[Emperor Smeat]

Originally Posted by Slik If you knew how bad most tv execs did not want professional wrestling on their channels you’d respect the hell out of WWE, NXT, & AEW for pulling off what they do each week. They literally have every card in the deck stacked against them and they’re still growing the business. — Freddie Prinze Jr. (@RealFPJr) March 13, 2021

Mainly due to the ad rates for wrestling shows generally being very low compared to other sports and entertainment shows. Took a ton of work by NBC just to convince a few higher level advertisers to purchase ad spots and sponsor WWE shows in recent years. Even then, NBC and USA Network are still been bleeding a ton of ad money with their WWE deals.

Even during WWE's height in the Attitue Era, they still struggled to get real high paying advertisers on board. Mostly due to wrestling's decades old bad rep with advertisers who mostly saw it mainly as just catering to the lowest denominator of customers in terms of purchasing power.

Its why NBC now wants NHL games on Wednesdays instead of NXT shows since the tradeoff for average viewership is nothing compared to the big increase in ad rates they would get in return.