I love Madusa. And she could GO, certainly better than most Divas today. But she did all she could to feed the eye-candy troll.
Getting back to SI’s main article, Monday Night Football has been around longer than Raw. TBS’ Saturday night wrestling program was around longer than Raw, 29 years to 22. Raw is no ground-breaking endeavor. Was, maybe. But no more.
Here’s the proof of that pudding: At the peak of the Monday night wrestling war, it was common for 10-11 million people to watch wrestling. Last Monday, 3.46 million people watched Raw. More people used to watch wrestling, than currently watch wrestling. Why did that happen? How isn’t that a concern?
Wrestling is not in a boom period. WWE keeps inventing ways to bleed more money out of those still interested. But social media engagement offers no evidence of a boom: That’s people doing something for free. It’s not monetized.
If social media is so important, why doesn’t the NFL do what WWE does: Beg people to follow them on Facebook and Twitter? Because the NFL doesn’t need to. Social media is an artificial boost for WWE, something to feed mainstream media marks like Kennedy.
The incredible business done WrestleMania weekend is quite tangible, but it’s only one weekend. WWE has become a big-event business, and the number of events perceived as “big” is dwindling. The WWE Network isn’t coming close to making up the corresponding loss in PPV revenue.
Easy solution there: Just pay the boys less.
WWE’s live business is relatively minuscule: It’s common for house shows in upper and middle markets to draw just 3,000-5,000 fans.
WWE live attendance last year was 1.58 million. In 1983, the year before WWE went national, live attendance for U.S. wrestling was 13 million. In 1951, live attendance was for U.S. wrestling was 24 million. There used to be dozens of territories, dozens of crews, dozens of TV programs. More jobs. More opportunity. A lot more people worked in wrestling. A lot more people watched wrestling. Given those FACTS, how can the current situation possibly constitute a boom period?
Yeah, I know: It’s not a house-show business anymore. Was that notion declared before or after house-show business went to hell?
