Rants

Should WCW have stopped PPV altogether

By Scott Keith on 16 November 2018




I have heard it said quite a bit that in the 1990's, WWF was run like a live event/wrestling company and that WCW was run like a TV production company.

Did Turner only see value in WCW based on its TV content?

If so, would it have been wise for WCW to drop PPV totally and put all of its major content on Nitro. WCW gets a lot of crap for giving away major matches like Hogan v Goldberg for free – but would it have worked if they were a TV only company? Imagine the rating that Sting v. Hogan, or Hogan/Rodman v. DDP/Malone would have gotten on weekly TV.

What say you? Have we gotten it backwards for all of these years? Instead of less free TV content, should WCW given it ALL away in exchange for broadcast ratings?

Kyle
The problem is that the TV business had always been a loss leader for wrestling until WWE suddenly started pulling millions in rights fees out of their ass. Ratings were nice, but ad rates for wrestling were shit. It would have been suicidal to drop PPV. Even now it’s kind of mystifying that WWE deliberately nerfed such a giant portion of their business.