Los Angeles Lakers President Jeanie Buss is featured in a new interview with the LA Times about her partnership with the Women Of Wrestling promotion. Buss comments on why she got involved, distribution and audience goals for the company, and more. You can read a few highlights below.
Women of Wrestling debuts on Sept. 29 at the Belasco Theatre in downtown Los Angeles.
Jeanie Buss reveals why she is entering the professional wrestling business with Women Of Wrestling:
This is a passion project. Yes, I do have a day job. A big day job. Why am I taking some of my free time to devote to this? I grew up in the era of Title 9, and there are so many female athletes, so many college programs for women to participate in, and there’s not enough places for female athletes to take all this training and hard work that they’ve done for years. I believe that WOW shows that women can become a professional athlete and make a living in this country and be able to entertain and keep training.
Buss explains what WOW is and her connection to the promotion:
It’s just like people have seen with wrestling. It’s character–driven. It isn’t about women being the afterthought or under card. There are the age-old issues of good versus evil, rivalry, conflict, chaos. All the different things that make wrestling fun. It’s over the top. The performers are phenomenal, talented, funny.
It’s women resolving their own issues, not running to a man to save them. That’s an important message for young women to see. You have to handle conflict and face your detractors. There’s an element of dealing with bullying in our society. We have wrestlers from different backgrounds, and they are wonderful role models for young women.
Buss explains distribution plans for WOW, their target audience:
Our goal is to grow our core audience and eventually transition our free content into a subscription model. If a network, online or otherwise, is interested in our content and model, we welcome the opportunity to speak to them, but we are pursuing this passionate fan base now by building our own digital ecosystem that clearly fans are gravitating toward. We have our own channel on YouTube.
It’s family entertainment. It is something that will appeal to children because of the strong characters. It’s like comic-book characters, superheroes. Young people who will enjoy the over-the-top characters. Women will enjoy the strong female role models, especially for their daughters. Fathers will want their daughters to watch WOW.
Buss comments on the possible criticism that she should invest more time into her job with the Los Angeles Lakers:
The Lakers have an excellent staff. Whatever I am devoting to WOW would never take away from my Lakers responsibility. I would never let anything interfere with that.
