Do you think AOL Time Warner regretted selling WCW when they look back?

[Chrome]

We have many threads about what if WCW was never sold, or was sold to someone else, yadda yadda etc.

But I think from a business perspective, AOL is not as strong as they used to be in the 90's financially. When they sold WCW it was STILL pulling 2-3.0+ ratings and had a lot of star power in the company and merchindise was still selling like hot cakes (Sting, Goldberg, NWO, Hogan, DDP etc) So revenue wise it was still very much a cash cow.

Do you think Time Warner is kicking themselves now since the AOL merger was a total failure and are now no longer merged?

For those that are not aware....
AOL officially splits from Time warner after 10 years

I feel that selling WCW was a mistake.

 

[TheLoneCharles]

Well sure WCW was pulling in alot of merchandise revenue and such....that was not the issue.

The problem was the amount of money WCW was spending they were going to eventually crash and burn. For every dollar they made they spent 20.

 

[Tre-Jigz510]

the money wasnt the issue,it was aol and them nt liking the idea of owning a wrestling promotion.they thought it was beneath their class so 2 speak,bt if billion dollar ted still had control wcw would hav never ben sold esspecially at da price it was sold 4

 

[neildittmar]

Is Time Warner kicking themselves that they dumped WCW during the AOL merger?

Absolutely Not

For starts, the company was hemorhaging money and was on the road to being shuttered anyway. Bischoff/Russo attempting to get mass media star power by bringing in talent like Kiss and No Limit Soldiers with essentially no return had spent the company into a corner only a small miracle would've got them out of.

As for the actually wrestling talent, the executives didn't care if Goldberg, DDP, Hogan, et. al. were all under contract still. The wrestling business was (and still is) seen as a low brow, small step above Carney form of entertainment by major media. Pre-merger, both AOL and Time Warner would've been looking for ANY reason to dump it from the lineup of owned properties anyway. Increasingly low TV viewership, poor buyrates for PPV, and the company money crisis were more than enough.

Even today, I don't think Time Warner (sans AOL) is thinking they made a critical mistake by letting WCW slip away. On the contrary and if they even care enough, they're probably looking at TNA with Hogan/Flair and about half the ratings WCW was getting in its dying days and probably recalling "that was one of the better decisions we made during the who AOL merger mess."

 

[TUFFY54]

NO

We care so much about the fate of WCW because were wrestling fans. AOL/Time Warner were not. WCW lost 60 million dollars in it's last year. That means nothing to a billion dollar merger like AOL/Time Warner. If WCW had made 60 million it would have still ment nothing. They just didn't want to own a wrestling company anymore. They didn't think twice about closing it.

It's hard for us to imagine, but WCW ment absolutly nothing to them. There was no passion or love for the product at all. To them, all they were doing was cancalling a show who's ratings were down. It would be like if someone told you they had cancelled a show on the Food Network or Judge Joe Brown wasn't going to be on anymore. Would you give a shit? (maybe you would, just examples)

WCW would probably still be around if they were making tons of money, but they weren't. I don't want to get started on the wrestling aspect, but it was total shit in the end. Attendence was down 75% percent in two years at the same time WWE was setting all time records. They deserved to go out of business.

Remember, they didn't close down WCW, they just took it off the air. WCW could have kept running house shows if it wanted to. However, that would have been a riduculous thing to do. At the end of the day, people who had never watched one minute of wrestling voted to cut a program that lost millions of dollars. They left their meeting and never though about it again.

 

[CuddleBuns84]

If WCW was making 400 million a year like it was before all hell broke lose, then yes I would call selling that company a big mistake.

However, we the merger occurred, WCW was losing cash like no tomorrow. All those big money contracts, and bad booking bit them on their ass for the final two years.

AOL Time Warner did the smart thing. They sold a company that was losing money.

But just like Clem dreamed, if only Chris Jericho bought it.

 

[Greydon]

If Jericho bought it...We wouldn't have TNA. AJ styles and guys like that would actually be in #2 promotion in America! Why didn't anyone tell Jericho. Oh yeah that's right Jarrett wanted to appease his ego, and create a wrestling company. That is why Jericho didn't know about it. But to only think what would have became of Jericho did run it. Fozzy doing all the music?

 

[classicviolence]

@Greydon do not mock JJ. Then man is responsible for men feeding their families in TNA today.

AOL/Time Warner could have saved WCW if they really thought that WCW was a valuable commodity. As someone previously stated, AOL/Time Warner were not fans of wrestling period, and that was WCW's fate.

What if Jericho bought it?? What if Foley, Cornette or any other high name wrestling personality bought WCW?? Well, this thread would not exist. I do commend WWE for not trying to re invent WCW (ala ECW) only to kill it when fans starting to become accustomed to it.

 

[Hollywood Naitch]

I do not think so. Wrestling was still in its most recent boom period in 2001 when WCW went out of business, and there are less people watching the business today so AOL Time Warner will not look at the past decade as a missed opportunity. Had WWE continued to rise in popularity since 2001, or Vince had resurrected WCW into a profitablt organisation then maybe, but as that never happened I cannot see AOL TW executives losing any sleep over "What Ifs?" over WCW.

Even though the company did have some serious star power in Goldberg, Sting, Nash, Hogan, Flair, DDP, Steiner etc, they were losing stupid amounts of money and not making enough to cover these losses. Viewing figures were constantly dropping and their PPV revenue was basically no-existant by the end of the company's life.

The fanbase was declining weekly as the mind-knumbingly awful booking decisions just made a mockery of the wrestling business, PPV revenue was basically no-existant and while WWE was setting viewing records, WCW was dropping in the ratings weekly. There was no sign of anything being done to stop this, so if the company had not been sold then the pattern would have continued, with WCW losing millions of dollars every month and eventually needing to be shut down. With the problems that this company had, and the fact AOL TW were not particularly interested in running a wrestling company anyway, thinking it was "beneath them", I really do not see another option other than selling the company.

It would have taken alot of money, some serious restructuring and alot of time to get WCW running right again, and AOL TW was quite simply not interested enough to do that. It made more sense for them to sell when they did as there was so much wrong with WCW which would have take ages to sort out, so much dead wood and hangers-on to clear out, so many overpaid wrestlers to get rid of or re-negoitiate terms with.

In the end WCW, for all the money it brought in through merchandise was just too far gone to be worth saving for AOL TW. Vince McMahon had the money to save it had he wanted to, but he made the decision to keep it buried and focus on his own company, which could be argued was right or wrong. Had he, as a wrestling fan, bought the company without already owning WWE, then WCW would probably have been brought back to life through Vince's passion for the business, but as AOL TW did not feel this way about wrestling, they probably did the right thing by selling it, rather than letting it run right until they were forced to shut it down and lose everything.

 

[The Crock]

No way! Why would they regret selling that money pit? They were literally throwing their money down the drain with WCW. Had they not sold it then for at least something, it would have eventually folded and they would have lost even more money. They hung onto the WCW for as long as they could before they couldn't afford to deal with it anymore. That was probably the best decision they could have come to. AOL Time Warner probably would have been affected even worse, and maybe even they would have had to go under had they not gotten rid of WCW.

 

[Tastycles]

It's interesting, the amount it went for was minimal, and it was going to be sold for more to Bischoff's consortium, or so he said, but they had also cancelled Nitro and Thunder. At that point, the contracts of 25 wrestlers and the video library would have been worthless if you didn't have a show to put them on. In those terms, they took something that was worth zero - nobody would have bought any DVDs made by a company not in the current consciousness - and sold it for $7 million, which represents a good deal.

Not as good a deal as it was for McMahon, who in the wake of the invasion and winning the Monday Night Wars, oversaw a revenue increase of $61 million in 2001. It's not a case of everyone being a winner, but its certainly a case of AOL Time Warner selling their unfavoured asset for something before it was worth nothing.

 

[RatedRSuperstar1331]

If Ted Turner wanted to start up his own wrestling company now, he could. The wrestling market just isn't as strong as it was and I seriously doubt WCW would have lasted much longer than it did had it not been sold.