tbarrie Posted October 10, 2023 Share Posted October 10, 2023 20 hours ago, Cobra Commander said: Distinguishing yourself from the WWE in 2023 is probably a little harder than it was in 2019 because the WWE is a hotter product now. Couldn't agree more. Certainly neither AEW's booking nor Tony Khan's other business decisions have been flawless, but I believe the biggest problem AEW has businesswise is that WWE (reportedly) stopped sucking once Vince was forced out. WWE still has a massive advantage in terms of general recognition; it's got to be extremely hard to gain market share as long as the juggernaut is putting out a decent product. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cobra Commander Posted October 10, 2023 Share Posted October 10, 2023 6 minutes ago, tbarrie said: I believe the biggest problem AEW has businesswise is that WWE (reportedly) stopped sucking once Vince was forced out Some of the change in WWE quality happened long before Vince departed. Roman turning heel and getting himself established was a big piece for the WWE shaking away some of the discontent from the years of them trying to make Roman the Superman babyface. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Raziel Posted October 10, 2023 Share Posted October 10, 2023 I'm more rolling my eyes at Tony spazing out because of a Nick fucking Housman "report". At least Housman has 1 source. It's Punk, but it's still a source. At least it's a step up from Slice. Fuck, now I want someone to snitchTweet Tony a Slice "report" and him lose his shit. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HarryArchieGus Posted October 10, 2023 Share Posted October 10, 2023 15 minutes ago, tbarrie said: Couldn't agree more. Certainly neither AEW's booking nor Tony Khan's other business decisions have been flawless, but I believe the biggest problem AEW has businesswise is that WWE (reportedly) stopped sucking once Vince was forced out. WWE still has a massive advantage in terms of general recognition; it's got to be extremely hard to gain market share as long as the juggernaut is putting out a decent product. Could be simply WWE getting hot. It's definitely part of it. I'm sure that's true of many of the obsessed upon metrics. To me, WWE is still one flavour all the time with mostly awful promos and sub-film student storytelling. One of the bigger issues I see is AEW burning out the audience with far too much television. I mean how much of the audience is watching 5 hours a week? And if you aren't, are you following with the same intrigue as when it was 2 hours (with an easy to miss b show?) Further, not much discussed, but when speaking of the live gates, I think critics are overlooking a few things. One, their best shows, see PPVs, are fucking marathons that completely burnout the crowds. That degree of exhaustion is going to be considered by those who are not so 'hardcore' the next time around. I know some of the casuals I've sat with are wary of a return to AEW live. Two, I believe they damaged their drawing power significantly with those awful Live Rampages - 3 plus hours of Dark squashes and a middling Rampage. See also these marathon ROH tapings with Collision sandwiched in the middle. I don't think it's a healthy model for bringing ppl back. Three, and probably most importantly, they jacked the prices to where these middling attendances are likely making the company as much as they had been when they were selling or nearly selling out. I could be wrong on that last line - maybe somebody has an eye on the gate receipts to refute that. 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
For Great Justice Posted October 10, 2023 Share Posted October 10, 2023 I, for one, am going to love the nostalgia associated with flipping back and forth. It gets me every time. Even that first live Monday Impact show with all the shitty Hogan stuff got me for the same reason. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cobra Commander Posted October 10, 2023 Share Posted October 10, 2023 TBS and USA are on back to back HD channels on my system. USA 195 and TBS 196. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zendragon Posted October 10, 2023 Share Posted October 10, 2023 Tony Khan grew up with money, and I don't think he realizes that everyone can afford to go to every show. And this hurts the gate when he runs the same markets that he runs over and over. To answer a question in the I.P. Freely thread Full Gear/Collision is being held at The Forum but the go home Dynamite is being held in a very nice minor league hockey stadium in Ontario (almost the bucks home town) basically a C- Market in Socal 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Raziel Posted October 10, 2023 Share Posted October 10, 2023 30 minutes ago, Cobra Commander said: TBS and USA are on back to back HD channels on my system. USA 195 and TBS 196. I'm actually in the air coming home while both shows are airing and my flight has DirecTV. I'm wondering how far apart USA and TBS are gonna be. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cobra Commander Posted October 10, 2023 Share Posted October 10, 2023 (edited) One thing that TK can’t really control unless he announces his show second is the possibilities of running a market “too close” to when the WWE runs it. Like tonight’s Dynamite is in the same market as a WWE House show that’ll be on Saturday and back in March he ran this building 5 days after a Smackdown in the same market. Different buildings but the same metro area. Now I don’t know which promotion moved first but if it happens enough times, it’ll raise eyebrows. But it’s more subtle than when the WWF would run marathon shows the night before a NWA show to mess with the switchover Edited October 10, 2023 by Cobra Commander 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stefanie Sparkleface Posted October 10, 2023 Share Posted October 10, 2023 39 minutes ago, zendragon said: Tony Khan grew up with money, and I don't think he realizes that everyone can afford to go to every show. And this hurts the gate when he runs the same markets that he runs over and over. It also is a matter that, for a lot of people, wrestling is a special attraction. Like yes, the Jim Cornettes of the world may bleat that territories used to run the same town each week and draw 8,000 every time, but that was in the era when you had three TV stations (and maybe a couple of independent UHF stations if you had a good antenna), no VCR, no cable, et cetera. Peoples' viewing habits aren't the same anymore, and unless they're outright obsessed with watching every second of footage they can find, there really isn't a need to go to every show, watch every moment of TV, et cetera. 6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zendragon Posted October 10, 2023 Share Posted October 10, 2023 I refer to this as the Netflix Effect. in the late 70's Quiet Riot and Twisted Sister could draw huge crowds with out even having record deals due to the fact that back then there where such limited entertainment options with out leaving your home 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Godfrey Posted October 11, 2023 Share Posted October 11, 2023 I dunno, if you had the right company with the right roster and a low enough price point I think wrestling could easily be 'must see' again. Live events are always better than anything on a screen and while WWE or AEW are nailing their big shows I don't think either is leveraging regular touring particularly well 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cobra Commander Posted October 11, 2023 Share Posted October 11, 2023 on the concept of touring.. there are 210 TV markets in the USA, from New York City (7.7M TV homes) to Glendive, MT (3920 TV homes) The middle point of the 2022-23 Nielsen DMAs is Tallahassee, FL (300k TV homes) and Lincoln, NE (292k TV homes). Meaning there are 100+ TV markets smaller than Tallahassee/Lincoln, and on one hand, it'd make more sense to have untelevised events in those markets than TV events. On the other hand, if you go to Erie, PA (152K TV homes) or Albany, GA (145K TV homes) for a house show, you have to make money somewhere since the reputation of house shows is that they're money losers. Another upside to running some live untelevised events is finding places that are good enough to visit for TV later which you might need one of these days. Anyways, you gotta make money somewhere to make up for when you lose money so. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Just Dave Posted October 11, 2023 Share Posted October 11, 2023 I just wanted to state again how happy I am for Big Bill. Dude is just crushing life right now. Makes me happy… 12 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt D Posted October 11, 2023 Share Posted October 11, 2023 Related: we’re hit the point where I would rather have Lexie than Renee in a backstage segment. She’s killing it too. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ramo2653 Posted October 12, 2023 Share Posted October 12, 2023 On 10/10/2023 at 12:41 PM, TheVileOne said: I guess because NXT had its taped episodes streaming at 8:00 pm on Wednesday nights originally? But I mean that was WWE Network only. All we heard about back then was how much money NXT was losing before the USA move. They hardly *owned* Wednesdays. But people did watch it at 8 or right after. The threads were pretty hot back in those days and didn't have a lot of "oh I watched it 3 days after it aired, let me add my comments. Granted diehards are not the same as the rando who sees it while scrolling his channels but there's some overlap. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Octopus Posted October 12, 2023 Share Posted October 12, 2023 Ugh. I’m gonna say it. Danielson vs Sabre jr is maybe my favorite match of all time. I know I know. Normally I’m harder to derp recency bias, but hot dang I’m still really enjoying thinking about and watching this match. 9 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
twiztor Posted October 12, 2023 Share Posted October 12, 2023 On 10/10/2023 at 4:32 PM, Sparkleface said: It also is a matter that, for a lot of people, wrestling is a special attraction. Like yes, the Jim Cornettes of the world may bleat that territories used to run the same town each week and draw 8,000 every time, but that was in the era when you had three TV stations (and maybe a couple of independent UHF stations if you had a good antenna), no VCR, no cable, et cetera. Peoples' viewing habits aren't the same anymore, and unless they're outright obsessed with watching every second of footage they can find, there really isn't a need to go to every show, watch every moment of TV, et cetera. 100% this. On 10/10/2023 at 7:53 PM, Cobra Commander said: on the concept of touring.. there are 210 TV markets in the USA, from New York City (7.7M TV homes) to Glendive, MT (3920 TV homes) The middle point of the 2022-23 Nielsen DMAs is Tallahassee, FL (300k TV homes) and Lincoln, NE (292k TV homes). Meaning there are 100+ TV markets smaller than Tallahassee/Lincoln, and on one hand, it'd make more sense to have untelevised events in those markets than TV events. On the other hand, if you go to Erie, PA (152K TV homes) or Albany, GA (145K TV homes) for a house show, you have to make money somewhere since the reputation of house shows is that they're money losers. Another upside to running some live untelevised events is finding places that are good enough to visit for TV later which you might need one of these days. Anyways, you gotta make money somewhere to make up for when you lose money so. simple solution: stop touring the same towns over and over again. If there's 210 TV markets in the US, why do they constantly revisit the same places within the same calendar year? I get a couple stops in the larger cities (Chicago/NY/LA), but with 52 weeks of touring, 10% of that should not be in Chicago (5 stops in 2022- not counting multiple shows the same week). I don't want to say they're killing the town, but it definitely stops being a "special attraction" if they'll be back in 3 months or less. 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cobra Commander Posted October 12, 2023 Share Posted October 12, 2023 36 minutes ago, twiztor said: stop touring the same towns over and over again. If there's 210 TV markets in the US, why do they constantly revisit the same places within the same calendar year? When asked why he robbed banks, Sutton simply replied, “Because that's where the money is.” It's sort of a paradox. You run some places because you know you'll be able to make money there but you don't know about lesser known places, but you don't really know about how you run in some places until you run them 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zimbra Posted October 12, 2023 Share Posted October 12, 2023 Tony announced on twitter that next week on Rampage we're getting Rocky Romero vs Mistico(!) 3 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eivion Posted October 12, 2023 Share Posted October 12, 2023 What magic did Rocky perform to make that happen? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MoeCristyV.1.6 Posted October 12, 2023 Share Posted October 12, 2023 Where is Los Ingobernables? All that vignettes and.... What was the point? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Raziel Posted October 12, 2023 Share Posted October 12, 2023 7 minutes ago, MoeCristyV.1.6 said: Where is Los Ingobernables? All that vignettes and.... What was the point? We'll get back to them in December, maybe. 1 2 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MoeCristyV.1.6 Posted October 12, 2023 Share Posted October 12, 2023 They should do something with Lil Bow Wow next. Just go through all the storylines Cargill started and never finished. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
odessasteps Posted October 12, 2023 Share Posted October 12, 2023 So, does he have deals with AAA and CMLL, or is that somehow a New Japan brokered deal? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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