Ratings Discussion Thread - Mod Warning #271 (26th June)

lawlolawl wrote: »

Raw figures for this past Monday:

8pm: 2,380,000
9pm: 2,086,000
10pm: 1,909,000

Was expected, they were going up against the NBA Finals in a title eliminator game in one of the best series in years. I watched both simultaneously but hardly glanced at Raw while the game was on tbh. I know people wanna use it to further the “WWE is dying” narrative (that I’ve been reading on here since 2002 btw :pac:), but the only story it tells is “The NBA’s biggest game of the season is bigger than just another episode of WWE when they knew they were going to get killed.”

lawlolawl wrote: »

It's down 15% on the same time last year.

When the Golden State Warriors beat the Cleveland Cavaliers 4-0 in a boring Finals and it didn't get to a Monday game.

leggo wrote: »

Right. But you're not counted in the US ratings either so...:pac:

Obviously not. What I'm saying is that it's been 20+ years since I haven't checked out at least a segment from Monday Night Raw. I've been staunch since day one. Can only imagine there's more like me and many more that have given up a lot easier.

Omackeral wrote: »

Obviously not. What I'm saying is that it's been 20+ years since I haven't checked out at least a segment from Monday Night Raw. I've been staunch since day one. Can only imagine there's more like me and many more that have given up a lot easier.

I get what you’re saying and that’s your experience of the product. But it’s not really indicative of anything beyond “that’s my experience of the product.”

Put it this way: when I started the wrestling show I do, one of the first running jokes was how people would go hysterical about how “WWE IS DYING!!” every year, without fail, from September to December (when NFL season is on and ratings dip, because people don’t pay attention to NFL so don’t realise the correlation and that it happens that way every year and always will, plus “WWE IS DYING” is a historically good thing to riff off for likes or attention). Then Rumble season would kick in and they’d be back paying attention. That was back around WrestleMania 30.

For fun one time, I decided to go back on a message board from 1999 and see if I could prove a point that message boards had always been this way. Because I remembered it being that way when Triple H was “holding everyone down” in 2002. Sure enough, D’Lo Brown, Test and Ken Shamrock were all stars of the future being wasted by Vince McMahon. You could literally sub in the stuff people would say and replace the names. I think I did a quiz where my co-host had to guess whether it was 1999 or present day and it was genuinely impossible! It’s just how fans related to the sport and, actually, it had zero baring on business. This was 1999. I’m sure you remember...business was pretty good then huh? You watched and probably loved it but I guarantee there was some guy back then saying “I haven’t missed an episode since the 80’s until this week...”

So do you see why I’m cynical when someone is like “Hey look at how bad the ratings are?” as if it’s validation of their own disinterest. Especially when, for the past week, Meltzer and anyone reporting the ratings has been like “Btw they’re clashing with the NBA Finals next week so ratings are gonna be pretty bad.”

The only story here is you didn’t watch Raw this week. Cool. But to try make that bigger than it is is being hyperbolic.

Omackeral wrote: »

That's all that my point was. It's taken this level of sh*t to make me this apathetic. I watched TL Hopper plunge literal crap on tv and stayed with it. I added to that by saying I personally know people who are in the same boat as me and I imagine there's a hell of a lot more on a broader scale who feel similar. This forum itself is indicative of that.

Your last line is ridiculous. How am I making anything hyperbolic? Gave an account. I've seen evidence of others doing the same. Your posts feel like lectures or essays sometimes tbh.

You’re the one connecting that view to the ratings being down yourself. You’ll note I haven’t actually expressed a personal opinion on the content (of which I’ve both positive and negative), because it doesn’t matter. If we’re going to talk about ratings, then the discussion we’re having is analysing WWE’s business. So adding your personal views to that conversation is like me saying “McDonalds are dying because the person in my local Drive Thru was rude to me!” See what I mean? Their rudeness and your experience isn’t insignificant, but the conclusion is ridiculous.

I’m not trying to lecture. I’d love to have a genuine, fact-based conversation on it, there’s a lot to discuss. But we’re not doing that.

Jerichoholic wrote: »

NBA and NFL audiences aren't down, in fact they are almost exactly the same as they were last year. WWE however are down 25% from last year, and Monday was the 3rd lowest rated raw in 26 years.

Attendances are also dwindling, Stomping grounds is less than two weeks away and isn't even close to half sold out.

Yup, they're doing just fine!

Below an article with an old story (because it is an old story) about the NFL’s struggles to attract a younger audience and the average viewer rising from 33 to 50 in the 21st century. Sound familiar? I think the NBA is the only major sport not in emergency mode about this because it’s quite good at facilitating younger viewers. The problem is Dave Meltzer either doesn’t see this correlation or doesn’t report it, so wrestling fans aren’t getting the full picture, and I’m cynical of his motives personally because WWE personally struggling sells more newsletters and he has a close friendship with their biggest competitor.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamhartung/2017/09/29/the-nfl-has-a-bigger-problem-than-kneeling-employees-demographics-and-trends/

So your info is missing the big picture and explains why your theory doesn’t explain how WWE are making more money from TV despite lower ratings, while mine does. And none of that has anything to do with what we personally think of the product.

I feel like they're creatively bankrupt outside of NXT. Corbin, Lashley and McIntyre teaming together is just lazy. It's bad. Corbin getting a title match is not gonna get crowds tuning in. They had people like Rusev getting reactions and he's nowhere to be seen. Shane McMahon all over both shows is beyond tedious. The whole wildcard rule is shocking and their enforcement of same is worse. Every call-up from developmental is either forgotten about or stripped of what's made them stand out a bit. Ziggler coming back for the 13th team talking about scratching and clawing. Champions being forgotten about until they've to drop straps. Name changes needlessly.. Teams broken up with no rhyme or reason.

lawlolawl wrote: »

What about live attendance being down?

What point are you trying to make here? Are you saying that running a giant corporation like WWE is as simple as “lawlolawl happy = business up across the board.” Are you THAT arrogant about how important your opinion is?

As someone who works within seeing how interested wrestling fans are in the product, here is my experience of local WWE live attendance and who attends: 90% of people I’d deal with as over-18 fans don’t and haven’t for years (I know 3 of these people who went in April, and I run a social media account for fans and am in about 7 different wrestling-related groupchats. Two of those who went were comps). 90% of people I know who do are parents or relatives who bring children. And neither the parents, relatives or children care if lawlolawl enjoyed Raw or not. The parents and relatives either aren’t fans or tend to be lapsed fans who dip in and out and don’t follow week to week. The kids love every Raw because they’re children and are just happy to watch any wrestling (remember how nice that phase was?)

Varying factors that dictate whether or not they put down money and go include: whether the kid’s favourite wrestler is there or not (so John Cena not being around, and Roman Reigns missing time last year, would be a big factor), price, whether there’s other stuff on like communions, if they need something cool to get the kid for Christmas/birthdays or if there’s a big toy that they wanted instead etc. This is the stuff that matters.

One issue WWE are having right now with live events, for example, is false advertising. The wildcard thing they’ve brought in means they’re advertising big names that they aren’t delivering, for example Roman Reigns, Drew McIntyre and Bayley were all advertised for a SD event on Monday, but all were on Raw. That’s going to have an impact next time they come back. They’ve also cancelled a lot of Monday shows recently for this reason, which parents won’t even realise and it’ll send the impression it’s just not popular/cool anymore, that’ll have a knock on effect six months down the line when they come back.

Now do you see how little your opinion of how good Raw was actually means in the grand scheme? Again, not insignificant, but not even nearly relevant enough to make any grand conclusions and worthy of ridicule if you do.

Here’s a conflicting story from someone who does this as part of his job. Interest in our wrestling related events, product and media as a whole is booming in 2019 after dipping slightly since 2017. Keep in mind we are aimed at fans in Ireland over 18. Here is a list of our events in 2019 so far in order of popularity:

1. WWE WrestleMania (two bars, both full, near sellout from ticket sales)
2. WWE Royal Rumble (two bars, both full, half tickets, half door sales)
3. NJPW Wrestle Kingdom (one bar, full, majority door sales)
4. AEW Double or Nothing (one bar, half full, half and half ticket/door)
5. NJPW Dominion (one bar, quiet, almost all ticket sales)

As you can see, interest in Irish fans over 18 is still on a different stratosphere for WWE to other products, regardless of what the internet is saying or what appears to be ‘cool’. I’ve no biases. I don’t care if we fill a bar for WWE, AEW, NJPW or a backyard promotion. It just is what it is. This stuff just doesn’t have any baring in the real world. It’s noise, nothing more, whether people like that or not.

Omackeral wrote: »

Sees another wall of text...

You’d actually learn and be able to talk sense with facts if you read it instead of hunting for thanks. :pac:

Omackeral wrote: »

Not hunting for thanks, just honestly how I feel seeing paragraph after paragraph every single time!

You got data, that I haven’t published anywhere else, there from an unbiased source with a unique insight into exactly what we’re discussing here. How did you react to that?

Did you use it to better educate yourself on the thing you’ve spent all morning discussing? Nope, you made a smart comment because the data didn’t back up your point. So you don’t care about facts at all really, you just want your pre-conceived notions backed up.

Well even if you learned nothing from the data I hope you’ve learned something about yourself this morning.

Jerichoholic wrote: »

The product is really bad, therefore the interest isn't there as it used to be, therefore attendance is down, therefore ratings are down.

They made the Fox deal during a tiny period where their ratings were actually up a little bit from the same time the previous year and they had just done a deal with Rousey. Fox would not be giving the same deal now with these falling ratings, not a chance.

Look at the interest in Stomping Grounds, it's not there anymore. The card is absolutely wretched.

https://twitter.com/TheVicMacias/status/1138108167680741376

Not surprising. You've got Baron Corbin and Dolph fúcking Ziggler in the marquee matches. I wouldn't cross the road to watch them.

Man you’re the one who connected your personal opinion of the product to the ratings. Nobody made you do that, your hand didn’t slip, type out that post and click send by accident. When I said “that’s your personal opinion”, you continued to argue and make smart remarks. Don’t get stubborn, butthurt and keep making smart comments just because you’ve been proven wrong. It’s okay, you just overreacted and made a bad point on the Internet once. This too shall pass.

lawlolawl wrote: »

WCW were actually doing similar/slightly better ratings at the end than WWE are doing now.

What smartphone did people watch content on then? How many channels were there to choose from in 2001 vs 2019?

Are ratings from then really comparable? Like do you honestly feel that way or are you clutching? If so then why did Fox pay record figures for those ratings when Turner chose to cancel based on them?

Jerichoholic wrote: »

You've literally condemned someone for forming an opinion based on personal circumstances and in the same breath presented personal circumstances as facts.

Nope, my personal opinion would be that the shows, in order of enjoyment, would be: Rumble, DoN, WK, Mania, Dominion.

The data presented, that isn’t affected by my personal opinion, says that people’s taste and interest feels otherwise.

Just watched an interview with George Barrios, alot of what Leggo is saying makes sense, direct to consumer product via the internet seems like their number 1 main focus, just pumping out content that people with eat up.

I guess these numbers help contribute to deals from fox and the likes going, look at how many people follow our brand.

Another result of this easy accesability would be the supposed declining house show business. This was always used as a barrometer for WWE success, but maybe not so relevent anymore.

The product is stale no doubt about that, especially condiering the sheer amount of wrestling we can consume nowadays, maybe this staleness will have a knockon effect in the future with no bonafide stars ala Cena, Taker, Austin etc being able to come back and pop rarings.