From the Observer site:
In an overreaction based on the news about the television deal, at this writing WWE stock is at $11.29 per share, or down 43% from its close yesterday.
EVERYONE IS FIRED. Who gets to mop up the blood on the floor of Titan Towers, I wonder?
Now, now... let's wait and see how things play out.
ReplyDeleteHEADS GONE ROLL!
Looks to me like the stock finally corrected back to normal, if anything. WWE's former strength, their higher than usual dividends, has been curtailed over the past couple years to where they're "industry average", at best.
ReplyDeleteIt's not a bad stock to have, but it had been so heavily inflated by speculation over the Network/New TV Deal the last few months that something like this is not a surprise.
This is all going to be really interesting. Can't wait to watch it on the Rise and Fall of WWE dvd that TNA produces.
ReplyDeleteVince promising to deliver double was crazy. He isn't talking to WWE fans, where not delivering on a promise is kinda a regular thing. Still, though, they got $160M domestically for the tv, and the network is still in its early stages. I mean, I know the numbers don't look very good right now, but, at the same time, I don't think it's necessarily a disaster.
ReplyDeleteSuper important TJ: Cesaro has a King of Swing shirt that uses the classic King of the Ring logo.
ReplyDeleteAnd in all honesty, managing to not bleed out even more today (today's downtrend is the result of overnight trading, they've been "steady" since the opening bell) is quite impressive. As I said yesterday afternoon, sub-$10 was a possibility, but I'd have to consider $11 their new "floor", at least for the moment.
ReplyDeleteSo basically Russo has never done anything bad ever attributed to him and anything good that happened while he was involved was 100% his doing. Got it.
ReplyDelete... that's days old. Good work Clouseau.
ReplyDeleteMore Divas matches. Building to an all divas ppv, erm, special. A special ALL DIVAS 3 hour block on the network every night during primetime. Also, every main event will have Judy Bagwell on a pole stips.
ReplyDeleteYeah. It took a beating today, but I would assume it will slowly creep back up to mid-teens in the next few months. Granted if Network subscribers don't keep increasing, all bets are off.
ReplyDeleteThen how come none of you assholes brought it to my attention?
ReplyDeleteI'm boycotting you until you admit Flair vs Funk I Quit rules was a 5 star classic.
ReplyDeleteThey should rehire CM PUNK as The Midnight Rider
ReplyDeleteThe new Black Scorpion now that Sting is debuting any month now...
ReplyDeleteThe only thing that could make BigNasty96 more annoying in if he jumped on this bandwagon
ReplyDeleteA feud still going on 24 years later!!!!!
ReplyDeleteIn all the commotion I never heard, will the WWE shows be on the same networks as before or is that changing?
ReplyDeleteA feud still running 24 years later!!!!!!
ReplyDelete... because you're no longer #1?
ReplyDeleteWe're assuming no change, but I don't think that's been addressed yet.
ReplyDeleteHe already did in the Daily Report. Thankfully nobody bit on it, last I saw.
ReplyDeleteHell, I still think there's money to be made in a Heyman-Cornette smackdown on Raw or Wrestlemania. Those two should be locked in a manager's feud till the day they both retire.
ReplyDeleteAs far as I know, I didn't lose the title on a BoD house show loop, so I'm still #1.
ReplyDeleteYeah basically. He strikes me as a decent guy who does get maligned for a lot of stuff he actually had no control over, but he just doesn't take responsibility for ANYTHING it seems.
ReplyDeleteWas watching The King of Kong last night. Now there's a feud that reminds me of old school wrestling, despite not being about wrestling. Perfect Face-Heel dynamic between Steve Wiebe and Billy Mitchell.
ReplyDeleteAMAZING documentary. You really start to cheer for the guy.
ReplyDeleteBilly Mitchell looks like a 80's jobber so there is that connection.
ReplyDelete"Yea pick it up and sign it before the stock plummets some more" - CMPunk
ReplyDeleteYeah, I heard Demolition just won the tag titles.
ReplyDeleteI thought it was going to suck and it turned out to be a gem. It gets the whole good guy/bad guy thing better than most fictional movies. Steve's wife is a saint for putting up with it all.
ReplyDeleteMaybe the best documentary of the last ten years or so, Billy Mitchell is a fucking superstar.
ReplyDeleteNo change. It was in the press release. Same channels, no word on the rumor of SmackDown going live though.
ReplyDeleteI don't really see much point in smackdown being live.
ReplyDeleteWhat is there to say? I told everyone this was going to happen. And then it did.
ReplyDeleteI put it on just for something to pass the time while I was doing something else... and I got sucked in. Legit hands in the air when Steve finally beat that guy.
ReplyDeleteI love the "T-I-E" bit. And his busty wife which is just hilarious.
ReplyDeleteOh just what we need, the TNA fanatics now giving ammo to "TNA is better than WWE now!" rants.
ReplyDeleteThe part where his daughter Jillian says, "Some people sort of ruin their lives to be in there" just kills me. The 9 year old is the smartest person in the film.
ReplyDeleteHis wife is legit. The guy's like a nerd god. He really instills fear into his peers, and demands respect.
ReplyDeleteHe's so fucking fiendish, it's hilarious.
By the way, the stock is not down just because of the TV deal. They now say they need 1.3 millon subscribers to break even. And adjusted their forecast to lose a shitton of money in 2014.
ReplyDeleteThe TV deal, by itself, would not have caused the stock to plummet. A 50% increase is still good. Its that the Network is now being described by Forbes as an "albatross"
He's a one man quote machine. "Not even Helen of Troy had that much attention on her."
ReplyDelete6- "Never did more pole matches than I did cage matches" - suggesting the two types are roughly equal in wrestling lore?
ReplyDeleteDavid Arquette- Valuable, free promos from good-sized actors at the time, even though he misspells Kevin Costner (perhaps Booker owns the T that Russo didn't include).
34- Ric Flair in the desert- "They brought him back after I left" - suggesting he wouldn't have brought him back after only 3 months, or at all?
70- Dirt sheets "completely changed the business SINGLE HANDEDLY. They took it from kayfabe, to everybody knowing everything." Really? EVERYBODY read Meltzer and Keller et al? Then why haven't they retired to their islands and gold boats? And even if EVERYBODY read the sheets, they don't get everything right. Creatives and wrestlers (not just Russo) talking about sheets got them more attention during that time period, but I know of at least one simpleton who watched every WCW/WWF show from 1999 to 2002 and had never even heard of the Observer or Torch.
88- Regrets: not standing up for himself, not responding to every barb/accepting being the whipping boy. Well, at least he's consistent and doesn't offer an insincere apology, though he does say the Last Rites and Kennel From Hell matches were bad creative decisions.
You didnt lose $400 millon in the last 18 hours.
ReplyDeleteI hope you dont give stock tips. The stock is down 70% in a month. Nothing about ths is impressive.
ReplyDeleteI think if it could have sweetened the deal, SD would have gone live.
ReplyDeleteI just want the network to last long enough for me to actually be able to legally sign up for it in my country.
ReplyDeleteOn 70, that was the big issue with him in WCW, he thought every single fan read all the online stuff and such. See when Bischoff makes a crack to Sid about scissors, the announcers going nuts at Bischoff bringing up the '93 fight with Arn but the fans in the arena have mostly never heard the story and are all "Um, what?" Plus, it just drove him on his "swerve the smarts" mentality that wrecked things more.
ReplyDeleteOnly way to save Smackdown as a live show is to bring back a true brad split.
ReplyDeleteI don't think it's going anywhere for a while... probably won't end up like Sega Channel.
ReplyDeleteI've never understood the feeling here that the Network 667,000 was great news, the math has just never worked out as far as I understand it.
ReplyDeleteDon't get me wrong it's freakin awesome for us, but for the company it seems like an endless cash funnel with a content limit. At some point everything's going to be there and then what? There's no other content in the world to add once they've exhausted their library.
My parents wouldn't get me the Sega channel when I was a kid. I still hold it against them.
ReplyDeleteYou are stupid, and lack reading comprehension. Fuck off.
ReplyDeleteThere's no base to increase on, though. Unless some kind of windfall hits WWE soon, there will be no reason to buy in. Pretty much everything it's lost was the "speculation" buyers, who jumped off the moment anything not 1000% bullish hit the news.
ReplyDeleteYou're going to be so disappointed in a few years.
ReplyDeleteOh it was marvelous... except the part where they'd break up big games into two parts. MK3 with split rosters, I'm looking at you.
ReplyDeleteIt pretty much got my dad off the hook for buying video games for a few years.
JBL's advice: keep buying WWE stock.
ReplyDeleteI'll wait until IRS and Dibease weigh in.
ReplyDelete"Donkey Kong kill screen coming up!"
ReplyDeleteThat doc was a topic on this blog years ago, and someone on here was part of that crowd and gave a VERY in-depth review of every person in that film, even down to the referee guy who owned the arcade. Sadly, I think that comment was lost when the blog converted to Disqus.
From what I understand there was a lot of jealousy amongst them over the tiny bit of fame some of the participants gained from the film that they didn't as well as all of the creative license that was taken in editing.
ReplyDeleteAnyone but Heyman.
ReplyDeleteIt's ok, Elvy isn't around.
ReplyDeleteHere we go: http://www.obsessedwithwrestling.com/pictures/y/yorkfoundation/01.jpg
ReplyDeleteOh tag!
ReplyDeletesave_us.y2j
ReplyDeleteStephanie sure was smart selling stocks awhile back. I wonder if she knew something.
ReplyDelete*leaves thread*
ReplyDeleteYou think Fozzy can bring in the money?
ReplyDeleteNot really.
ReplyDeleteDidn't she sell before the real boost in price, though?
ReplyDeleteAlthough if she had... she might be in actual trouble now.
could someone please explain to me why the stock is falling?
ReplyDeletetheir tv deal is higher than last time, right? more money. why is that bad? is it b/c it's not as much as was predicted? are investors feeling like they've been misled?
As late as January 2014. Mostly during Fall last year, though.
ReplyDeletegod forbid another tragedy happen, but i can see aurora rose now: "this is almost as bad as when the US govt tried to indict my mom on insider trading!"
ReplyDeleteThey are taking a huge hit by having just over HALF of the required subs to break even on the network. PPV revenue is essentially gone. WWE predicted 2-3x increase in the TV deal and only got like 1/2 of that.
ReplyDelete1 word: Expectations
ReplyDeletenot as much as predicted/forecast network subscriptions lower than expected. revenue down for last quarter.
ReplyDeleteold rspw joke is old
ReplyDeletehouse shows dont count, and no one goes to them anyway
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWwl8JldQOA
ReplyDeleteShort Answer: Speculators blew up the price and now it's falling down to a level that makes sense.
ReplyDelete"makes sense" is a tricky thing though. Makes sense to who though? Certainly not to the investors selling off their stock. Certainly not to anyone with a vested interest in growing the company. "Makes sense" is just code for settling. Investors believe in "Go big, or go home".
ReplyDeletePPV Revenue being essentially gone is a HUGE overstatement
ReplyDeleteThere wouldn't be a rational argument for that.
ReplyDeleteAbeyance isn't great with humor
ReplyDeleteWell two of the top providers in the US aren't offering them anymore and it takes 3.5 subscribers to equal one traditional PPV buy.
ReplyDeleteShort Answer: I don't know enough about this to be of any use to anyone really.
ReplyDeletecouple of real gems in this report
ReplyDeletebasically, tna has a slush fund in janice carter
i also like how the walkout thing "ended peacefully." i for one am amused by the thought of full scale riots and bloodshed
More On The TNA Production Crew Threatening To Walk Out Last Week
Posted by Joseph Lee on 05.16.2014
The same thing happened around last year...
As previously reported, the TNA production crew threatened to walk out of the last Impact Wrestling taping because of late payments. The entire situation ended peacefully and the crew was paid before anyone was able to walk out. Before the last set of tapings, some of the crew hadn't been paid since early March. While most were upset, not all of them were prepared to leave.
The same situation happened around this time last year. Janice Carter, Dixie's mom and the person who controls the company's finances, sets aside a portion of money each month to finance the times the company loses money. It's outside of the revenue the company earns on its own. Since TNA taped so many events and PPVs in a short period of time so far in advance, they just didn't have the money. This is the same thing that hurt them last year.
It's still thought that this incident was isolated and not indicative of any problems in the company. In 2013, the crew and talent were paid on a regular basis. While checks may arrive a few days late today, TNA is still paying their employees on time.
What was the Sega channel?
ReplyDeleteCan someone please explain to me how checks arriving late = being paid on time?
ReplyDeleteWe're all pretty much full of shit. But it is fun to speculate and play armchair stock market trader.
ReplyDeleteHE SAID SPECULATE!!!
ReplyDeletewait, was that here? i remember some gag about no one being allowed to speculate
Speculatively speaking, I speculate that the specs on this speculation is speculative at best. Specutively speaking.
ReplyDeleteBasically a video game on demand service.
ReplyDeleteNeeds some spectacles. And a spectrometer...I think that's from Avengers, I'm stoned.
ReplyDeleteJust think of it like watching RAW. The less you think about it, the less you worry about the lack of logic.
ReplyDeleteHa ha, seriously, I'll sit here and talk stocks and meanwhile I can't even figure out why Facebook is worth more than a dollar.
ReplyDeletelol, well that one I can answer for you. Advertising and selling user data to other companies for targeted marketing. Big money to be had when your user base is so huge.
ReplyDeleteThe price would have fallen anyway if they'd gotten $200 million because they hit their mark, so it would have been time for investors to move onto something else.
ReplyDeleteAgain, listening to JR's podcast again with Shawn Michaels, and again, I wish we could, again, just removed the word again, from again the Greatest Of All Time's vocabulary, again.
ReplyDeleteTalking Head D-Lo Brown!
ReplyDeleteThe funny thing was Bischoff repeating himself.
ReplyDeleteYes, TNA and rational always go together....
ReplyDeleteI get that he probably hears a lot of shit from fans, but wow...that was different.
ReplyDeleteExcept they got 400,000 buys for Wrestlemania. Plus the 600K in network subscribers.
ReplyDeleteAlso how does it take 3.5 subscribers to equal 1 ppv buy? You realize everytime someone bought a ppv, 1/2 went to the distributor. Also (and this just occurred to me), buying on ppv, you pay the cable company who then pays WWE eventually. When you subscribe, you're giving the $60 right to Vince (who they has to pay MLB.tv and others, but certainly not 50%).
I still find it funny/amazing that Jim Cornette makes Russo look sympathetic.
ReplyDeleteI felt that number coupled with 400,000 domestic buys for Wrestlemania was good news. If they could turn those 400,000 Wrestlemania buyers into subscribers, they'll be fine.
ReplyDeleteThat's never stopped them before.
ReplyDeleteDid you actually read this? I don't think anyone makes Russo look sympathetic.
ReplyDeleteWhat I think is ironic is that the deal, though less than expected, doesn't mean the company is crumbling, but will remain viable, because of the deal itself. If it ever comes to the point where there are no companies willing to put the WWE product on TV, then the company is finished. No TV deal is what killed WCW, not all its other problems, and it is probably what will eventually kill TNA. In other words, this deal, which many are touting as proof that WWE is overvalued and not a growing company with a bright future, is actually what is keeping the company afloat. I have to wonder though, yes, emerging markets like Brazil, China, and India, are potentially huge money markets, but is there strong enough interest in those countries to lead to another golden age boom? I think that a new golden age is desperately needed in North America and Europe before significant inroads can be made in those new markets. The network helps, and it may help significantly more in the future, but, for now, WWE needs a TV deal, and this deal, obviously, accomplishes that, and I think things will calm down once people realize that.
ReplyDeleteAnd get CM Punk to be the big star on the brand.
ReplyDeleteThe two providers that dropped wwe ppv's did so after wrestlemania. So adjust accordingly.
ReplyDelete"Who gets to mop up the blood on the floor of Titan Towers, I wonder?"
ReplyDeleteZack Ryder. Obv.
What would be the point of the network in an "emerging market" like India? The biggest selling point is all the classic footage. People want to watch all the old episodes of Raw they didn't know about?
ReplyDeleteSaturn, duh
ReplyDeleteYep, a nice "oversized cartridge" with a cable hookup in the back, it would carry 50 games that changed monthly. It came out fairly late in the Genesis life cycle, but was quite cool for its time. Especially the ability to use savegames... as long as you stuck to one game until you were done with it.
ReplyDeleteThe blood on the floor IS Ryder's.
ReplyDeleteWhat about me, what about Raven!?!
ReplyDeleteWe don't mention mops around Saturn... it is still a sensitive subject
ReplyDeleteYes, the stock was in a speculative bubble... I wonder who (other than Vince) took a hit by buying it at $20+?
ReplyDeleteWhat would WWE's attempt to break into those countries look like?
ReplyDeleteIndia: "Come see Great Khali beat 20 jobbers while not moving!"
ReplyDeleteOh, you mean an attempt that might actually succeed. My bad.
It's Stephs vaginal blood idiot
ReplyDelete...why?
ReplyDeleteAnd now you can go buy Sonic's Genesis Collection with 50 Sega games on it for $19.99 in the bargain bin. How times change.
ReplyDeleteSomehow they'll still have 35 clips of Steve Lombardi talking.
ReplyDeleteWhy not
ReplyDeleteMoppy.
ReplyDeleteToo far, too far.
ReplyDeleteSo "placental blood" definitely would have crossed the line?
ReplyDeleteSorry I couldn't hear you over the nearly 600 posts separating us.
ReplyDeleteCaliber Winfield, come on down!
ReplyDeleteRemember when it was a big deal that Cult hit 10,000... now the top 10 posters all have 10 dimes or more
ReplyDeleteWWE closes today at $11.27, and somehow actually GAINED 70 cents during the trading day, having opened at $10.55 after the bloodbath that occured yesterday. No, it's not gonna sniff $15 any time soon, IMO... but I'd bet on that happening before it dips back under $10. The bubble's been popped, and the stock is pretty much on ground floor at the moment.
ReplyDeleteNow is that ground rock solid... or is there more bad news to come?
(And a friendly translation for bignasty: WWE Stock go UP, WWE not go broke yet.)
No. And by no I mean yes.
ReplyDeleteJust goes to show you that Cultstatus is a life fraud
ReplyDeleteVince lost $357M in 24 hours. I wonder if now he'll sell out to Ted Dibiase like Tatanka did.
ReplyDelete#kayfabefriday
"Honestly? If we're being honest, at the end of the day, I honestly don't remember that at all. It was booked before I came in. Honestly."
ReplyDelete"56% of setup_rollercoaster_tycoon_deluxe_2.1.0.18.exe downloaded"
ReplyDeleteVince Russo still not understanding why Arquette as Champion was a disaster is him in a nutshell.
ReplyDeleteRCT2? I could never get into the sequels, only the original.
ReplyDeleteRCT1 v.2.1.0.18 ;)
ReplyDeleteSeriously, I hate these business driven wwe threads. It's interesting info but I couldn't care less. Why WOULD I care unless I'm an investor or an idiot like BigNasty96?
ReplyDeleteAh, cool. It's been a long time since I played it, though.
ReplyDeleteBecause what happens with the stock affects the product that ends up on the screen.
ReplyDeleteHaven't you heard? We are all supposed to base our enjoyment of the product based on which angles/wrestlers will make the company the most money... doesn't matter if it is actually enjoyable or not... just needs to make money.
ReplyDeleteI can still hear them screaming....
ReplyDeleteNo it doesn't
ReplyDeleteI honestly do not remember how much it was a month... but games generally would cycle out for multiple months before returning.
ReplyDelete$15 a month, and they started with changing games every month, but later it switched to every two weeks.
ReplyDeleteStreaming Sega Genesis games for $15/month in 1994.
ReplyDeleteIt could, if the stock dropped low enough to where Vince (or future McMahons) said "Fuck it, we'll buy it all back and return private."
ReplyDeleteBut that's not happening here, obviously.
Jesus... how could a 1994 ISP keep up with that?
ReplyDelete"So Dr. Jones, what you're saying is, my aids WASN'T a result of the hiv?"
ReplyDeleteIt was over cable lines, and ran extremely well in my experience.
ReplyDeleteThat sounds like it was 20 years ahead of its time
ReplyDeleteYeah, mine was through Time Warner Cable. Only took a minute or so to download each game.
ReplyDeleteIn all honesty, you can probably thank Sega for helping to pioneer broadband internet. The giant cartridge was essentially a modem hooked up to a coax.
ReplyDeleteMind you, we didn't even have dial up internet in our house until 2000, but we had Sega Channel in '94.
sure it does. Ultimately TV is the driving force behind everything else WWE does whether they want to admit it or not. You don't think that if Raw were pulling in 3.8-4.0 ratings they wouldn't have gotten more cable money?
ReplyDeleteI love this post.
ReplyDeleteWWE executives kept an even tone but offered little additional guidance. “We never commented publicly on the expectation,” said George Barrios, chief strategy and financial officer. “We said we were undervalued by the math that we had done.”
ReplyDeleteLOL! We were never at war with Eastasia.
3.5 subs = $35. One traditional PPV purchase = $35
ReplyDeleteEurasia
ReplyDeleteI'll say it until the day he dies: Vince Russo has done as much to destroy "professional wrestling" in North America as ANY person, living or dead. Yes, including Vince and Eric.
ReplyDelete