On a recent edition of his “Something To Wrestle” podcast, WWE executive Bruce Prichard discussed Vince McMahon’s Million Dollar Mania on Monday Night RAW RAW.
As part of the segment, Mr. McMahon would randomly call a phone number and reward one or more viewers with a million dollars.
You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On the idea behind the concept: “It’s not just building a mailing list. It’s awareness, it’s getting people to talk about this billionaire giving away $1 million of his own money. And that is what it was, because you couldn’t take it out of the company. It’s a publicly-traded company, and the board was like, ‘You can’t take that out of company money to just give it away.’ So Vince said, ‘Okay, I’ll pay it personally.’ And it was a publicity stunt. It was a stunt, it got people talking everywhere. Local media, every place that we went everybody was talking about giving away the money… Not only do you have to watch TV, but you can come to a live event, enjoy a great show and still have the possibility of winning money. It’s a nice added attraction.”
On whether there were people in WWE against the idea: “Not really, no. You know, again –look, you would pay for advertising and this was a way of getting advertising, and you’re paying your customer. So it hits all sides. I think it’s very good. No, nothing wrong with that at all.”
On the concept ending with the stage falling on McMahon: “I hated it. I just hated it. You know, when you visualize things, when you talk about things and you can visualize something. And you think, ‘Oh man, this sounds gonna be, it’s gonna be great.’ And then the practicality of A, trying to explain your vision to somebody else for them to actually make it a reality and make it happen. A lot gets lost in translation, and then just sheer execution, and being safe and trying to do something. It’s — you know, we tried something. I don’t think it worked. I didn’t think it was well executed, and I don’t know, I just — not a fan and didn’t really care for it.”
