March 7, 20205 yr comment_5911955 25 minutes ago, Mad Dog said: I was guessing they were going to want $85 for Mania. UFC moving to ESPN+ and being able to have people pay for PPV in addition to paying for the streaming service made Vince realize he left money on the table.
March 7, 20205 yr comment_5911959 I think it was a smart move at the time because that market was shrinking for them. The problem is they have incredibly devalued PPV since moving to the Network. The cards have gotten lazier and the booking is far worse on the shows. I think if they expect people to pay any amount of money they have to overhaul their booking practices.
March 7, 20205 yr comment_5911961 If they get a deal like UFC got with ESPN, who's to say it wouldn't be the same or worse though? Guaranteed money each month would certainly cause WWE to have even less motivation to spice up the booking. Plus it's been proven time and time again that the whole "PPV is a dying business" concept people were pushing so hard was clearly false. Boxing and UFC prove you can still get millions of buys if you put together a compelling show people want to watch. On a smaller scale, AEW able to break 100,000 was an unheard of number for a non WWE wrestling show until it happened. WWE saw falling PPV numbers and just decided "welp, no one buys PPV anymore, time to come up with a new business model" instead of considering the more likely answer of "we produce too many PPV shows a year and on average we're lucky if more than 3 or 4 are worth a shit".
March 8, 20205 yr comment_5911968 I think if they were willing to cut back to say 6-8 PPVs a year and really build those shows they would see good numbers. Their current model won't work though. They just crap out a PPV show every 3 weeks currently and they have completely burned the audience out. It's the same problem RoH eventually ran into with the DVD model. When people have to start picking and choosing what they can afford you start to lose business.
March 8, 20205 yr comment_5911969 Well best of both worlds would be to sell 4-6 to ESPN or whoever as big time PPVs and then do 4-6 Network specials that are more like Clash Of The Champions level shows on in between months.
March 8, 20205 yr comment_5911970 50 minutes ago, FMKK said: Well best of both worlds would be to sell 4-6 to ESPN or whoever as big time PPVs and then do 4-6 Network specials that are more like Clash Of The Champions level shows on in between months. Except I don't think they remember how to book like that anymore, because everything feels exactly the same. Raw, Smackdown, Backlash, Wrestlemania..... they just regurgitate the same matches with the same people, over and over again. Why would anyone pay 60 or 70 bucks for a show headlined by two guys who have already wrestled each other 6 times on Raw in the last 3 months.
March 8, 20205 yr comment_5911972 It's the eternal treadmill. It feels like almost everything on the shows are filler, even the PPVs. It's turned into, how can we get out of providing resolution to this match or feud so we can get another month out of the same matches and promos. People also won't pay money for a show when they run half of that card as rematches for free on TV within a week.
March 8, 20205 yr comment_5911974 1 hour ago, Blehschmidt said: Except I don't think they remember how to book like that anymore, because everything feels exactly the same. Raw, Smackdown, Backlash, Wrestlemania..... they just regurgitate the same matches with the same people, over and over again. Why would anyone pay 60 or 70 bucks for a show headlined by two guys who have already wrestled each other 6 times on Raw in the last 3 months. Agreed. Even when they have 6 or 8 weeks to build to a PPV (normally Mania or Summerslam), it's the same old shit but with a couple nostalgia acts to fool people into thinking shit is special. I don't believe if they scale back on PPVs it would make much of a difference. If anything, they'll continue to burn big matches on TV because that's also were they money is
March 8, 20205 yr comment_5911978 I don't think the relative success of bigger UFC and boxing shows is really a relevant comparison to where the WWE is today. With UFC and boxing, while there were down periods, the model has always been that a bigger show is going to cost at least $50 in the US and, if I'm not mistaken, for the very biggest matches, closer to $100. The WWE, meanwhile, is not only putting out a terrible, repetitive product featuring less and less actual stars, but spent 5 years training the audience to think that their biggest shows of the year were worth $9.99 and that because the Network is available 24/7 and the best bits are typically put on YouTube, you don't actually have to watch any of - RAW, SD, NXT, PPVs - live. I just don't see the WWE having much success trying to put the genie back in the bottle. Sure, ESPN+ giving them a huge rights fee will offset any financial loss but I wouldn't expect the actual number of PPV purchases to reach the same level (1 million or more for Mania) as they were in the pre-Network era. I just don't see a million people agreeing to pay 6-7 times what they were spending a year earlier on the kind of shows the WWE puts on these days.
March 8, 20205 yr comment_5911980 Not even that. Pre Network they were doing close to 300-350k for Summerlam and Survivor Series and 450k for the Rumble. I don't think they would come close to that if they sold the big four to ESPN+ or another platform.
March 8, 20205 yr comment_5911984 5 hours ago, Blehschmidt said: Except I don't think they remember how to book like that anymore, because everything feels exactly the same. Raw, Smackdown, Backlash, Wrestlemania..... they just regurgitate the same matches with the same people, over and over again. Why would anyone pay 60 or 70 bucks for a show headlined by two guys who have already wrestled each other 6 times on Raw in the last 3 months. Well yes, the real ideal would be if Vince wasn't completely brain dead and remembered how to book wrestling. Ain't happening of course.
Create an account or sign in to comment