Eric Bischoff Explains Why WWE Cutting Back On Live Events Isn’t A Surprise
There will be fewer WWE live events in 2025 and Eric Bischoff has reacted to that news by saying it’s not a surprise.
It was announced earlier this week by TKO Group’s President Mark Shapiro that WWE plans to cut back on the amount of live events they run per year. While in past years, WWE used to have over 300 live events, this year the number is around 250 live events, which includes television shows, PLEs, and non-televised events aka house shows.
According to Shapiro, World Wrestling Entertainment is likely to have around 200 live events in 2025 meaning it would be about 100 fewer live events from 2023.
Eric Bischoff has a long history in pro wrestling working as a talent and the former President of WCW. Five years ago when WWE launched Smackdown on FOX, Bischoff worked for WWE behind the scenes although it was not a role that lasted very long since he was gone within a few months.
While speaking on his 83 Weeks Podcast, Eric Bischoff recalled his time working on the Smackdown brand and how the company was talking about cutting back on live events five years ago.
“It’s really been going on for a while, as you pointed out. But I remember back in 2019 when I first went to work as a director of SmackDown. In that role, presumably I touched every facet of the SmackDown brand, including live touring. Now when I say I touched it I didn’t run it, I didn’t manage it, but I was fully up to speed on all the different aspects of the touring schedule as it related to SmackDown and SmackDown talent.”
“And sitting in a couple of those meetings early on, like within my first week or 10 days — sitting in a few of those meetings where live events were being discussed at that time.”
“Again, this is pre-COVID, this is still 300-plus dates a year, that traditional WWE live touring model, I guess. But even then, there was a lot of conversation about, ‘Look, these things are just not profitable. If we’re lucky and we route properly and everything goes according to plan, we may break even and make a couple of bucks.’”
Eric Bischoff Not Surprised By WWE Cutting Back On Live Event Touring
As he continued, Eric Bischoff
“So it doesn’t surprise me. And then certainly when COVID hit us, everybody was forced to reevaluate their touring model, right? And it’s almost like people during COVID, when they got used to working from home, and companies got used to their employees working from home. What looked like an extreme kind of temporary solution, became normal course of business for a lot of companies.”
“We’re slowly seeing that kind of goes back in some respects to what it used to, but it’ll never go back. And I think after COVID, I thought to myself, ‘Now they’re going to be forced’ — they meaning everybody in the wrestling business that’s in a touring element of it, are going to have to really reevaluate. And this does not surprise me. This does not surprise me.”
An example of WWE cutting live events is that in September, there are only two live events in the United States on the 28th and 29th of September.
While there are European live events in October & November, there are none in the US in those months. After late September, the next US live events are in the final week of the year in December as part of the annual holiday tour.