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MITCHELL'S TAKE
MITCHELL BLOG: Hey Media Rubes! Floyd Mayweather and WWE Know You're Lazy and Stupid! Feb 26, 2008 - 9:46:23 PM
Hey, Jim Rome, AP, and the rest of you lazy, stupid marks who fell for that twenty million dollar salary line WWE and Floyd Mayweather fed you - you got played like a tourist at three card monte. The cheesy wrestling promoter got you to give him millions of dollars worth of free publicity by blatantly lying to you and betting you were too lazy to do your homework or too stupid to remember wrestlers and boxers are con men, I mean, multi-level marketers.
Even you, Michael Wilbon. You guessed in the opposite direction, figuring Mayweather might get a few hundred thousand because "WWE isn't American Idol." Great.
Five minutes on Google would have told you this:
Last year's Wrestlemania, co-starring Donald Trump, did big business for WWE, business this Mayweather thing will be lucky to match. That show did about 1,200,000 buys.
For the sake of argument - and to do this in less than five minutes - let's say WrestleMania this year does the same business. Now round off the pay-per-view price to the show to fifty bucks a head.
Let's see: A million-two times fifty equals sixty million dollars. Half of that goes right off the top to the cable companies. That leaves thirty million dollars. Add five million for the live gate.
Now you've got thirty-five million dollars BEFORE expenses. This ain't the NBA. It's wrestlers and boxers - two groups who are notorious for making the worst financial deals in sports and entertainment. You really think Vince McMahon is giving anyone twenty million dollars and ensuring his biggest show of the year will be a money-loser?
Suckers.
Two questions, though. Do you guys just do shoddy work on the stories you think readers care about, but you don't care about? Or does this laziness touch every story you report and comment on?
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