The General Wrestling Thread

[Warner2BruceTD]

Alvarez & Meltzer are reporting that you must commit to rolling six month cycles, meaning if you sign up, you get billed $9.99 per month for 6 months, then you renew for another six months, and so on. If you cancel, whatever remains on your contract gets billed all at once.

In other words, you can not buy single months. So no cherry picking PPV's.

 

[Warner2BruceTD]

1.5% of the library will be available at launch. They claim to own 150,000 total hours of content.

 

[Warner2BruceTD]

 

[Kuzzy Powers]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTLV-4L1lDM

 

[FedEx227]

This year's Mania is a hook to get people to buy, and they are requiring a 6-month commitment to get it. So they are still (kind of) getting their $60 for it.

Next year, they are yanking Mania off of the app. The rest will stay, and yes, it's a dice roll.

They are getting about 100,000 domestic buys per show, and the break even on the network is 800k-1m subscribers. That 100k base is obviously buying this. But where are they adding 700-900k buyers?

By and large what we've seen in this last half of 2013 is what you can expect from PPVs in the future. The goal isn't to make you buy them anymore, there will no longer be an incentive to build towards a engaging anticipated match because, it doesn't really matter. Those types of things may happen organically but the TV and how the company operates creatively is going to completely change.

 

[PP]

I think this is a great move by WWE. They only get about 40% off of a PPV event anyways. That's like 18$. Factor in people who don't buy every PPV and it probably evens out quicker than you think. 1 subscriber gets you 60$/6months but they are banking on people enjoying this service and doing the whole $120 a year subscription. Their line of thinking is a more consistent revenue stream by using their vast video library. A lot of their demographic is in the age where streaming is becoming king.

Vince is a very smart man and has very smart people working for him. This service is priced right and HBO should take notice.

 

[Leftwich]

Mae Young died today...surprised it wasnt posted in here.

Unfortunately here whole career will be summed up by giving birth to a hand.

Edit: Correction, not dead, gravely ill.

 

[JayDizzle]

No context, just funny.

 

[LiquidLarry2GhostWF]

They'll eventually be glorified RAW's. As in, they won't even attempt to make them special at all. They aren't going to waste valuable TV time pushing shows that aren't driving the bus.

Shit is evolving before our eyes. It used to be TV setting up the house show business, then TV setting up PPV. Soon it will be TV as the #1 priority.

This is a bold move. PPV is dying aside from Mania. Vince is gambling by giving up his $20 (or so) split on traditional PPV in hopes that enough people paying $10 will make up the difference by eliminating the middle man. A big, big key is the next TV deal.

You should really check out Chris Harrington's stuff on our site if you are interested in all this. He has his finger on the pulse of it all as much as anybody: http://www.voicesofwrestling.com/author/chris-harrington/

They will still want to put some emphasis on the pay per views...

I'd say they would be akin to some of the early In Your House PPVs. Low key type fare, but matches still with a little gusto.

 

[LiquidLarry2GhostWF]

Just a regular schmoe here...

Currently, the WWE gets $0 from me.

I will pay my $60 upon launch and will probably pay my $60 every 6-months. There is going to be enough of a library and $10 for the monthly PPV + the original content (surely, NXT is getting off of hulu) is a steal, in my opinion.

$10 for a full HD stream of the show (will get sent to my TV anyway)...easy money from me.

:kanye:

 

[Warner2BruceTD]

Just a regular schmoe here...

Currently, the WWE gets $0 from me.

I will pay my $60 upon launch and will probably pay my $60 every 6-months. There is going to be enough of a library and $10 for the monthly PPV + the original content (surely, NXT is getting off of hulu) is a steal, in my opinion.

$10 for a full HD stream of the show (will get sent to my TV anyway)...easy money from me.

:kanye:

I was thinking about this last night. The last time I spent $1 on WWE was Money in the Bank 2011. Before that, it was buying the Bret Hart 3-disc set whatever year that was. So we're talking like roughly $60 in the last decade.

They'll get that every 6 months from me now.

What's weird, is TNA gets more money out of me. I have three old TNA PPV's on my DVR (Destination X '11 & '12, and Hardcore Justice when they did the ECW gimmick). Plus, I bought a ticket to an Impact taping last year.

DGUSA/Evolve used to get my money for every iPPV. Not anymore, although I did buy tomorrow's show to sample the HD feed, and will buy Sat & Sun if all goes well.

ROH gets my money whenever they come to Texas, which has been twice since I moved here.

New Japan gets the most money out of me. I alternate buying the shows with a friend and we share passwords. We buy every one of them and will do so until they cool off. We do this even though we know we can see it for free a few days later, because it's so good that we feel it's worth supporting and they've earned our money. Plus since it's so good we prefer to watch live.

Dragon Gate, same thing. The iPPV's are more infrequent, but are all instant purchases.

NWA has gotten me to buy tickets three or four times in the last year.

Inspire Pro obviously gets my $12 every time out, except when Biss yanks me from the line and won't let me pay.

Wrestle-1 got my money for the one off iPPV, and the show was really good, so they would get more if the ran another one.

Meltzer gets my $10.99 per month or whatever he charges.

So yeah, WWE was easily getting the least of my wrestling budget, but moving forward only New Japan will likely see more of my cash. They need to hook around 800,000 people like me & larry who were previously spending zero.

 

[Warner2BruceTD]

 

[Ravin]

Almost makes me think they should go back to the old 5-6 PPV system in the old days. 13 right now is way to much. I remember watching old matches from PPV's in in 2011-12 and remember Cole saying "We'll be back in 2 weeks on PPV" and you are just like "wtf are you doing?"

Almost works perfectly really.
January - Royal Rumble
Late March/early April - Wrestlemania
May- Bring back King of the Ring!!
July- Summerslam
September - ????
November - Survivor Series

With the focus now to TV, you can run that kind of schedule, plus, lets face it, the world is going to App based services like the WWE Network, and the UFC one, and I suspect soon a lot more will be getting involved in that. If WWE wants, run smaller "PPV's" exclusive to the App, in the form of a Main Event show. Don't peak feuds on the App stuff, but just do it to provide content. Obviously taping prior to it ruins it a little, so if they could run them live, even better, just don't go all out on them like you would a PPV. Basically a 'supershow' where could see a world title change or something, and gets them off this insane 13 PPV nonsense.

I'm the person the WWE is trying to target with this. I'm a very casual fan, who watches RAW (I never watch Smackdown) and I stream my PPV's, or watch them later in the week if I miss them. I won't shill out $60 a month for a PPV, because I'm not that into it, but $10 a month for a PPV and a bunch of content, I am actually considering. I basically don't watch TV at all except for the AMC/HBO type shows (stream them online as well, don't use Netflix), and when I watch the one episode of 10, I don't have much else to watch, so going back to watch wrestling is a good waste of time, and well worth the $10.


Except none of this matters to me at all, since it will be a year before I can buy this service in Canada. :suicide:

I'm sure a lot of this stuff will show up on other sites in no time at all.

 

[Warner2BruceTD]

Interesting thought on eventually scaling back on (what we now call) PPV's. That would have to come slowly though, as a major selling point here is getting the PPV's as part of the package.

Also, PPV won't be completely dead by March. The network will cannobolize buys for sure, but until the trickle down to a meaningless level, they'll still do strong builds (yeah, yeah, I know, it THEY think the builds are strong) to keep them special and maximize buys. But once they eliminate PPV, those shows will be deemphasized on terms of importance in a heartbeat. At that point, yeah, I can see moving to a scaled back model for sure, even though that did nothing for TNA (which may be an insignificant comparison anyway)

 

[IamMedellin]

havent watched Raw since....week 2 of the authority angle?..when Edge was on..

Ive caught bits and pieces on youtube but I generally have developed an apathy for the product, that said...I do watch Mania every year and If i could get the Rumble too...

well why not, will this work like netflix where I can stream the show at any time after it 1st airs? if so...fine...Ill pay $60

 

[Spidey]

Could not agree more with the last couple posts. I haven't paid a dime since Rock/Cena 1, mainly just for the Rock's initial return. Before that, nothing in like 5-7 years maybe more. But I'll definitely go in for at least the first 6 months. If the product is good, I'll keep going. If they start pulling some PPVs off the network to make them "more important" or exclusive events and they are actually more important, I'm more likely to buy them now with this scenario then I was in the past.

I don't follow quite as close as the regulars in this thread, but if they went to having monthly or every couple weeks having a glorified raw that only the network gets and then having 5-6 major PPVs that you actually have to buy in the future, Im much more likely to get those as long as they truly feel special. So now instead of getting nothing from me, they have roped me in to $120 per year as well as potentially another $60 x (5-6) per year. Hell, even if only half of them are important, they are still getting far more than they have gotten from me in a very long time.

If they do this right, I think they will do well. The big thing is, in the future, they need to make the actual PPVs important and special. Whether they can do that or not, remains to be seen. I have my doubts, but I'm hopeful.

 

[JimLeavy59]

TNA wasted the prime years of Samoa Joe's career.

 

[JayDizzle]

TNA wasted the prime years of Everyone NOT from the WWE's career.

FTFY.

 

[Warner2BruceTD]

Why have I not been following Missy on twitter all of this time?

 

[LiquidLarry2GhostWF]

Missy Hyatt has been a good follow. She's ridiculously hilarious.