The Case For Why There Is No Market For A Third Major US Pro Wrestling Company

Is there room in the U.S. wrestling industry for a third major entity to muscle in on WWE and AEW? According to Wrestlenomics' Brandon Thurston, Triple H and Tony Khan will not be losing sleep worrying about a new competitor.

In an interview with Wrestling Inc. Senior News Editor Nick Hausman, Thurston believed the wrestling environment is at a saturation level.

"I don't think there's an opportunity for a third company to make a lot of money," he said. "I think wrestling is way over-invested in. I think there's a lot of passion that people have for wrestling, and that passion greatly outweighs the business opportunity that exists for wrestling."

The problem, in Thurston's view, comes primarily in getting viewers and signing talent for a third entity.

"I don't think there's a great TV rights value opportunity," he continued. "Not only is it difficult to even gain any traction as a wrestling brand that exists in any kind of national awareness – that's difficult just on a creative level – [but also] just on a level of finding the right talent now. Especially now that you've got AEW eating up that talent, and WWE under Triple H actually valuing talent more appropriately. Finding the right talent is very difficult, and very competed over."

Thurston highlighted the challenges for the wrestling organizations competing with WWE and AEW to get a spot among the top-rated shows on television, with a spotlight placed on Impact Wrestling's efforts in building a television viewing audience that could rival the ratings enjoyed by its larger rivals.

"We don't see Impact up there," he said. "Impact in the Showbuzz Daily Top 150 Cable Originals, since Thursday Night Football has been competing with, has been out of that top 150. So, I think the value of Impact – even when it's over the summer and spring, where there hasn't been football to push its ratings down – it doesn't crack the top 100. So, I don't think there's a great deal of value in Impact wrestling as a TV property."

Thurston speculated that perhaps the all-female WOW reboot "will do something different" because it is being positioned as "a very niche product." WOW returned on Sept. 17 as a syndicated television series that is being scheduled by local stations to fit their respective time slots; for several years, WOW was only available for Internet and streaming viewing.

"Even in the case of WOW, we're talking about how impressive – and over my expectations – the WOW TV viewership is," he said. "If we look at the demo, they did a 0.03 and a 0.06 in the demo. I don't know that they are breaking into the top 100."

And even WWE has some shakiness with its NXT brand, according to Thurston, who defined it as a "questionable value with the ratings that it's delivering, because it's been doing a little bit better lately. But sometimes its fallen below the top 50 on its Tuesday night." But that doesn't mean Khan should be preparing for a victory lap over his chief competitor, as Thurston credited Paul "Triple H" Levesque's work as Chief Content Officer for disrupting the dream that AEW will "one day become as popular or more popular as WWE" is less likely now.