FITE COO Mike Weber Thinks WWE Should Film Their House Shows

Mike Weber has a level of experience on the office side of pro wrestling that is almost surely unmatched: 15 years total in marketing and public relations for WWE, WCW, and Impact Wrestling across a career that also saw him work for various other sports media companies. Since December 2016, though, he's been in charge of combat sports streaming provider FITE TV, the home of GCW, the AEW+ streaming service outside North America, and more. And on Wednesday, "The Business of The Business" released a new interview with Weber, during which he was asked if there was any possibility of FITE stepping in to make a deal to shoot and stream WWE's house shows a la the '80s broadcasts on regional cable channels.

"They definitely have an interest in doing it," Weber responded. "I'm sort of surprised they're not. In what I think is their opinion, it's gotta look the level of Fox or nothing ... So I don't think they want to put a smaller production out there. Could it be done? Yeah, it could be done overnight. It would be easy to go in there and do those shows, because it's still nice venues, bigger venues than, say, the GCW shows. GCW's a good example; you can film those shows almost anywhere, and they work, and fans like them. I think it's very important to [WWE] to keep that level of TV production at the highest level. That's a $150,000-$200,000 ... production budget to go and do every show, which would not make sense for your quote-unquote 'house shows.'"

Weber doesn't see WWE being willing to stream the house shows, with AEW being a question mark as they're only now starting non-televised events. He further noted that with house shows often used as practice runs for pay-per-view matches, WWE also has reasons to not want them constantly broadcast to the fan base.

If you use any quotes from this article, please credit "The Business of The Business" with a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.