Lance Storm on WWE/UFC buyrates

Mr.Nice Guy

Lance Storm has written an interesting column talking about why UFC on average gets more PPV buys than WWE, even though WWE gets better ratings. His view is that UFC puts more emphasis on the outcome of its feuds than WWE does. Here's an excerpt:

Where I think the problem lies is in over exposure of big matches on TV and general booking trends in wrestling today. I don’t think enough emphasis is put on the outcome of matches anymore. Matches quite often are treated as if they are just there to advance the “storylines”. I would hazard to guess many people “writing” wrestling today think that is exactly what a match is for, which in my opinion is completely backwards.

The “Storyline” is there to create interest in the match up, and the result of that match up is what is important. The match up is the steak and the “Storyline” is just the sizzle. I’ll pay for steak; I will not pay for sizzle. I think the best illustration of this was the Ultimate Fighter Season 3 build up for the Tito Ortiz – Ken Shamrock fight. The Shamrock – Ortiz feud was built up all season and then produced 775,000 buys on PPV. The winner of that match was all that mattered, and when the fight was finish so was the “Storyline”. To see the conclusion of that feud you had to order the PPV, which three quarters of a million people were willing to do.

Now I realize they had several months of build up to sell that one PPV, and if WWE did that with say Batista and The Undertaker there would be several PPVs in the interim that would be without a main event, but perhaps with the new PPV structure in WWE that problem could be over come.

In WWE now there are three distinct brands, each with their respective World Champion. RAW and SD also have the US, and IC titles, not to mention 2 Tag Team titles, the Women’s title and the Cruiserweight title. With 9 titles to be defended would it be possible to slow the entire booking process down and alternate which titles are being defended on each PPV?

If they took extra time to rebuild Batista, keeping him completely away from Taker, and have him dominate his way back to the top over 3 or 4 months, how much more effective would that rematch be at selling PPV buys than the immediate rematch at Backlash? You would have to completely restructure the creative process and how TV and PPV were built, alternating which title matches headline each PPV, but I think it’s interesting to look at the possibilities this creates.

One thing you would have to do, is eliminate World Title matches from free TV completely. If you never get to see the Title defended on TV, Title matches on PPV become more special. If you want to see Randy Couture fight, which I do, you have to order it on PPV, which I will, where on the other hand I’ve gotten to see Bobby Lashley defend the ECW World Title 3 or 4 times this year for free, and I haven’t even watched ECW TV.

There are a lot of problems this concept creates also, including possible reduction in over all viewer ship, due to the reduction of big matches offered on regular television. This potential drop in viewer ship may also have an adverse affect on live events as well as over all merchandise revenue, so I am in no way offering it as a solution. I’m just throwing ideas out there for the sake of discussion. I do however firmly believe that more emphasis on matches and match outcome, will increase interest in the over all product and have a positive effect on buy rates.

Lance Storm

The article can be read in full here.

I think he makes a compelling argument. I wouldn't be willing to pay to watch Backlash (thankfully it's on Sky Sports) and I think it's because the outcome of the matches just don't seem like must-see events.

What do you make of his comments?

Vince135792003

Every month, the UFC does tremendous work in hyping up their shows. They make every event seem special and they make me care about who will win. I'm not sure if they'll always be doing the numbers they are doing currently but they have a winning formula right now.

2 more points to compare it to wrestling promotion:

- all of the promotion for a pay per view is based around 2 matches, sometimes one. Its hammered home who are the stars and they promote them as stars. You'll never see Couture fighting on free tv over there.

- UFC have a tremendous disadvantage to wrestling in that it can't control the outcome of matches. Cro Cop (after a ton of build up for him) lost on Saturday and thats quite a negative hit to them short term. Meltzer was asked one time which would he prefer to book and he said immediately pro-wrestling for that very reason.


Bottom line, when the WWE has 18 ppvs a year with 75% of the card always being the same, it rarely feels special. Its just too much. How could you care?

On the other hand Lidell will fight 3 times this year at most and will feel like a big deal.


EDIT: Heres a fantastic video clip of a hype special for De la Hoya and Mayweather which will do ungodly ppv numbers. Even by looking at the first 2 minutes, its a perfect example of how you promote any combat sport fake or real. A wrestling comparison would be Steamboat versus Flair in the 1980s. The family man versus the cocky playboy.

I couldn't recommend this video enough and I think wrestling could learn from it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rBny9J1OPs&mode=related&search=

Ph3n0m

A wrestling comparison would be Steamboat versus Flair in the 1980s. The family man versus the cocky playboy.

Other comparissons, would have been Steamboat vs Savage, Savage vs Hogan, Hogan vs Sid Justice, Undertaker vs Jake Roberts, and a personal fav Undertaker/Roberts and Savage (way to be the man and take a snake bite Savage )

Ph3n0m

Vince135792003 wrote:

Relax. If that line annoys you.I'll delete it now. I genuinely didn't say it to get a rise out of you and if I did I'm sorry.

my apple-ogies, just cranky cause I am awake, shall edit my post

However this booking talk makes me wonder - should WWE reduce the number of PPVs per year - in my opinion yes. It always seemed to me that the booking a tad more solid back in the days of yore and fewer PPVs

krudler

there are far too many ppvs nowadays,half of them are just matches you can see on raw every week,and then they give away the tag titles to duece and domino on an episode of smackdown? not to mention the main event of last nights raw was better than the wrestlemania main event,it doesnt make any sense,there should be max 7 ppvs a year,2 months between them would give storylines proper time to build.
i was watching wrestelmania 7 the other night and it had savage vs warrior on it,they started their fued at surivor series the year before and it culminated in a wrestelmania match

Vince135792003

The WWE must feel that they'll make more money by doing lots of ppvs with smaller buy rates than doing less ppvs with bigger ppv buy rates.

The Sparrow

Vince135792003 wrote:

Heres a fantastic video clip of a hype special for De la Hoya and Mayweather which will do ungodly ppv numbers. Even by looking at the first 2 minutes, its a perfect example of how you promote any combat sport fake or real. A wrestling comparison would be Steamboat versus Flair in the 1980s. The family man versus the cocky playboy.

I couldn't recommend this video enough and I think wrestling could learn from it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rBny9J1OPs&mode=related&search=

For anyone that has Sky Sports, that De La Hoya v Maywearther 24/7 build up show is been shown on Sky Sports 1. The first episode was on last week and the second is on tonight at 11.15pm. And it is must see television! It shows you why HBO is HBO and what can be done with a feud!

I think wrestling in general can learn a lot from MMA. UFC television points the way forward imho for WWE. UFC usually has pretty poor television ratings in comparison to WWE and in fact they usually do somewhere around a 1.4 whereas WWE usually does something approaching a 4.0 rating (for RAW) at least.

Yet UFC has figured out how to make a very large percentage of that television audience (around 75% for Tito v Chuck it seems) actually order the PPV. So while their TV numbers are only about a third of WWE's, UFC outdraws WWE on PPV.

So WWE need to scale back all of the TV title matches etc and instead build towards those matches only happening on PPV.

On a "wouldn`t this be cool but it will never happen" note. How great would it be if WWE followed the business model of UFC and rotated which titles were defended every month. So you only get to see the World titles defended every two or three months but you build up the Tag Titles, the IC and USA titles and the cruiserweight strap so that they can headline the intervening PPV's. Obviously a ton of work would be needed to build them up but it would really make it interesting again and build up anticipation. And unlike UFC they can determine the finish so they have that distinct advantage.

Ph3n0m

woooo232 wrote:

On a "wouldn`t this be cool but it will never happen" note. How great would it be if WWE followed the business model of UFC and rotated which titles were defended every month. So you only get to see the World titles defended every two or three months but you build up the Tag Titles, the IC and USA titles and the cruiserweight strap so that they can headline the intervening PPV's. Obviously a ton of work would be needed to build them up but it would really make it interesting again and build up anticipation. And unlike UFC they can determine the finish so they have that distinct advantage.

thats dangerous talk - talk like that might make WWE interesting again

Cactus Col

The wwe does need to do less ppv's. 18 in a year is madness. I can see smaller ones such as Cyber Sunday being phased out over the next few years.


However, I've always thought it was unfair to compare WWE ppv's with UFC ppv's. I think the rise in UFC has more to do with the decline of heavyweight boxing. Fight fans have been looking for an alternative, and UFC fills that need. People don't want to have to watch 4 hours of programming a week to keep track of who's fighting who and why.

oneofakind32

Lance storm is right. Its a catch 22 situation. You would have to sacrifice TV ratings for PPV buys. If they were to build PPVs like UFC you have nothing but jobbers getting squashed ever week on Raw and Smackdown.
It realy enoys me when i buy a big ppv like SummerSlam or Wrestlemania expecting a big finish to what ever fued there doing and then the match ends in a DQ or somthing inorder to sell the rematch at next moths PPV

Vince135792003

Cactus Col wrote:

However, I've always thought it was unfair to compare WWE ppv's with UFC ppv's.

I think its fair although I see what your saying. The UFC is a mixture of alot of groups but for sure many of them are wrestling fans too. I mean, you have to remember where this growth began. It was with the UFC reality show that did excellent numbers right after RAW on the same channel with the same demographic audience tuning in to both. That was the big turning point for the UFC.

Also I don't think its a coincidence the WWE's domestic buy rates last year were at time very poor at a time when UFC's were soaring. I've no doubt that the UFC took a slice out of them.

It would be interesting to see how ppv buyrates would be effected if the main champions only wrestled on ppv.

Fozzy

Interesting article. I remember back when they started doing brand-only ppvs, I think the first was probably Raw with Backlash. That mean that SD had 8 or 9 weeks to build from WM to their next ppv. I was thinking how great this would be, they could really put some effort into long feuds. But they decided to just have a sort of "ppv edition" episode of SD halfway through the 8 or 9 weeks in which they ended whatever feuds had been built up. I always thought that it was a mistake to do that

One of the most well received feuds of the last few years was Shawn Michaels vs Chris Jericho. That feud built up for months and months, and when the match happened, that was it, it was over

With most ppv main events these days, you know that if the champ loses then he'll get a rematch at the next ppv. It does makes you not care as much about the current match to an extent. A lot of the time too, you just know that the champ won't lose his belt by the way it's been built up

It's not the hardest thing in the world to create a tag division (for example) where they treat the belts as something special and they treat the contenders as stars. If WWE hadn't made the tag titles seem so worthless, you could realistically have them defended in the main event of a ppv. This would in turn make the top titles seem more important if they're not being defended so often. But with the way it is at the moment, there isn't really anything you could replace the heavyweight title matches with and I don't think it would help WWE with the way they are now

Bubs101

What I don't understand about the WWE is that they seem determined to wreck their own products. For example , does anyone on boards who has watched the WWE in recent weeks not know the storyline and ending to the Condemned? what's the point in spending so much on a movie to tell people what happens in it. Also, am I the only one who's unhappy that they used Wrestlemania to promote it

Cactus Col

Vince135792003 wrote:

I think its fair although I see what your saying. The UFC is a mixture of alot of groups but for sure many of them are wrestling fans too. I mean, you have to remember where this growth began. It was with the UFC reality show that did excellent numbers right after RAW on the same channel with the same demographic audience tuning in to both. That was the big turning point for the UFC.

Also I don't think its a coincidence the WWE's domestic buy rates last year were at time very poor at a time when UFC's were soaring. I've no doubt that the UFC took a slice out of them.

Absolutely I'd say UFC took a slice, but I'd imagine (best on not much but my own thoughts) that a lot of boxing fans, who would never bother with wwe, have migrated directly to UFC too.

But like everyone says, WWE are they're own worst enemy. At this stage they've completly messed up the brand extension. It might sound silly, but survivor series a couple of years ago when it was team smackdown v team raw, (smackdown won) that was probably the height of the extension. It felt, at least to me, like a big deal.

Vince135792003

I agree. They took a slice out of everyone. Based on my experience, I would know alot of people who would have interest in neither wrestling or boxing who have gotten into it too.

Fozzy

Vince135792003 wrote:

Based on my experience, I would know alot of people who would have interest in neither wrestling or boxing who have gotten into it too.

Absolutely, a lot of people who I know have only gotten into it within the last 6 months

Just wondering, was that De La Hoya/Mayweather build-up program made by HBO? Would they be involved in making specials like that for UFC when they have events on HBO later this year?

The Sparrow

Fozzy wrote:

Absolutely, a lot of people who I know have only gotten into it within the last 6 months

Just wondering, was that De La Hoya/Mayweather build-up program made by HBO? Would they be involved in making specials like that for UFC when they have events on HBO later this year?

Yes it was. lol that was my exact thought too when I watched it! Imagine what a good job they could do...

The big question however is who will be commentating on the shows because HBO are bringing in their own people and producing the shows as well so it may look very different from the UFC we are used to.

And I wonder who will pick it up over here? Or will Bravo just show the HBO shows?

Vince135792003

I don't know but I'm sure Dana White wouldn't have a problem! The Spike specials for UFC are really good but those HBO specials for Mayweather/De la Hoya are a big step up from anything I've seen.

Charlie

Just a heads up, the De La Hoya/Mayweather 24/7 special is on Sky Sports 1 @ 11.45.

Fozzy

I read that it was 11:15. It was on at 10:30 and 6:30 earlier, haven't watched it yet but I definitely will. Can't wait for this fight

Vince135792003

charlie mchugh wrote:

Just a heads up, the De La Hoya/Mayweather 24/7 special is on Sky Sports 1 @ 11.45.

Thanks for that. It was on an hour ago too for those that need some sleep! Also just type in De La Hoya Mayweather and they're all up there on youtube.

I liked the show. The do a piece on Freddie Roach thats touching. I made the analogy of Steamboat versus Flair. After tonight it came across like Raven versus Terry Funk. The bitter young man with the dysfunctional family against the old warrior.

Just on Lance Storm, he was on figure four today talking about the article for over an hour. I'd summarise it if I could but everything Lance says comes across as relevant!

Slightly off topic but Lance has suggested to the powers that be that his school become a developmental territory for the WWE after they cut Deep South. Its just a suggestion at this stage though.

Fozzy

Vince135792003 wrote:

Slightly off topic but Lance has suggested to the powers that be that his school become a developmental territory for the WWE after they cut Deep South. Its just a suggestion at this stage though.

The latest I heard was that they'll be helping Steve Keirn set up a territory in Florida and they'll be using that as a developmental place. Keirn already works for WWE

Vince135792003

Fozzy wrote:

The latest I heard was that they'll be helping Steve Keirn set up a territory in Florida and they'll be using that as a developmental place. Keirn already works for WWE

Yep that was reported in the observer. He wasn't given a ringing endorsement either.

I could see Storm getting something like this in the future.

Vince135792003

Just on promotion in relation to Mayweather versus De la Hoya, an update from the observer:

--The final 24/7 De la Hoya vs. Mayweather show on HBO airs tomorrow night. Last week's show was nothing short of incredible. One of the best pro wrestling bookers of the past decade e-mailed me after the episode and said it was the best pro wrestling TV show they had ever seen. Probably a half dozen other bookers have given me similar responses to the series, including one who thought this whole series made both UFC and pro wrestling promotion seem behind-the-times or even obsolete after 30 minutes. It is definitely the new state of the art when it comes to match promotion.

http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=-1305867020477063649&q=mayweather+duration%3Along (last 5 minutes is amazing)

The last 5 minutes of this weeks special is something else and just emphasises why this fight will do 2 million buys (albeit a total once off) whereas WWE will do 130 thousand and TNA will do 30 thousand domestically a month.

No blindfolds, polls, scaffolds or cages necessary. Just 2 guys that people really care about having a one on one fight.

The hard part for professional wrestling/boxing/MMA in 2007 is to make people care but if you can do it you'll make alot of money. A lot more than any quick fix gimmick match.

Mr.Nice Guy

Vince135792003 wrote:

Just on promotion in relation to Mayweather versus De la Hoya, an update from the observer:

--The final 24/7 De la Hoya vs. Mayweather show on HBO airs tomorrow night. Last week's show was nothing short of incredible. One of the best pro wrestling bookers of the past decade e-mailed me after the episode and said it was the best pro wrestling TV show they had ever seen. Probably a half dozen other bookers have given me similar responses to the series, including one who thought this whole series made both UFC and pro wrestling promotion seem behind-the-times or even obsolete after 30 minutes. It is definitely the new state of the art when it comes to match promotion.

http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=-1305867020477063649&q=mayweather+duration%3Along (last 5 minutes is amazing)

The last 5 minutes of this weeks special is something else and just emphasises why this fight will do 2 million buys (albeit a total once off) whereas WWE will do 130 thousand and TNA will do 30 thousand domestically a month.

No blindfolds, polls, scaffolds or cages necessary. Just 2 guys that people really care about having a one on one fight.

The hard part for professional wrestling/boxing/MMA in 2007 is to make people care but if you can do it you'll make alot of money. A lot more than any quick fix gimmick match.

I really enjoyed that. It works because they're focusing on making an emotional connection with the protagonists rather than focusing on stipulations and all that other stuff.

Correct me if I'm wrong but that fight is on Sky Sports right?

Vince135792003

Mr.Nice Guy wrote:

Correct me if I'm wrong but that fight is on Sky Sports right?

It is.

Fozzy

I managed to fit in watching last week's show just before a lecture, HBO were going around getting the videos removed from Youtube. I'm not really sure why they want to get rid of these shows though, I'm sure they'd encourage more people to watch the show at the weekend that HBO will actually make money off of

I only found out at the weekend that this is on Sky Sports, I was planning to buy the ppv. And I'm not a boxing fan, nor have I ever bought a WWE ppv! But this promotion is just incredible

Like Mr.Nice Guy said, they create that emotional connection with the two guys. I've often thought that they don't do that enough in WWE these days. Mick Foley didn't often put on great matches towards the end of his WWF run, but the emotional connection he had with the fans more than made up for that. I hope some people in the wrestling business can learn from this

Mr.Nice Guy

Fozzy wrote:

I hope some people in the wrestling business can learn from this

Same here. TNA did a very short package prior to the first match between Samoa Joe and Kurt Angle which by my reckoning is the closest wrestling has come to the sort of package shown above:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=QUDhAXRUP3c

Taking a leaf out of the De la Hoya/Mayweather video, if TNA had shown Angle emphasising how he feels he has much to prove and if they had hyped up Joe as the next big star of wrestling, we can only imagine how well they would have done with it. Instead people got sick of the feud really soon.

Wrestling can learn a lot. Sadly they seem to be forgetting things rather than learning things.