As legendary wrestling commentator Jim Ross likes to say, business is about to pick up.

The last year has seen an explosion of big-money rights deals across television and streaming platforms for live boxing and mixed martial arts, and WWE’s weekly flagship shows.

It has people around the industry, and in the media world, believing wrestling can capitalize on the trend with its increase in popularity over the past year. To them, wrestling is a viable next option for sports streaming services. WWE’s inroads have softened the stigma advertisers have traditionally had for professional wrestling, and other promotions are seeing the effects.

The evolution of streaming has made live wrestling shows less expensive and easier for promotions to distribute to a mass audience. Some wrestling companies have their own streaming platforms or use secondary distributors such as FITE TV and share the revenue for pay-per-views.

“I would think that is the next viable step, for some of these streaming services is to sign up a wrestling company,” said Dave Meltzer, editor of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter and reporter for MMA Fighting. ”Right now, there isn’t one [outside WWE] big enough, but that could change in a year.”

There are hurdles to overcome, however. With the lack of a major television footprint for wrestling companies outside of WWE, the other brands will need to continue to prove themselves and the viability of their audience to prospective broadcast partners. Brand loyalty and an oversaturated market could also be a concern.

“Because you are a Game Changer [Wrestling] fan, it doesn’t necessarily mean you are a WWE fan, a Ring of Honor fan or Impact fan,” FITE TV COO Mike Weber said. “We are finding a lot of division between fans of various brands that we are airing now.”

What wrestling does have, most experts believe, is opportunity and potential.

“There is definitely room [for wrestling],” said Greg Gilleland, the general manager of Ring of Honor. “Content in general is very heavily demanded today in this environment with the evolution of digital and streaming as well as broadcast with the things they are doing to change that business.”

Starting in October, WWE is set to begin television contracts with NBC Universal and Fox worth a combined $2.35 billion over the next five years. “SmackDown Live” will move to Fox on Fridays and “Monday Night Raw” will stay on USA Network on Mondays.

MMA and boxing are also cashing in. The UFC is in the first year of its $1.5 billion deal with ESPN that was recently extended till 2025 when the company made ESPN+ the sole provider for its pay-per-views. ESPN also signed up Professional Fighters League, formerly World Series of Fighting, for two years to broadcast shows on ESPN2 and ESPN+.

The new streaming service DAZN signed Canelo Alvarez to an 11-fight, $365 million contract and will also air a monthly Golden Boys Promotions boxing series. The company also has nine-figure deals with boxer Gennady Golovkin and Bellator MMA.

“[Streaming] completely changed the world of MMA and boxing,” Meltzer said. “Even PFL has gotten a deal with ESPN’s streaming service and Bellator is on DAZN on a real big money deal, and those were second and third promotions.”

Streaming has contributed to a rise in popularity and visibility for wrestling, and is one of the factors working in the industry’s favor when it comes to attracting a broadcast partner. WWE, Ring of Honor and New Japan Pro Wrestling already have their own streaming services that provide subscribers access to pay-per-view events, original content and archived footage.

WWE Network, which charges $9.99 a month, just went over the two-million-subscriber threshold last year and will broadcast WrestleMania 35 on April. 7. New Japan World is the same price and NJPW President Harold Meij said last July the service was approaching the 100,000-subscriber mark, with around 40,000 coming outside of Japan.

Gilleland noted that subscribers to Honor Club, which has tiered pricing from $9.99 a month or one $99.99 payment for the year that includes discounted merchandise, early access to tickets and other promotions, has met the company’s expectations. A $129 tier lets people view all of Ring of Honor’s pay-per-views.

While those companies have gone with their own service, many of the smaller promotions’ pay-per-views and shows are streamed in other ways, including through FITE TV and its corresponding app.

“Now all of a sudden you don’t need a network partner,” said Eric Bischoff, the former WCW president and executive producer. “You don’t need to spend or invest tens of millions of dollars in production facilities and equipment. You can stream some high-quality stuff for a fraction of what it used to cost from a production point of view.”

FITE, which also shows numerous different combat sports, will broadcast 32 live wrestling shows over three days beginning April 4, including the WrestleCon SuperShow, the all-women’s promotion Shimmer and Joey Janela’s Game Changer Wrestling. The costs range from $9.99 to $39.99. FITE, along with Honor Club and New Japan World, will show the G1 SuperCard from Madison Square Garden on Apr. 6.

“If you had [told] me [in 1986] that we would be airing 31 other wrestling shows going on during WrestleMania weekend, I would have lost my mind,” said Weber, who was previously the director of public relations for WWE and oversaw marketing for WCW and TNA.

Since FITE — which has approximately 100 active contracts with wrestling promotions — started three years ago, Weber said there are more people cutting the cord for programming as the number of households in the US not using a cable or satellite provider has gone from 20 to 30 percent.

While there appears to be an endless amount for streamed wrestling, live television is a different story.

WWE, which has been dealing with a gradual decline in ratings in recent years, still averaged a consistent audience of more than 2.8 million viewers for “Monday Night Raw” and more than 2.3 million for “SmackDown Live” in 2018.

“It’s unique in that it’s 52 weeks a year,” said Jacob Ullman, senior vice president of production and talent development at Fox Sports. “We’ve never broadcast a sport that’s 52 weeks a year. Live program becomes that much more important and really is kind of the foundation for our new version of Fox.”

Outside of WWE, wrestling’s television footprint in the US is small. Ring of Honor runs in syndication over the networks of its parent company, Sinclair Broadcasting. But the shows are not available on television in New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago, though Gilleland said “there are things in the works to improve that.”

Impact Wrestling, which left Pop TV at the end of last year, can be seen weekly on Pursuit Channel, which is active in more than 43 million homes. Portions of New Japan’s bigger pay-per-views are broadcast days later on AXS TV.

“People have got to find you,” Ross said. “You can’t promote your product through a television vehicle if your viewers can’t find the vehicle.”

While the reliability of streaming has allowed wrestling companies to flourish, many believe that hasn’t changed the need for a television deal to get to the next level.

“You need that as a foundation, and from that foundation you build everything up to include digital or streaming or things of that nature,” Ross said.

Meltzer said companies will need television money to sign the industry’s top-tier talent. Wrestlers’ contracts have become a hot topic with the launch of All Elite Wrestling by the Khan family, including its president, Tony Khan, which owns the Jacksonville Jaguars. Dean Ambrose is set to leave WWE after WrestleMania and become a free agent, while Ring of Honor is winning the battle for up-and-coming star Bandido.

“You can be all over Twitter day and night, but still for whatever reason there is a logic that would tell you [that] you don’t need [television] because guys are on Twitter and made themselves big stars on Twitter, but I still think you need that weekly TV to get to a certain level,” Meltzer said.

One of the biggest roadblocks for a wrestling-television marriage has been advertisers’ uneasiness with the industry.

“It’s not comedy, it’s not drama, it’s not reality in the broader sense of the term. It’s not news,” Bischoff said. “It doesn’t fit in a nice little box that advertisers feel comfortable supporting for their clients. And even when they do, the clients look at professional wrestling and it’s like, ‘I don’t want my product associated with that.’ It still has a stigma to a certain part of the advertising community.”

That mark is slowly going away — much in part because of WWE, which is still mainly marketed towards kids and families. Turn on Raw and SmackDown and you will see ads for Snickers, Domino’s Pizza, Burger King and Cricket Wireless among others. Emerging star Becky Lynch now has her own commercial with Head & Shoulders, which most recently used NFL stars Odell Beckham Jr. and Troy Polamalu as spokesmen.

“[Vince] McMahon, he broke down a lot of barriers,” Ross said.

Other promotions are seeing the ripple effect.

“We have definitely had more conversations and closed deals as well as the international distributions,” Gilleland said. “So I think it’s coming around. To what extent, I think it really remains to be seen.”

WWE’s deal with Fox could provide a blueprint for how broadcast partners could maximize their relationships with wrestling companies. Traditionally, the wrestling audience is loyal to their favorite show but they may not stick around or come early to watch a network’s other programming.

Unlike USA Network, Fox owns the rights to numerous major sports properties. It will test that notion in the fall with “Thursday Night Football,” “SmackDown Live” on Friday night, a new Saturday college football show and Sunday NFL games. It allows for numerous opportunities for cross promotion.

“We think [WWE] fits perfectly within that four-day stretch,” said Ullman, who also noted WWE’s popularity on social media. “The fall is really the time, combined with the baseball postseason, where we are kind of at our best. I think it fits really nicely in the block. … I think in other places, WWE wasn’t necessarily the right fit and I think this is a deal where it’s Fox Sports and we’ll treat it like another one of our sports properties.”

Outside WWE, New Japan and Ring of Honor sold out Madison Square Garden for G1 SuperCard in less than 20 minutes. AEW sold out the MGM Grand in Las Vegas in four minutes for is first pay-per-view, Double or Nothing in May, and their YouTube shows “Being The Elite” and “The Road to Double or Nothing” have combined for more than 200,000 views weekly. But there it is still uncertainty how their popularity will translate to television.

“Vince has proven he can deliver year in and year out for the last 30 years or more,” Bischoff said. “A start-up [like AEW], no matter how well funded or thought through, a start-up is still a start-up”

There is also the risk of oversaturating the market both for the audience’s viewing time and disposable income. WWE already produces six hours of live wrestling content a week plus two taped hours of NXT shows and a pay-per-view a month that runs from around four to five hours. Owning subscriptions to WWE Network, New Japan World and Honor Club will cost the consumer around $360 a year before buying any other promotions’ shows.

“Time, or the number of hours that a fan has to watch wrestling, is a little more of a concern because time isn’t a resource that you can increase in total.” Gilleland said. “The VOD aspect of subscription platforms do help stretch this barrier a little.”

Weber has seen a trend to support that claim, saying that 20 percent of the total viewership for a Ring of Honor or Impact pay-per-view on FITE comes after they end, where boxing fans know the result and don’t see the need to watch it.

“People treat it [wrestling] a little differently for what it is,” Weber said. “You have a friend go to a movie and after they told you how great the movie was and everything, you probably still want to see it.”

Where and how fans will be able to view their wrestling brands in the coming years remains to be seen, but the market is there for expanded growth on television and across streaming platforms.

“It’s a hell of a good time to be a wrestling fan,” Ross said. “I think it’s a hell of a good time to be in the wrestling business.”