Jim Cornette Breaks Down The Evolution Of Wrestling Over The Past 70 Years
Jim Cornette has taken a look at how the wrestling business has adapted to survive and thrive over an extended period of time.
There can be no doubt that wrestling can be big business. However, as times changed the business has to evolve with it, and that means finding new avenues to make money and continue growing both the audience and the revenue.
In a discussion on his Jim Cornette Experience podcast, the famous wrestling manager and promoter has taken a look at the business over the space of seven decades, and discussed the key changes particularly when it comes to ways of generating revenue.
Well, somebody was just saying that, you know, these numbers are getting up to the point where if, you know, Bill’s network is going to pay a billion dollars to some organisation to carry their programming for three or four years, and they can buy the organisation and own everything forward and backward for three or four times that why the f*ck not, at this point. These numbers are insane.
I was talking to a media person the other day, who is a younger person and had no idea that television stations didn’t pay wrestling promotions in the territory days anything. Well, you know, Memphis got 1500 bucks a week and the production in the studio. Most promotions didn’t get paid, they didn’t get paid since back in the days of network television in the early 50s. So that was non-existent, they subsisted on ticket sales, merchandising was nil.
Now it’s completely reversed, where you get more money from the television stations, networks than you do for anything else. And there’s fewer people than ever buying tickets, but they spend more on merchandise per head. So it’s completely turned upside down.
Jim Cornette also recently gave his take on Vince McMahon’s return to WWE, and how he will get the “glory” for arranging the sale of the company.
If using this transcription, please credit The Jim Cornette Experience podcast, with a h/t back to TJRWrestling.