TNA PPV's getting only 14,000 buys

[Thanks for the Fish 0]

From Gerweck (who looks to have poached Meltzer)

 

TNA is going to have to re-evaluate their PPV business model. The current direction is to build up four “A” pay-per-views in 2009, and the remaining eights PPV shows will be treated as “B” shows. According to Dave Meltzer, TNA PPV numbers have taken a nose dive since September of last year. We don’t have final numbers, but the preliminary number for the January PPV is not good. Based on projections, TNA pay-per-view numbers could dip as low as 14,000 buys, which is mind blogging considering the talent roster they have.

 

 

Another mind blogging aspect is that TNA is at times drawing lower PPV buy numbers than shows they promoted while airing weekly television on the much less visible Fox Sports Net.

 

 

The morale is down, which was overt if anyone saw the Against All Odds PPV last weekend. Wrestlers appear to be going through the motions, which is not a good sign moving forward.

[cd213 0]

How long until we see the headline on wrestling "news" site, Vince McMahon Buys TNA Wrestling?

[daileyxplanet 0]

From Gerweck (who looks to have poached Meltzer)

 

TNA is going to have to re-evaluate their PPV business model. The current direction is to build up four “A” pay-per-views in 2009, and the remaining eights PPV shows will be treated as “B” shows. According to Dave Meltzer, TNA PPV numbers have taken a nose dive since September of last year. We don’t have final numbers, but the preliminary number for the January PPV is not good. Based on projections, TNA pay-per-view numbers could dip as low as 14,000 buys, which is mind blogging considering the talent roster they have.

 

 

Another mind blogging aspect is that TNA is at times drawing lower PPV buy numbers than shows they promoted while airing weekly television on the much less visible Fox Sports Net.

 

 

The morale is down, which was overt if anyone saw the Against All Odds PPV last weekend. Wrestlers appear to be going through the motions, which is not a good sign moving forward.

 

Is this a new shocking experience where your mind actually posts on xanga/twitter before you even think to?

 

[Steviekick 0]

Well it is definitely mind boggling to say the least.

[Corey_Lazarus 0]

It doesn't surprise me. The FSN days had the Samoa Joe/AJ Styles/Christopher Daniels feud, as well as Sabin/Williams and leading up to Raven back to the main event. Now? It's been the Kurt Angle show for the last 2 years. That isn't to say Angle can't be the top guy or in the main event, but he shouldn't be the only part of the show. And before anybody says "but he hasn't been for the last few months," he's the fucking leader of the top stable, so YES - it is still the Kurt Angle show.

[Boner Kawanger 0]

How long until we see the headline on wrestling "news" site, Vince McMahon Buys TNA Wrestling?

Vince isn't an idiot

[daileyxplanet 0]

Looking back at Planet Jarrett.... this is worse considering the kind of "Star Power" they have in the ranks now.

[RedJed 0]

Honestly, TNA isnt really in a position to have much more than a few ppvs in the year being the extremely standout ppvs (that would be Bound for Glory and Lockdown). Otherwise, the rest should be on par with each other in terms of what they are putting on the cards. In their minds, there should not be such a thing as a "B" show type ppv, that's wasting everyone's time.

 

Ultimately, it all comes down to the build of these ppvs, and thats where TNA lacks much of anything in, both on the marketing end and the booking end. But with the guys on the roster that they have, there really should be a loaded main event on everyone of these shows. Between Foley, Sting, Jarrett, Joe, Styles, etc this shouldn't be hard in theory to at least put a top notch card on paper each month, especially with at least an attempt to draw interest with a strong selling point match. This last ppv they did was the total opposite of all of those things.

[Hawkius Maximus 0]

The key to remember here, is it's not like TNA ALWAYS did PPV's this low. They weren't setting the world on fire, but they weren't doing this bad on every PPV.

 

This is recent. Fuck ratings. PPV buys is where you see the loyalty and interest in the company.

 

TNA has *none* right now. And watching the TV, is there any question why? This company, if it wasn't already, has become the single worst produced weekly episodic wrestling show in history of mainstream wrestling. Illogical booking is everywhere. All the faces are killed dead. None of the storylines make sense or are being progressed with sense. Wrestlers have quite litterally given up hope causing ECW to look like an upgrade. They fired a guy who had been with them for years, had their most iconic finisher, and worked hard every show. They bring up a "monster", and then book him bad and then immediately start jobbing him. They give away big matches every show to zero rating spikes and then they turn around and main event a PPV with TEAM 3D fighting for the title. Not two weeks later with ZERO BUILD they give away Sting/Angle in an Empty Arena Match.

 

I hope they die and anyone worth a damn that still cares (IE not anyone in the MEM outside of Angle) goes to WWE or ROH.

[Hunter's Torn Quad 0]

The key to remember here, is it's not like TNA ALWAYS did PPV's this low. They weren't setting the world on fire, but they weren't doing this bad on every PPV.

 

This is recent. Fuck ratings. PPV buys is where you see the loyalty and interest in the company.

 

TNA has *none* right now. And watching the TV, is there any question why? This company, if it wasn't already, has become the single worst produced weekly episodic wrestling show in history of mainstream wrestling. Illogical booking is everywhere. All the faces are killed dead. None of the storylines make sense or are being progressed with sense. Wrestlers have quite litterally given up hope causing ECW to look like an upgrade. They fired a guy who had been with them for years, had their most iconic finisher, and worked hard every show. They bring up a "monster", and then book him bad and then immediately start jobbing him. They give away big matches every show to zero rating spikes and then they turn around and main event a PPV with TEAM 3D fighting for the title. Not two weeks later with ZERO BUILD they give away Sting/Angle in an Empty Arena Match.

 

I hope they die and anyone worth a damn that still cares (IE not anyone in the MEM outside of Angle) goes to WWE or ROH.

You used to get people who were so angry about TNA fucking things up left and right, which wasn't that bad of a sign because it showed that there was still a strong desire there to see things turn around and succeed. Now people don't even care enough about TNA to get angry. They just shake their heads and wonder how people who should have some kind of clue about wrestling booking can get things so gloriously wrong.

[DrVenkman PhD 0]

I haven't read the Observer this week so it very well could be in there, but that whole thing is actually an opinion piece by Alvarez in the F4W from earlier in the week. It was a really good read too.

[Hawkius Maximus 0]

I don't know if it's in there word for word, but Dave's confirmed that their buyrates are about at that level. He's talked about it. Even going as far as to tell a TNA fan on the radio show "Oh...You're not going to like this" when the subject was broached.

 

It's bad.

[BUTT 0]

The 14,000 figure comes from Dave on yesterday's Observer Radio.

[Scroby 0]

I think TNA's main problem is that they've tried to hard to become the WWE alternative of Sports Entertainment and Russo is just so dried up to the point where he's trying to use old angles from both WCW and WWE to try and gain more viewers (Stone Cold Sharkboy, Main Event Mafia vs Frontline, Feast or Fire). It's like they're not trying anything new anymore. Instead TNA is going "well it worked before, let's try it again.". I think what TNA needs to do at this point is get away from trying to copy "sports entertainment" and more importantly get away from Russo and take guys like Foley and Cornette and make them into the head bookers and try them out. Try something different.

[cabbageboy 0]

TNA has so utterly buried everyone aside from the ultra top level guys that they may never recover. After all the stuff Samoa Joe has been through I asked myself "Do I want to see this guy get revenge on Kevin Nash or Steiner?" And the answer comes back "Nah, not really." I still don't know what Styles is doing on the show other than dick around with Booker over a quite literally useless belt.

 

In regards to PPVs, TNA reminds me a lot of the WWF circa 1995-97. They have a few PPVs that stand out as the main shows like Lockdown, Slammiversary, Bound For Glory, and maybe something else I'm forgetting. Say what you will about Dusty Rhodes but at least he gets the notion that you need to build to some key shows to blow off vicious feuds. The rest of these PPVs are essentially filler with 6 man tags and aimless stuff underneath. It's like the old IYH shows that you could just skip, knowing nothing useful would be on the PPV.

 

TNA's most unsettling aspect though? The old guys are actually LESS stale than the younger guys they should be trying to get over. In all the time I've watched wrestling I've never seen something else remotely like this. In WCW you could at least think that the NWO guys or the old guys were stale as hell and needed to move aside for the younger wrestlers. In this case however the younger guys have been there longer than the MEM and are the ones who are stale. Someone like AJ Styles is in a real bind: He can either stay in TNA and be stale as hell, or he can go to WWE and be a redneck comedy act like Jamie Noble. Samoa Joe can stay in TNA and be buried...or he could go to WWE and be another Samoan savage gimmick (actually that might be a step up). Guys like Abyss and have long since worn out their welcome, which is why it baffles me that TNA would job out a potential rising star like Matt Morgan to the played out Abyss. Jay Lethal was fun for quite a long time as Black Machismo, but after a point a guy doing a silly comedy tribute wears thin. Sonjay Dutt is drifting along aimless, the whole Machismo/So Cal Val angle basically killing his heat.

 

Right now TNA needs to take a chance on someone and go with it. Hernandez has a Feast or Fired shot, so the hell with it. Have him cash in with a serious match vs. Sting and beat the piss out of the icon and leave him laying with a Border Toss, then have Sting put him over on the mic as being the younger and better man. Pull the trigger on SOMEONE. Create a star instead of signing washed up old ones. And if guys like Angle, Nash, etc. don't want to play ball to get someone over, send them packing.

[PILLS! PILLS! PILLS! 0]

Hernandez already cashed in his 'Feast or Fired' shot and they squandered it.

[DrVenkman PhD 0]

They need to cut back on PPVs to make the ones they run seem more special (as opposed to their current philosophy of running PPVs that no one at all will buy to hype up a later PPV), but - and yes, I admit I am just taking this point from Chico - doing so admits failure, and wrestling companies don't seem very apt at doing that. WWE is claiming SNME went to Fox because of high ratings and it's 18 years after NBC cancelled them!

[RedJed 0]

They need to cut back on PPVs to make the ones they run seem more special (as opposed to their current philosophy of running PPVs that no one at all will buy to hype up a later PPV), but - and yes, I admit I am just taking this point from Chico - doing so admits failure, and wrestling companies don't seem very apt at doing that. WWE is claiming SNME went to Fox because of high ratings and it's 18 years after NBC cancelled them!

 

What they should do is cut down to at least six pay per views, hell even make them four hours each and really make them solid all around, give the matches more time, etc. Keep Genesis (Feb), Lockdown (April), Slammiversary (June), Turning Point (August), and Bound for Glory (October) and Final Resolution (December) as the big ppvs, and make the other ppvs into more of Clash of the Champions shows they do live on Spike, if they are just going to throw mundane "B style" shit out there for some of them like they did with Against All Odds. Even run them on Sunday evenings, just like a typical ppv timeslot, probably would generate better ratings for Spike than they would do on a normal Sunday night lineup anyway.

[DrVenkman PhD 0]

Live specials on Spike run like PPVs instead of Impact episodes would be a great idea. I don't know how you would accurately advertise such things without outright saying "This will have good wrestling matches like our PPVs used to!", because even though it's been said a million times, there's no way any new TNA viewer can watch Impact and think, "Yes, this is the type of thing I want to drop $30-$40 (HD) on".

[MillenniumMan831 0]

They can advertise it as TNA's Turning Point will be on Spike. Maybe tape it the night before so they can freshen it up and save a buck or two by not going live . . . unless Spike foots the bill.

[Hawkius Maximus 0]

I don't even think TNA could pop a good rating right now. It's not like they HOLD BACK on doing big matches on Impact as it is.

[goldengreek 0]

The key to remember here, is it's not like TNA ALWAYS did PPV's this low. They weren't setting the world on fire, but they weren't doing this bad on every PPV.

 

This is recent. Fuck ratings. PPV buys is where you see the loyalty and interest in the company.

 

TNA has *none* right now. And watching the TV, is there any question why? This company, if it wasn't already, has become the single worst produced weekly episodic wrestling show in history of mainstream wrestling. Illogical booking is everywhere. All the faces are killed dead. None of the storylines make sense or are being progressed with sense. Wrestlers have quite litterally given up hope causing ECW to look like an upgrade. They fired a guy who had been with them for years, had their most iconic finisher, and worked hard every show. They bring up a "monster", and then book him bad and then immediately start jobbing him. They give away big matches every show to zero rating spikes and then they turn around and main event a PPV with TEAM 3D fighting for the title. Not two weeks later with ZERO BUILD they give away Sting/Angle in an Empty Arena Match.

 

I hope they die and anyone worth a damn that still cares (IE not anyone in the MEM outside of Angle) goes to WWE or ROH.

who?

[The Ghost of bps21 0]

Petey Williams

[goldengreek 0]

Petey Williams

What ???

 

When??

 

Why ??

 

 

WTF ??!!!!

[Slickster 0]

Earlier this week.

[MillenniumMan831 0]

I don't think he's been fired per se, they're just not renewing his contract which expires in March.

[DrVenkman PhD 0]

Hopefully I'll run into him visiting his parents while taking out the garbage again.

[Obi Chris Kenobi 0]

They do seem pretty low, but then, aren't they only getting PPV buys in American and on one cable stream? Does every wrestling fan in American have access to that carrier?

 

In the UK we get the PPVs for free, while WWE PPVs are all slowly turning over to sky box office (when they used to be free on Sky Sports).

 

How many people bought the weekly PPVs? Has the buy rate against those went up or down?

 

Its possible that scaling back the number of PPVs might help, but ideally they need to market better and improve booking.

[cabbageboy 0]

In regards to Hernandez I thought Foley reinstated his title shot due to the bogus way it all went down? Or am I imagining things?

 

 

[DrVenkman PhD 0]

They do seem pretty low, but then, aren't they only getting PPV buys in American and on one cable stream? Does every wrestling fan in American have access to that carrier?

 

In the UK we get the PPVs for free, while WWE PPVs are all slowly turning over to sky box office (when they used to be free on Sky Sports).

 

How many people bought the weekly PPVs? Has the buy rate against those went up or down?

 

Its possible that scaling back the number of PPVs might help, but ideally they need to market better and improve booking.

 

Your colourful English language confuses me (cable stream?) but TNA PPVs are available on basically every provider.