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SMACKDOWN LIVE TO FOX, OCTOBER 2019


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1 hour ago, Greggulator said:

Stock is up over 6%. I haven't seen details on the deal in terms of money, but haven't been paying attention. Stock is up 174% for the year. Company now has a value of over $4.6 billion. 

I'm going over their last quarterly earnings review right now. Net profit for its media division (rights fees, ad sales, network subscriptions) was up by 136% from the previous year. 

For all of the criticism Vince/WWE takes for the books and etc., the company sure knows how to make a lot of money. 

Why didn't you make a bunch of money on this? 

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19 minutes ago, Matt D said:

So, obviously it's like when Mr. Fuji sold the contracts of Warlord and Barbarian to fund the Orient Express. 

That was a shrewd deal if Fuji only wanted to make money. Imagine the money saved not feeding those two. Meanwhile the Express got an MSG title match and worked the Rockers at Mania.  Fuji was a shrewd business man and a great cook. 

 

 

1 hour ago, Craig H said:

It's possible, especially with promotion on MLB and NFL games. Haven't networks tried and failed for a long time now to boost Friday numbers?

Smackdown got very big numbers for the CW on Fridays. 

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I made an argument last week that WWE not doing anything and having some success was worse than trying to do anything and having MORE success. 

Obviously, given the scale and scope of this, I'm wrong. Doing nothing and having a massive amount of success is better than doing something for slightly more success. 

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1 hour ago, RIPPA said:

God with all this money - the Main Event for Mania 2020 is so going to be Hologram Undertaker vs. Hologram Andre the Giant

Good chance it would still be better than the Brock/Roman F-5 fest from the last WM

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6 minutes ago, Matt D said:

Obviously, given the scale and scope of this, I'm wrong. Doing nothing and having a massive amount of success is better than doing something for slightly more success. 

I hope you like Riott Squad vs. Sasha, Bayley,  Natalya  matches. 

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3 minutes ago, Niners Fan in CT said:

I hope you like Riott Squad vs. Sasha, Bayley,  Natalya  matches. 

I like the 6 discs of the DVDVR PR set I still haven't watched yet (and even just within the WWE window, I haven't seen those ASW episodes or all of the early 80s Mid-South or Mid-Atlantic). I'm good. Don't worry about me. Think of the children! 

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42 minutes ago, Raziel said:

It's funny, that the WWE is getting billion dollar TV deals when a large portion of it's fans are as vocally displeased with the product.

 

37 minutes ago, Niners Fan in CT said:

And with this,   (not that anyone could before)  nobody can tell Vince a motherfuckin thing.   Don't like Roman?  There is the door. 

Yeah, bizarrely, these gigantic tv deals make me even less interested in the product.  Vince has somehow created a product that is incredibly successful for reasons that have nothing to do with wrestling.   Attendance down and you're tarping off part of the arena so it doesn't look so obvious on TV?  Who cares?  Company enormously profitable.  Booking stale and people booing your babyface ace every night?  Vince can hold up one of the tv contracts and say "I was right all along."  Ratings a fraction of what they used to be and nosedive every time there's some competition from a real sport of whatever?  So what, TV money is flowing in by the river-ful.

It seems ridiculous to complain about the product.  It even seems pointless to take any risks or spend any assets to try to improve it.  How WWE does as a wrestling company is almost besides the point.  Apparently. Vince is completely right about everything and we are completely wrong.

I dunno.,  My interest has been flagging for awhile now.  I'm just glad NBA is on tonight and I won't debate turning on RAW.

Meltzer's head is going to explode over this.  If I was Bryan, I wouldn't stand too close to Dave.

 

 

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38 minutes ago, Raziel said:

It's funny, that the WWE is getting billion dollar TV deals when a large portion of it's fans are as vocally displeased with the product.

It's the ultimate example of the wrestling bubble. What wrestling fans don't like about the WWE is so picayune and minute to what TV executives and big investors care about. Something like "Roman Reigns not winning the title" or "they really screwed up Bray Wyatt" really does not matter to a Fox executive. At all. What matters to that level of decision maker are the millions of people watching the live programming of an entertainment company that has a decades long track record of success.  

The vocal fans can be displeased all they want. They're still buying the product and going on four-day vacation packages on Royale Rumble weekend. 

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As long as people keep paying and tuning in, there's zero impetitus for Vince to change anything.  Add that Vince has enough money to squash any competition that might spring up, and we are where we are.  And Gregg's right, people bitching about the product and booing Reigns vocally are the same ones that buy 4 day Rumble and Mania packages, so why the hell is there a reason to change?

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Also: Live attendance in many mediums is down. Movie theater attendance his a near 30-year low last year. Baseball attendance sucks this year. NFL attendance was down in a lot of markets. People not going to live events isn't because they aren't watching the WWE. It's because they'd rather watch it inside the comfort of their own home on the subscription service they purchased. That's just how Americans consume entertainment now. (And Vince was ahead of that curve.)

If you were to go back to the deepest corners of the IWC 20 years ago or so, I would very much venture to guess that there were a lot more "Vince is ruining wrestling!" than "Holy crap, Austin vs. Foley was awesome tonight!" posts. I have no proof of that statement beyond 20 years of a wasted life.

Vince heads a ship that just inked a $1 billion TV deal that now puts it on the same map as the NFL and MLB.  He's obviously doing something right. And maybe -- just maybe -- it's the product.
 

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6 minutes ago, Craig H said:

I wonder what any of this means for the Network if it's even impacted at all. 

The WWE now gets to advertise its product on the same network that broadcasts the NFL. It's the biggest score the network has ever had.

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My suggestion is that people find things to like, that they watch it on their terms and not WWE's. Don't watch a three hour Raw live religiously every week. Pick and choose. Watch house show fancams. Find stuff on the network you like. Get whatever joy you can from WWE while avoiding what grief you might have. Because they're set with or without you.

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1 minute ago, Matt D said:

My suggestion is that people find things to like, that they watch it on their terms and not WWE's. Don't watch a three hour Raw live religiously every week. Pick and choose. Watch house show fancams. Find stuff on the network you like. Get whatever joy you can from WWE while avoiding what grief you might have. Because they're set with or without you.

Which is another part of their business plan that works so well. I'm sure they get more than anyone else that watching five hours of weekly programming plus the periodic Sunday event is really friggin' hard. But they have all sorts of ways for anyone to keep up with the current programming. If you miss this week's event live, then you have more than enough ways to keep up and get up to speed when you can watch later on. That also helps with their social media views, too. I haven't watched Raw or Smackdown in months due to just the general hecticness of my life. But I am pretty caught up on who is doing what just watch watching via Twitter. 

They always talk up social media in their investor reports (and the live show). There was a question once from an analyst when I was working on my MBA project about what that even mattered since they don't make money off of it. And it was exactly for that reason: It keeps people invested in the brand. And they also used the research they got from social media to see they had a burgeoning audience in India with a rapidly developing middle class. 

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2 minutes ago, HumanChessgame said:

Meh.  As someone who doesn't have cable I'm ok with this.  Does people DVRing the show still count as a view?

If it's within seven days, yes (assuming it's a measured house)

Nielsen breaks down live, three day and seven day numbers. The original broadcast viewers are by far the most valuable though, since they can't ff the commercials

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