How wrestling became big business
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 15 April 2026
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Professional wrestling has grown into a global entertainment industry worth billions of dollars, driven by sponsorships, new broadcasting deals, and a growing online audience.
We step inside the ring, exploring how wrestling has become big business, from streaming and new sponsorships to the global fanbase willing to pay for multiple subscriptions.
We also hear from the new and emerging wrestling franchises, aiming to change the sport.
To get in touch with the team, our email address is businessdaily@bbc.co.uk
Presenter: Megan Lawton Producer: Sam Gruet
Business Daily is the home of in-depth audio journalism devoted to the world of money and work. From small startup stories to big corporate takeovers, global economic shifts to trends in technology, we look at the key figures, ideas and events shaping business.
Each episode is a 17-minute, daily deep dive into a single topic, featuring expert analysis and the people at the heart of the story.
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We also feature in-depth interviews with company founders and some of the world's most prominent CEOs. These include Google's Sundar Pichai, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, and the CEO of Canva, Melanie Perkins.
(Picture: Wrestler, Ben Webb aka Trent Seven.)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. |
| 0:06.0 | As you can see here, we've got this kind of like padding on the floor here. |
| 0:09.7 | I'm standing in a wrestling school in North London, soft padding underneath me. |
| 0:15.6 | In front of me, standing six foot tall with a long beard and broad shoulders, his professional wrestler, Trent 7. |
| 0:23.8 | So this will be able to take the weight of somebody. |
| 0:26.1 | Yeah, so this is a little bit more for your bumps and stuff for that. |
| 0:28.9 | So if you just jump on here. |
| 0:30.8 | When he's not in the ring, he's best known as Ben Webb. |
| 0:34.6 | And in between practicing acrobatic takedowns, diving from on top of the ropes around us |
| 0:39.8 | and performing body slams, he's attempting to cash in on a global entertainment industry |
| 0:45.5 | valued at $5 billion U.S. dollars. |
| 0:48.7 | I'm Megan Lawton, and this is Business Daily on the BBC Wild Service. |
| 1:01.9 | Today, we're somersaulting into the world of professional wrestling, meeting a passionate new fan base. |
| 1:08.8 | I watch WWE. I watch a lot of stuff outside of WWE. |
| 1:12.8 | Crunching the numbers on new broadcast deals, |
| 1:15.7 | new sponsorships, new franchises and new places to watch. |
| 1:20.0 | If I am in a venue and 200 people show up, |
| 1:22.4 | well, only 200 people watched me. |
| 1:24.0 | But I could be on YouTube live and 20,000 people can watch me. |
| 1:27.7 | And finding out how its biggest export, the WWE, has overcome controversy to expand to even |
| 1:34.5 | greater success. The thing about wrestling is that it continues to try to focus on the fans |
| 1:40.7 | and sort of just try to weather the storm as much as it can for better and for worse. |
... |
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