Generally wrestling shows don't cause a mass exodus with one specific event no matter how silly. WCW didn't lose 1/3 of viewers at the Fingerpoke of Doom (the rating was the exact same the next week and higher a month later) and 1/3 with Arquette winning the belt. Bad wrestling shows lose viewers slowly over time with different (often seemingly minor) events apparently being the breaking point for different people.

It's true that the vast majority of people who rage quit aren't actually gone (yet), but as moorobot said, incidents that leave fans dissatisfied can just be one more step toward phasing out. Have said it before, but if not for this board I doubt I'd have stayed anchored to this era of wrestling for this long. Take away a community to snark on the bad stuff with, and the entertainment value of following the main WWE product gets pretty grim.

LOL imjosh must have posted 87 times in the Royal Rumble that he was canceling and then that he in fact had canceled, then the next night he was posting about the podcast on WWEN.

El Kabong is 100% right, and I can't imagine anyone who actually enjoys professional wrestling not being able to get $10 value out of WWEN even if they hate/don't watch the current product.

The Network has had months where over 100,000 people cancelled but I doubt January ended up way out of line with previous numbers.

From a business standpoint, Vince is probably right. The cancel threats aren't something that the investors should worry about. Most are empty, those that aren't won't/didn't happen in meaningful numbers. Because he's Vince he talks about it in the most Vince way possible.

I remember Vince once saying something along the lines of "You should never give the fans everything they want, you always need to keep things in reserve."

I think that philosophy could well be behind recent booking decisions. If you give everyone their dream Wrestlemania, what else would there be left to hold fans interest? Business would probably tank in the forthcoming months. In that sense, Vince is probably right to keep rationing fans 'mark out moments', otherwise the show would simply burn out.

Payoffs and Heat must be kept in perfect balance. Too much of either and the wheels come off. It's like some kind of mythical Buddhist law of the universe. Heat-generating booking is a necessary evil. Vince is actually a deeply misunderstood Ra's al Ghul type character saving the fans from themselves.

I think it's not just that fans aren't getting what they want, it's that fans are actively being given things they don't want that are bad, and nonsensical stories that are dropped/picked up randomly. It's very insulting to the audience.


Like it's one thing for a fan favorite to lose, it's another for him to not even be given a match while simultaneously some other random guy is getting pushed to the moon.

Another thing, though, is that I don't even think the wwe has any long term plans. To contrast how it used to be run, the main event at wrestlemania 4 set up the main event at wrestlemania 5.

(Macho winning the belt, hulk being weirdly overly supportive and touchy with Elizabeth in the celebration... Then next year it's hulk vs macho in the main event).

Crowds mostly being dead or defiant likely means smaller crowds in the long run. I might be more worried about the dead crowds because at least the defiant crowds are showing a passion for the product; I'm not sure how much longer people who don't care will keep shelling money out. And I would be more worried about Raw ratings and standard PPV buys and ticket revenue than Network subscriptions because NXT is so good and on the network.

They said this year's TLC was the lowest bought PPV in wwe/wwf history, with I think like 31k buys.

Edit to add: yeah the crowd thing is a real problem. The wwe is like heavy metal in that no matter what, there's a small built in audience that will always tune in, whether to complain or celebrate the product. But if they want to get more mainstream, they need to make the product entertaining enough, cool enough, and fun enough that the millions of casuals won't simply stop watching.

Cause really that's the fear-- not the die hards canceling the network (because they actually won't and there's really not that many of them anyway), it's the borderline fans simply walking away, not out of spite, but because they simply aren't interested.

Is WWE in trouble when Vince dies?

No way. He's holding it back.

Umm- y'all get why PPV buys are down- right?

The problem with the "they're just holding back theory" is that they obviously, based on their actions, actively don't have the first ****ing clue what the fans want* and haven't for over a year now, so how can they be holding it back?

I think the biggest problem is they can no longer control the message and MAKE the fans want what they want them to want. I don't know whether that's booking related, or what, but it seems like it was so much easier 20 years ago to just make the fans like or hate somebody all of a sudden.

By the way, the really obvious solution to "what happens when you give the fans what they want" is "then you develop something or someone that they'll want even more". Plus the fans have short attention spans anyway if you actually satisfy them.


*which is actually a pretty remarkable thing given social media/etc.

Vince is the glue that holds WWE together. Technically it's already a publically traded corporation with multiple shareholders and a board of directors, but Vince is the de-facto leader. He's the Captain in Plato's allegory of the ship. When Vince goes suddenly you have a multi-polar situation. Factionalism, power struggles, and dysfunctional Machiavellian shenanigans are all inevitable in the long run.

What if Shane and Stephanie have totally different ideas for the direction of the company? What if Triple H divorces Stephanie and takes half of her inheritance? What if one of the McMahons decide to cash-out and sell their stake to a third party? All great empires eventually decay and fall, the WWE will be no different. (Second law of thermodynamics ITT)

Watching the WWE crash and burn while Shane/Steph/HHH fight for supremacy would still be more entertaining than having the solution to every storyline being a Kane interference and the muscle guy holding the title.

I'm not just saying PPV buy rates are down, I'm saying that event was the lowest in the history of the company.

Meanwhile summer slam had like 150k buys, meaning TLC was 20% of what SS was. Survivor Series had 100k, for comparison's sake.

Obviously PPV buy rates are gonna drop, but my point was TLC was historically noteworthy for how low it was. And I realize I'm comparing it to two bigger events. I'm just offering this as a tidbit of info, not some screed on how wwe sucks or something.

Vince is a terrible micro manager that constantly changes his mind, which is why it's so rare there are any long term (or even coherent) stories.

Vince is why the show sucks. Vince thinks a bunch of dumb stuff that's not funny is funny. Vince wrote all those awful reigns promos. Vince was behind suffering succotash. He's the problem, imo.

Totally disagree. I'd call myself a hardcore fan. There's a thread on another wrestling forum that counts how many wrestling matches you watch. I watched a touch over 1k matches and most of them were long ass AJPW/NJPW/ROH matches. I completely stopped watching WWE after ER and Bryan stopped wrestling. There's only so much trainwreck you can watch. It's exactly what happened at WCW. It was "crash" tv and once they so rarely had anything good the noncrash fans stopped watching and people can only watch a trainwreck (bad) show so much until they lose hope and give up on that to. Of course, WWE isn't going out of business but they will lose their hardcore fans. It would be nice if WWE was threatened to the point that they had to put on a good show because, clearly, they can. They choose not to.

I completely agree with what you guys are saying about a gradual decline but it's going to take a lot for them to become WCW. You're not the type of person I'm talking about though. There's a big difference between hardcore wrestling fans and hardcore WWE fans. I also think there's a middle ground of wrestling fans that strangely only seem to watch WWE. Look at how many people on this board complain about the lack of great wrestling yet we only got like 6 people in the WK9 thread. Vince doesn't care about indy/puro/IWC fans. Cena destroys everyone in merch so they cater the majority of the show to the people buying the merch and keeps a few guys around like Bryan and Rollins etc to satisfy the hardcore's curiosity.

For some I think it is a bit like a sports team. If you grow up watching Raiders you tend to watch them instead of other teams, even if the competition is putting out a better product, and the same goes for WWE. Some people also (not on this board) just don't know what's happening outside of WWE because of questionable marketing by other companies. Angle and Jeff Hardy still get people who ask them if they will ever wrestle again, and have no clue they were in TNA etc.

Also it takes time to get in tune with and learn the new characters of a new show. People have to sit through several episodes where they don't know the storylines and they don't care about the wrestlers before they start approaching the full experience.

Has nothing to do with marketing imo, nobody cares about the minor leagues in every other sport, it's amazing those other wrestling programs do as well as they have.

The major league of any sport is the one with the best athletes, so it is all the more clear marketing plays a huge role when WWE was making more money than the Major Leagues in 2007 (Ring of Honor) and 1989 (NWA) etc.

I think it's more comparable to mainstream music. Average artists sell a lot because they have huge marketing budgets and production teams while a lot of the real talent are on bandcamp, soundcloud or itunes marketing themselves.

I think wheatrich was referring to production quality rather than talent though. It means a lot to people and the WWE have no competition in that department. I understand why people would be drawn away from stuff like ROH when you can see a basketball ring behind the crowd. Hogan took all of TNA's money so they look pretty cheap now as well.

I really like how Lucha Underground is filmed and hope it does well. It's unique, the stories are basic but work and the in ring action is awesome. It also has some pretty strong names behind it so it looks healthy. It's never going to reach WWE's level but it's a cool little show.

Production quality has been so huge for WWE throughout the years and indeed other companies have looked like the minor leagues in comparison because of that despite sometimes in fact having the better athletic performances. Music is a good analogy as image is so important to who sells, and Vince has generally understood the importance of image and how to build one while his competitors so often have not.

Just watched the WM24 opening Belfast Brawl. What a fun garbage match, and super bonus points for JBL just hucking a garbage can at Hornswoggle full speed.