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This week WWE has reached its all-time peak financial performance as the company's publicly-traded stock price has gone higher than ever following back-to-back news reports indicating that the firm is set to not only triple its U.S. TV rights earnings from NBC's USA Network (for Monday Night RAW alone) but have been separately negotiating a deal with Fox Broadcasting Network that could total $1 billion over 5 years for Smackdown Live.
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This comes fresh off the heels of WWE's reported 10-year contract with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (which was kicked off by the Greatest Royal Rumble pay-per-view last month in Jeddah) as well as the deal with Facebook that led to the intergender Mixed-Match Challenge tournament, and other recently-created revenue streams like the various licensing deals and sponsorships the company has managed to score.
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Whilst WWE's main roster product is largely considered stale by hardcore wrestling fans and casual viewers alike, the company has not only managed to maintain solid enough interest and viewership to stay afloat financially but is steadily rising in fortunes despite the criticisms of its core product. WrestleMania is still attended by 50,000-1,000,000 people every year, TV ratings are steady, merchandise sales and bonus content like Total Divas/Bellas is performing solidly, as is the WWE Network.
WWE has even remained strong in the face of UFC, despite the Dana White-helmed company's emphasis on contrasting its "real" fighting from wrestling's "fake" kind. WWE has offered a token to displeased wrestling fans in the form of NXT, which offers a respite from main roster monotony where the in-ring quality and storylines are superb, fluff is minimal and the weekly show and TakeOver specials are highly consistent, particularly over the last year. This speaks about the company's well-heeled business sense, which will only be reinforced when SmackDown most likely returns to free, over-the-air TV next October.
Whilst the details behind WWE's television changes and financial future are not absolutely certain at the moment, momentum seems to be heavily in their favor and given their recent successes, it's not hard to picture a time when perhaps the product could improve and re-capture at least some of the millions of fans lost over the past 15 years. Even just a few quality control tweaks to the product combined with some sound marketing strategies and promotional muscle flexing could yield amazing results.
Is it possible then that wrestling is on pace to become mainstream again?
Imagine WWE scoring 4 or 5 Nielson ratings again via Fox's wider reach, or leveraging their SmackDown broadcast deal to get NBC Universal to switch RAW to the over-the-air network. Imagine WrestleMania becoming a true wrestling Super Bowl, airing on free TV with huge advertisements. In just five years wrestling could be seen in more homes than it has been since the late 1980s.
Some fans and industry insiders, mostly cynical types who remain emotionally attached to wrestling's Golden Age of the 70s and 80s, or the Attitude Era of the 90s, groan at such a notion, but there is indeed a degree of undeniable support for a new pro-wrestling surge at all levels, from NBCU and Fox's corporate offices down to niche indy shows, and evidence exists that such a boom may be slowly unfolding in front of our very eyes.
Take the Young Bucks and Cody Rhodes for example, a trio of Bullet Club members who have instantly elevated the potential of independent wrestling from the depths of obscure bingo halls to the heights of arenas by selling out a 10,000-seat venue in the Chicago area in minutes (a first for indie wrestling, and first for a non-WWE U.S. wrestling show since WCW went belly up 17 years ago).
The Bucks' merchandise hustle through Hot Topic stores and ProWrestlingTees.com has earned them the bragging right of saying they can haul WWE-level pay without having to make sacrifices like incessant touring and limited movesets. Also, the United Kingdom independent scene is equally hot if not hotter than its U.S. counterpart as promotions like PROGRESS, ICW and RevPro have developed rabid followings and talent pools for major promotions to draw on (Australia is also piggybacking this trend with its own scene).
But that's not all. There are now numerous indie names from Colt Cabana to Joey Ryan who are making a healthy living without WWE in a supposedly dead industry. Boutique products like NXT, Lucha Underground and WCPW have galvanized rapid word-of-mouth buzz across social media.
Ring of Honor is financially performing stronger than ever with record crowds at recent pay-per-views, and of course, the resurging New Japan Pro Wrestling has set the non-WWE wrestling world ablaze with its incredible brand of high impact, hard-hitting in-ring action and legit sports presentation that has earned them improved attendance in Japan, a demand for U.S. touring for the first time in their 40-plus year history, and enough revenue to build a new training dojo in Los Angeles for their oncoming American expansion.
On top of that, women's pro-wrestling is more popular around the world than ever with WWE names like Charlotte Flair and Asuka earning attention from mainstream audiences as athletes rather than eye candy, and independent names like Toni Storm and Tessa Blanchard building support online and touring the globe earning the type of living that wouldn't have been possible 10-15 years ago.
Even with Japan's joshi puroresu scene, which is in a steep decline from its apex in the early 90s (when the All Japan Women's promotion could by itself sell out the Tokyo Dome), the World of Stardom and SENDAI Girls feds have helped revive the scene from the doldrums of the early 2000's, and thanks to the Internet, there's probably more people outside Japan that are familiar with Japanese women's wrestling than ever before. Oh, and did I mention the Netflix hit series GLOW and all the interest in women's wrestling that it's helped generate?
There have been rumors of a potential up-and-coming wrestling boom for several years now, with most speculation being shot down by jaded, aging purists who are still nostalgic about pro-wrestling's long gone late 20th century hey-dey, and unfortunately WWE's growth or decline has for too long been the primary metric used to measure the health of the industry overall.
However, thanks to the companies rising fortunes, along with some rapidly growing niche alternatives that are far removed from the McMahon monopoly, wrestling is in a better position than it's been in a long time, and through a renaissance of rising revenue, quality matches and characters, and growing fanbases, a wrestling boom (even if relatively miniature in comparison to the days of Hulk Hogan and Stone Cold Steve Austin) could be right around the corner. The only question is if biased media sources will still insist on denigrating and stigmatizing wrestling rather than trying to understand and contextualize it.
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