Eric Bischoff Discusses AEW’s “Flatlining” Ratings

Former WCW President Eric Bischoff is of the firm belief that AEW has the potential to create something special, but they seem to have hit a bit of a brick wall when it comes to their ratings.

Speaking on a recent episode of Strictly Business with Eric Bischoff (available exclusively via AdFreeShows), the former WWE General Manager commented that consistency will be key if AEW wishes to grow, and that will lead to opportunities when it comes to branding and merchandise.

Nobody else out there that is manufacturing products is looking at the AEW brand right now or anybody in it and going, ‘wow, we can build our future on that. They’re looking at it and going ‘wow, this is interesting, let’s see where this tracks for the next year-three years.’

And if there’s consistency and they see that the belt program that AEW has for example at Walmart, and is actually tracking and growing and creating revenue, that will give future licenses the interest in coming out and trying to build some of their product on AEW licensed properties.

Eric Bischoff continued by noting that whilst AEW’s viewership seems to be “flatlining” at around a million viewers a week, if they continue to push their growth it will bring confidence from key people when it comes to further expansion.

But that doesn’t happen overnight, it didn’t happen overnight in WCW. Providing AEW continues to grow, which arguably they’re not, they’re kind of flatlining at a million viewers a week, but if they can grow that industry in such a way that it gives confidence to manufacturers and distributors to go ahead and invest money in that licensing in hopes to increase sales off their products, that’s when you’ll start to see real growth in AEW.

It’s not a knock against them, you can’t do that overnight. No one is going to take that risk until you’ve established yourself in the marketplace.

‘Easy E’ also recently commented on watching a pair of WWE Hall Of Famers “torture” a referee.