On a recent edition of ‘Strictly Business’, former WCW President Eric Bischoff revealed how much money Ted Turner’s World Championship Wrestling made from their officially licensed video games back in the day.
Here’s what the 2021 WWE Hall of Famer said:
“No, I never played them. I kind of was outside of the demo as they were emerging. It was never my thing to sit down and play video games. I’ve never been a video game guy, even. I think I played pong when it first came out because it was new, and you could play it on your TV. And I might have dabbled in that for a minute, but after that minute or two, I kind of lost interest in it. I’ve just never been interested in video games in terms of strategy.
I don’t know that there was a real strategy other than, let’s try to get a deal and let’s try to get the best deal we can, and the best deal we could get at the time I think it was either an $8 or $10 million guarantee upfront from EA Sports for a WCW video game license. So it’s not that we weren’t successful in it, but it was never something that I was familiar enough or passionate about enough to interject myself into.
It was an important part of our business, don’t get me wrong, but other people were much more knowledgeable and much more interested in that space than I was. I was interested in the business of the business and the business of video games, but I wasn’t interested in the product itself.”
The officially released WCW video games were:
1. WCW Wrestling (1989, before Bischoff was there)
2. WCW SuperBrawl Wrestling (1994)
3. WCW The Main Event (1994)
4. WCW vs. the World (1996)
5. WCW vs. nWo World Tour (1997)
6. WCW Nitro (1998)
7. WCW/nWo Thunder (1998)
8. WCW/nWo Revenge (1998)
9. WCW Mayhem (1999)
10. WCW Backstage Assault (2000)
During his career in professional wrestling, Eric Bischoff used to work for Verne Gagne’s American Wrestling Association (1986-1991), World Championship Wrestling (1991-2000), WWE (2002-2005) and Dixie Carter’s Total Nonstop Action! (2010-2013).
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