Brandi Rhodes discusses the highly-debated membership fee for AEW Heels.
When Brandi Rhodes first introduced AEW Heels, the female exclusive community within AEW’s fanbase, it was initially met with a lot of excitement. however, when it was later revealed that there would be a membership fee, it became a source of much debate on the internet. At one point, Brandi Rhodes even received so much criticism on Twitter that she deactivated her account.
Speaking with Entrepreneur, Brandi reveals that she doesn’t expect the project to be hugely profitable and they only ask for a membership fee because of the number of management costs a project such as this requires.
“One thing we’re seeing, and this has been growing across the board, is that more women are watching AEW. So learning information like that only helps when you want to form a community for women,” said Brandi. “The other thing is, from a marketing standpoint, this is not something we looked at and said, ‘Hey, we’re gonna make a ton of money off of this’ It’s not unlike a lot of small business. This is not something we expect to be profitable for a long time, if ever. The only reason we ask for money for membership is because there’s a cost to run it. There’s this big website that’s multifaceted and allows these women to communicate all the time and to do live in-persons and parties and meetings via Zoom. We update with different news and photo galleries and posts. They’re getting access to a lot of people who are putting in a lot of work. We can’t start a website out of the clear blue sky. If we did, the product would not be good, and they would not enjoy it and stick around.”
Brandi also discussed the coincidental timing of the launch of AEW Heels and the Speaking Out movement that saw many women in wrestling come forward and address past instances where they dealt with misogyny and sexual abuse.
“That was purely coincidental. This is something we had talked about and were trying to figure out what it would look like, especially in this period, for quite some time. The #SpeakingOut movement happened and continues to happen, and that’s something I definitely look at as a separate thing, even though one of the greatest things about Heels is that it’s very topical. Whatever is going on in the world or that people want to discuss is something we’re open to doing.”
As of now, Brandi is back on Twitter. On-screen, she does not have a role on Saturday’s All Out pay-per-view card at this time.
