Nick Khan shares his vision for just who exactly is part of the WWE Universe.
During a recent appearance on The Town with Matthew Belloni, WWE President Nick Khan spoke about the company’s audience and how he believes they should appeal to the masses instead of focusing on just one group of wrestling fans.
“Did you go to public school as a kid? And you graduated high school around 93? So to me, if you grew up in the mid-80s and 90s and you went to public school, you watched WWE. I feel we’re for the masses and we can never lose sight of that,” Khan stated. “And it can’t be ‘oh we’re just targeted towards certain cities’ that are perceived as the bigger cities, if you will. We try to target towards everybody. If you see some of the scripted programming that’s working these days, Yellowstone for example, we believe that’s targeted to everybody. We’ve been doing that, Vince has been doing that for 30-plus years.
“So to me, public schools I bring up because a lot of kids in the 80s didn’t have cable. So if you didn’t have cable and you had, at the time three networks before FOX even launched, you had Saturday mornings, which was part of the many of the brilliant things Vince has done,” Khan noted, “Saturday morning syndicated programming on network TV. And then you had the network programming Saturday nights. So if you didn’t have cable, you could sample this kind of thing, which you really couldn’t find anywhere else.”
Khan also spoke about the company’s ability to create new stars, noting how it’s definitely a more difficult task than it was a decade ago. He pointed out how Logan Paul, who appeared at WrestleMania 38 this past weekend, was one of the rising stars outside of wrestling that saw the appeal of their platform, bucking the former trend of getting performers during the decline of their respective careers.
“So even if you look at let’s say a Logan Paul, for example, who’s wrestling a match for us this coming weekend along with The Miz. If you look at Logan Paul, if YouTube and all of the social media platforms did not exist, let’s say it was 15 years ago, could he have been the next big WWE superstar? Sure. But he figured out a way to go make a ton of money without having to do that. So we’ve made a massive pivot. We came to him. It used to be you’d get for example boxers on the downside of their career, Joe Louis, Muhammad Ali, coming to quote-on-quote wrestling. Now you’re getting them on the upside. Floyd Mayweather, 15 years ago, Tyson Fury a few years ago, so I think the athletes see the benefit of our platform.”
Khan spoke about how WWE has completely shifted its recruiting efforts for full-time stars, noting that they want to make it easier for NFL hopefuls and other athletes to come to them and start their careers.
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