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TV vs. PPV revenue

Scott,

Long time reader, occasional commenter.  I read your post about how WWE makes most of their money of TV rights, and I hear they may be about re up and triple that deal or some kind of crazy nonsense.  Doesn't this seem short sighted?  I mean it seems to be that in the next 5-10 years the way people watch TV will change dramatically.  I feel like cable companies will go the way of the dinosaur as people start picking and choosing what they want to watch. By extension this seems like the days of networks are numbered too.  Am I crazy here?  Just a thought.


Vince is living in a dreamland with his "double or triple the rights fees for RAW and Smackdown" nonsense.  They're the ones who are coming up with these numbers, not the networks.  They seem to think that if they make enough comparisons to sports like NASCAR and football that they can get that kind of money, but I just don't see USA shelling out for them.  Especially when their big push is creating their own network to compete!  

Comments

  1. Cable is about to enter its death throes but there's still money to be made there. WWE is lucky that their contract came up on the heels of Burn Notice (and some of the other shows? I can't keep track) ending, so USA needs reliable hits. I don't know about double or triple but WWE can afford to play hardball.

    I wonder what their strategy is going to be for ppv? I get the feeling that they'd actually be happy to cut back on the overall number of ppvs if it meant being able to increase revenues for the big ones. Like I said in the last thread, if people really stop buying the redundant nothing shows and supporting the more built up ones, they'll stop doing the nothing shows. But if they can make a few million off some terrible pile of rematches that doesn't strain the writers too much and doesn't detract from Raw, who can blame them? Its the marks that keep buying them that keeps them in business.

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  2. Gordy made some appearances with them early in their WCW run but pretty much left to work mainly in All Japan shortly thereafter.

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  3. Ah that's right. I forgot he was in their match at Bash 89

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  4. You basically needed one not terrible match to get your money's worth, and that usually happened.

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  5. I think Darren Young is pretty underrated but he does need more opportunities to work longer matches with the better workers.

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  6. 3MB was pretty damn entertaining in that one. JBL's shoots on commentary is the best he's been in months.

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  7. Thank Bret & Shawn for that. Without those two, those early years would have been rough.

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  8. Basically Moolah used a lot of backstage she basic dickery, bribing, and even outright shooting on her opponents to change the finish so that she was the only territorial Women's champ for all those years. Any time a promoter started to push anyone else as an alternative (and preferably an alternative that didn't look like a catchers mitt with red hair) she managed to screw them over so that she was the only real name in Women's wrestling. So basically rather than a long history of women who all made their mark in wrestling over the course of the 30 years until she retired, you just had Moolah as a sideshow attraction and all other women as glorified jobbers. she's not the only reason it didn't ever catch on until the last decade or two but her greed set them all back for years.

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  9. YankeesHoganTripleHFanNovember 24, 2013 at 10:31 AM

    The guy has not been able to walk for 15 years. People he was close to are dead...the guy that worshiped him, well you know. He had enough bad karma come back to him...leave him alone

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  10. Heath's ok as a JTTS, the other two are pretty drab. Neither sells or bumps very well. I also hate the gimmick, it just feels half baked and more suggestive of comedy than actually funny. But jobbing is about right for them. And I take grim satisfaction in knowing that Vince's two pet projects in Drew & Jinder are being presented aas jokes.

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  11. Yeah, the movie thing is weird. When I first heard they were doing it, I thought it made sense. They have a lot of equipment which is owned outright. I thought they could play the executive producer to some low budget but good quality indy films which...and this is key...They didn't have much influence over. Think MTV Films or when Kevin Smith is just the exec producer. You get Napoleon Dynamite and Good Will Hunting respectively.

    As soon as I heard they were not only producing, but writing and having wrestlers star in the films I just shook my head. I certainly don't understand how it's possible they even made two million in profit unless they're writing off losses to other divisions.

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  12. Yea. As much of a fucking cocksucker as he was when he was alive, at this point he just comes across as a bitter tragic caricature. I feel bad for him at this point...and I never ever thought I'd say that

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  13. Absolutely. What an awful person.

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  14. Shane Helms is informative too. He has a great mind for the business

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  15. In total they make $29 million on live events. This is amazing considering they do such a bad job promoting them.

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  16. You might be overstating the importance of DVR here, especially for WWE. Plenty of people watch sports on a time lag, and with no external media coverage and TONS of dead time WWE is also a prime candidate for DVR, regardless of the importance of the matches.

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  17. Legitimate question, but how many people would have to stop buying the nothing shows in order for it to not be worthwhile for them? I would imagine they turn a nice profit on each of these shows, and that even with buyrates going down they'd still have to lose a lot more business before they're losing money.


    Aren't they typically doing house shows on Sunday anyway (not sure, looking for confirmation)? So no longer doing the shows wouldn't prevent them from having another travel day, right?

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  18. BECAUSE THEY'RE A MULTIMEDIA ENTERTAINMENT CONGLOMERATE!!! LIKE ENTERTAINMENT 720!!!


    But, seriously, it's so funny that the DVDs are grossing 3x the movie division despite having virtually no overhead.

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  19. Sadly, I question the "cable in its death throes" talk. People at the BoD, and others who understand technology and media, are cutting the cord, but are we representative of the general population? I'm guessing not, unfortunately. Cable has been an essential luxury for many many many people for years and it's hard to break those habits, especially when it involves having to understand how to find and stream what you want on the web. People are painfully slow to pick up on new tech. Hell, HDTV didn't reach a 50% market saturation until like 2010 or 11 or something equally insane.

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  20. DVD recorder, yo, if you're not too uptight about getting it at 1080i resolution.

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  21. I'm guessing advertising? They have a fair amount of ad banners on their site.

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  22. 1997 WWF with Cornette is great.
    1986 WWF with George Steele is awesome too. As is 87 with Honky

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  23. I like my cable package, I'm an HD nerd. I like watching sports on my big TV in HD. I have no interest in getting rid of cable. I can't see cable going away anytime soon. I do wish you could get an a la cart package (i.e. 30 stations of your choosing for $50). The cable industry will adapt to the changing market, such is the nature of business.

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