE Could Change If It Goes Private, If Smackdown Is Losing FOX Money

On a recent episode of 83 Weeks, Eric Bischoff talked about Smackdown losing money for FOX, and how WWE changes if they go private. Some highlights are below.

On if Smackdown is losing FOX money: “Here’s the interesting part, it doesn’t matter. Because, here’s what we don’t know. Let’s just take it at face value alright, which is really hard to do. If we take that at face value, USA is only getting $47,000 a minute for WWE ad time or FOX, okay. Does anybody know the terms of that licensing agreement from between FOX and WWE is? Well, again, this is speculation but here’s the point I’m trying to make. What don’t we know? We don’t know if NBC Universal or FOX are participating in other forms of revenue in addition to the ad sales. So they may be not quite getting whole on ad sales, but they’re making up for it by participating in other forms of revenue.

“For example, this is a what if, but what if in that licensing agreement NBC Universal also participates in the upside of other events premium live events. Who knows? There’s a lot of ways to participate. It’s one of the reasons I wanted Viacom to invest in TNA, so that TNA had a solid television partner. And yeah, while in many respects it doesn’t make a lot of sense for Viacom to own it unless they’re participating in other revenue streams in the upside with them and there can be a multitude of those opportunities within that agreement. I’m not saying that exists, I don’t know. But it could.”

On how WWE changes if they go private: “Hard to say. You have to get inside of the head of Vince McMahon and trying to do that is daunting. He’s a complex dude, but let’s just look at the patterns. You know what’s best for business one of the things that we know is Vince McMahon makes decisions that all of us at some time or another were surprised at. Whether it was bringing me in after, you know, years of competing against him and almost putting him out of business and I had some pretty crappy things to say. I did some pretty crappy things giving away their finishes and all that stuff. I was the enemy. I was the Antichrist. Had I walked into WWE headquarters back in 1997 I don’t think I would have walked out. Until I got hired and I was one of the key figures on camera for whatever it was three or four years. Nobody thought that would happen including me. Nobody thought he’d bring back Ultimate Warrior.

“But, Vince this has been part of his public persona is that he will do what’s best for the business even if it’s distasteful as hell. Even if it makes him throw up in his own mouth in his private time if it’s best for business that’s what he’s going to do. Now, if you accept that and you go ‘yeah, that’s probably true’ maybe it’s 100% true maybe it’s 70% true, but it’s true. If you accept that and you step back and you take your emotion and your wrestling fandom out of the equation, what’s best for business? Currently, I think, the existing creative team from Triple H to Bruce all the way down to a lot of writers that I do know personally that are fantastic talent. What’s best for business is you let them keep doing what they’re doing because it’s working. So, there’s a part of me that says yeah even if Vince takes it private I could see him continuing to allow that process to exist as it does as long as it continues to be successful. I believe that in my heart having worked with Vince having been one of the.. hell he brought me in as executive director of Smackdown, come on. Now it didn’t work out for a lot of reasons most of them because of me. My inability to adapt or unwillingness to adapt maybe subconsciously it doesn’t matter it didn’t work out… I don’t think we’re going to see a radical change when it comes to creative.”

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit 83 Weeks with a h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription.