On the latest episode of the 83 Weeks Podcast, Eric Bischoff highlighted how AEW still has a lot of ground to cover if they want to start the next wrestling war. Bischoff shared criticism about how everyone compares the success of WWE and AEW through the lens of the 18-49 age demographic for viewership of each show when it doesn’t tell the whole story.
“I think if you’re an executive in a media buying company or advertising agency, I think [the 18-49 demographic] matters,” Bischoff noted. “To the rest of the world, it doesn’t mean two sh**s. But it is something that everybody can pat themselves on the back for, I’m talking about AEW supporters and fans. I’m not knocking it by the way, I’m excited that everybody is excited. But when somebody asks me what do you think about the focus [on the 18-49 demographic], it’s primarily driven by the internet wrestling community and people that write for it.
“It’s not new, it’s been that way since I made the decision to go after the 18-49 male demo. Not because I was brilliant but because I knew there was no way I was going to beat WWE at what WWE was doing back before Nitro launched. 18-49 has always been important. Today it’s so much of a conversation because it’s a line item that those who are anti-WWE and pro-AEW can go, yeah, but AEW beat WWE in the demo. Big f***in deal, AEW on Wednesday night with no real competition for 18-49 gets a higher percentage of a demo than Monday Night RAW going head to head with Monday Night Football where the vast majority of the 18-49 year olds that watch wrestling also watch football. It’s like me getting into a fist fight with Mike Tyson’s kid and coming out on top of that. I’m just making this up, and if he did or he does, and I were to mop the floor with that 16-18 year old kid, that’s like me walking around saying I beat the sh** out of Tyson.”
Bischoff continued to talk about the Wednesday Night Wars and the issues he had with so many people wanting to compare WWE’s developmental show to AEWs full roster. He also talked about how he hasn’t heard any criticism thrown AEWs way for getting beaten by Friday Night SmackDown now that AEW has Rampage on Friday nights.
“It was the very best lineup on AEWs roster against the developmental squad [of WWE],” Bischoff said. “Not really competition, folks. That’s not the same thing, but everybody wants there to be, and I do too. I’m one of you, but all of us want there to be that Monday Night War vibe. We want that as fans because it was fun and history has taught us that it actually raises the tide and everybody’s boat floats higher when it happens, so we want that. But it’s not really a war yet.
“AEW on a Friday Night is at a very big disadvantage in terms of comparing it to apples to apples, but let’s just go back to the comparison that everybody likes to make. It’s okay when people who write about ratings and talk about 18-49 like it’s the end all be all and it’s not, it’s one component and an important one but it’s not, trust me, when it comes to revenue. Since people like Bryan Alvarez were so excited comparing AEW the A-team vs. NXT the C-team, let’s then do the same thing [on Friday night’s]. If that’s how we’re going to contextualize this battle, what about the fact that SmackDown delivered the week before, more viewers in the demo than AEW had for total viewers? People two years old and above, that’s kind of a big deal but nobody talked about that. Nobody wants to make that kind of comparison because, well, that doesn’t look good.”
