NO! NO! NO! FALSE ALARM!

[Warner2BruceTD]

SUCK MA DICK, RUDOS!

New Japan announced earlier today that Sunday's G-1 Climax event from the Bodymaker Colosseum in Osaka will be airing live on iPPV. We don't have details, but the show would start at 5 p.m. in Osaka, which would be 4 a.m. on the East Coast of the United States and 1 a.m. on the West Coast, which would be late Saturday night/early Sunday morning.

The lineup for the show is:

Yuji Nagata vs. Yujiro Takahashi

MVP vs. Rush

Hiroyoshi Tenzan vs. Lance Archer

Karl Anderson vs. Shelton Benjamin

Toru Yano vs. Minoru Suzuki

Tetsuya Naito vs. Togi Makabe

Shinsuke Nakamura vs. Kazuchika Okada

Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Naomichi Marufuji

Look at those last two matches....LOOK AT THEM!

I don't care what this cost. This is the best wrestling news in a very long time. If this is even moderately successful, the other Japanese companies will follow suit. Why Gabe doesn't have Drgaon Gate on wwnlive.com already is a mystery to me.

Shinsuke Nakamura vs. Kazuchika Okada

Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Naomichi Marufuji

Shinsuke Nakamura vs. Kazuchika Okada

Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Naomichi Marufuji

Shinsuke Nakamura vs. Kazuchika Okada

Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Naomichi Marufuji

Shinsuke Nakamura vs. Kazuchika Okada

Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Naomichi Marufuji

 

[Warner2BruceTD]

http://live.nicovideo.jp/watch/lv102034202

If you translate the page, it looks like 2000 yen, which I am told is about $20-$25, and you can watch it for a full 24 hours, which is good since it starts at like 3 or 4am.

 

[Warner2BruceTD]

1800 yen if you order early, whatever early means.

 

[Warner2BruceTD]

Playing around with Google Translate

- the create a account bit is in english! everything else is in Japanese.
- you can watch it after the fact up until 23:59p August 12th, though only once. Once you start watching, you have 24 hours to finish it before the ticket expires.
- (I could not figure if watching live counts as the one time or if it's in addition to that.)
- you can buy it for 1800 points ($23 US ) ahead of time or 2000 points ($25)...but you have to buy your points in increments of 500/1000/2000, so you're going to be putting down $25 either way.
- they do accept payment by Visa and Mastercard. I stopped here, am not actually going to buy this particular show, no idea if a region limitation kicks in there or what. There are a whole host of other ways to pay, so I imagine there's some way to make it work.

 

[FedEx227]

I will purchase this.

 

[Warner2BruceTD]

This is Night 4 of the G1 Climax Tournament. Yuji Nagata & Satoshi Kojima have the night off, so that kinda sucks. And of course, no juniors.

Main events are fantastic on paper. The bigger story here, is hopefully they continue this for the big shows, like the G1 Finals, Best of Super Juniors, and all of the PPV's. And of course, hopefully the other companies play copy cat and do it as well.

 

[BigBiss]

Man I'd love to check this out

 

[Bigpapa42]

Gah! Not gonna be able to watch this, which fucking sucks.

 

[Warner2BruceTD]

Eh, false alarm:

Very bad news G1 ippv is only available Japan. Outside Japan can not see.

 

[FedEx227]

1.....2................HE GOT HIM NEW CHAMPION... NO... NO...

 

[EmpireWF]

You were saying about rudos...?

:kuzzy:

 

[KINGOFOOTBALL]

MVP vs. Rush

What are VSNers doing on a Japanese PPV ?

 

[Warner2BruceTD]

Speaking of RUDOS, as they get their lawyers together and prepare to attempt to avoid jail, it came out yesterday that they were taken down because one of the ringleaders' gay lover was the one who dropped dime on them after a lover's spat.

 

[EmpireWF]

What are VSNers doing on a Japanese PPV ?

MVP...and it wouldn't even be a fair fight. :knubb:

 

[Warner2BruceTD]

This thing did 21,615 buys on Japanese iPPV @ $25 per pop. Keep in mind they also do traditional PPV as well (with limited clearance).

That's a monster success, time to take that worldwide. New Japan or Dragon Gate would be the perfect companies to test this out, New Japan because it's so good right now and is a lot like North American wrestling in many ways, Dragon Gate because they obviously have an American branch already and bring something unique style wise to the table, plus have roots in lucha so Mexico could be a potential market.

 

[MvP]

lol I just randomly clicked on this thread and I see that I'm fighting in Japan.

 

[Golden Taters]

MVP...and it wouldn't even be a fair fight. :knubb:

I gotta go with Rush. He is the size of an elephant and has the heart of a lion.

 

[Warner2BruceTD]

* 21,615 people in Japan watched New Japan’s first ever iPPV according to forum regular enuhito, which is a huge success for a first time attempt. New Japan does have hopes to make these iPPVs international eventually and if/when that occurs I’ll be sure to let everyone know.

WrestleMania did 9,000 iPPV buys worldwide.

Keep in mind, this was basically a New Japan house show (albeit a big house show, since it was G1 and had a great double main event), and really the only way to see it was iPPV. Obviously, most people who wanted to see WrestleMania were able to see it on traditional PPV, and the show did about 1.1-1.3 million buys worldwide. So the comparison isn't apples to apples by any stretch. I'm curious to see what kind of business one of these NJPW iPPV's can do in Japan while also airing on PPV. PPV is a niche deal in Japan, only available to upper middle class & wealthy people with pricey satellite packages. So I think it would do similar numbers to what this show did.

Internationally, I think they would be looking at several thousand, between Europe, US, Canada, and Mexico. I think something like WrestleKingdom would do even more. The ability to not be forced to watch live is the key.

This same service that hosted the iPPV hosted several live (and free) All Japan shows earlier this year. They were available internationally. The only thing stopping New Japan from offering this up to us is whoever is in charge of the decision. I think it's inevitable.

 

[Warner2BruceTD]

New Japan did a two show tour in New Jersey in 2011. They brought all of the stars (including Tanahashi), and were co-promoted by Jersey All Pro, a strong local indie that has been around for a decade and knows what they are doing in terms of promoting in the area. They ran the usual Jersey All Pro building in Rahway, New Jersey.

The shows drew what was described to me as "decent peak ROH sized" crowds. So we are talking around 500-600. Clearly nobody flew in (fwiw, I didn't, even though I have family in the area to stay with), and they drew the usual east coast hardcores who go to all of the ROH/EVOLVE/JAP/CZW/etc etc shows.

Notable is that to my knowledge, Jersey All Pro has not run a show since, so clearly "Fat Frank" lost his ass flying over the entire New Japan crew while drawing probably doing under 1,000 for two shows combined.

My point here, is if New Japan can draw ROH sized crowds in an ROH market, and ROH does about 2000 iPPV buys for their shows (pre iPPV disasters, I dont think they do those numbers anymore due to all of the issues), then you would think that New Japan could do in that 1500-2000 ballpark for an iPPV in the U.S. I have no idea if live gate correlates to iPPV at all, but I can say that DGUSA & EVOLVE (especially EVOLVE) draw smaller houses than ROH for house shows, and also draw less than ROH on iPPV (last I heard, they do just under 1,000 for DGUSA shows, in the 700-900 range, and probably way less for EVOLVE). So maybe there is something to it.

If New Japan can do up to 2000 buys in the U.S., plus another couple of thousand from Europe, Mexico, etc, I don't see why they wouldn't do it since making the stream available would not require any if at all additional costs.