winston
wcw failed to adapt overtime i think ecw possibly couldve been more sucessful if they had gotten better tv slots
Tmess2
There are two parts to management -- financial management vs. quality of product.
WCW's had the advantage and disadvantage of being part of a big corporation -- Turner Entertainment. After Time Warner acquired Turner, WCW went from being an ego project of Ted Turner to just another corporate asset. Eventually, Time Warner decided that -- given the value of the asset -- the return on investment was just not enough to continue operations. In other words, they were not willing to continue to spend what it would take to be competitive with WWE. What did WCW in ultimately was the quality of product. After Bischoff's initial success in making a product that could draw fans away for WWE, WCW simply proved unable to develop and keep young talent or make good use of the talent that it lured away from WWE. What ultimately killed WCW was that it ratings weren't good enough for Time Warner to be willing to give a TV contract to whomever purchased WCW from Time Warner which made it attractive only to WWE.
ECW was more a matter of misfortune. The network that was showing ECW managed to get the rights to WWE Raw. One of the terms of that deal was cancelling ECW. ECW was unable to find another network. And without a primetime TV contract, it did not have the reserves to continue.
Anonymous
ecw moreso than wcw
Candle
They're both bad in different ways. While ECW hemorrhaged money, sponsors, television, and talent throughout it's Extreme existence, they were good at building rivalries and telling stories even when all Heyman was given to write with was the broken crayons of the wrestling industry.
WCW dominated WWE in the ratings for 83 weeks, did the unimaginable and stole true top talent away from WWE, a feat no other major organization has been capable of doing before or since. Was the booking bad for a vast majority of it's existence regardless to whom was at the helm, with serial offenders like Bischoff, Russo, or Jim Herd? Yeah, but for at least two of those bookers people watched their crash television and lapped it up like it was Champaign instead of garbage water. They also paid too much for talent that was barely even used and didn't do well with pushing younger talent.
It all really boils down to what you mean by 'poorly managed'. Heyman did well with booking feuds, creating moments, and marketing his programming to a niche audience that loved it while WCW seemingly tried to do everything within their power to alienate fans and cause the economic bubble of wrestling to pop with lofty contracts for enhancement talents. Considering the amount of fans that disappeared once WCW went out of business, which was nearly half of the professional wrestling fanbase, I'd argue that ECW was more poorly ran and it all boils down to money. Paul didn't save money to keep his talents around, he didn't invest money into making the product look better, he didn't get along with the network execs and sponsors, and probably ran up copyright strikes by using licensed music. Paul has a great mind for booking, but he's far and away from being a shrewd or prudent businessman. The end all be all answer to this question is who lasted longer? and the answer is WCW. If each were reopened tomorrow with the same assets that they had in the beginning, WCW would still outlast ECW, keep television longer than ECW, and draw a bigger audience than ECW. Whether you liked one's television product over the other, the irrefutable fact of the matter is ECW was the more poorly managed promotion.
Adam
WCW was more poorly managed but at least at one point wcw was well managed. ECW financially was never well managed. ECWs biggest strength was also it's biggest weakness... Paul heyman