Credit Roman for huge TV deals?

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When things go well, leaders get credit. When things go poorly, leaders get criticized. In the NFL, for example, head coaches and quarterbacks receive the lion's share of glory and notoriety.

What about wrestling? By and large, Hogan gets credit for WWE's rapid expanse in the 1980s; Austin gets credit for saving WWE in the 1990s. Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels often get blamed for WWE's decline in pre-"Attitude" WWE. What about Roman Reigns? For the majority of pay-per-views, Monday Night Raw broadcasts, and for four consecutive WrestleManias, Roman Reigns has been on the marquee and in the main event. Does Roman Reigns deserve credit for being "The Guy" during WWE's dramatic bump in TV earnings?
 
There is 0 connection between wwe programming and business. WWE as a brand and an organization is bigger than any performer and sells itself. Unlike during past era's, no 1 performer is the reason for their success it's all name value, TV rights, merch, and network.
 
Somebody placing you as a leader doesn't really make you a leader... Nobody really placed Undertaker as the leader back in the day, but he was the #1 dog backstage and everybody looked up to him. Nobody really looks up at Roman Reigns.

Anyways, as the previous poster said, the bussiness has changed. There's no face of the company any more.

If WWE were to fail or if a Wrestlemania were to bomb, I wouldn't critisize Roman for that. I only critisize Roman for his individual matches. Roman has nothing to do with WWE's success. But Roman has everything to do with the fact that the main events of the previous 3 Wrestlemanias bombed. Big time.
 
Like everybody wrote before there really no face of the company anymore. In the past, the guy that was considered the face of the company was whoever was the WWE champion as it was the guy the use to do the most promotion for the company, so if this was the case today, Aj Styles would be considered the leader and face of the company more then roman.

The fact is, fans seems to want to blame roman for everything. He was in the main event of the last 2 or 3 ppv yet i don't blame him for the quality of thoses matches or the reactions to them, i blame WWE for having PPV that last to damn long. Mania is way to long in my opinion and whoever gets the main event spot would have died with the crowd anyway no matter who it was. Backlash was the same thing. The show went 30 minutes over, the matches were boring as hell and fans were just plain tired. You could have put Aj and nakamura as the last match and you would have gotten the same reaction. In fact, i've seen this happening a few days before backlash when i went to the smackdown tapings and fans we're leaving in drove during the main event because of how boring the show was.

WWE is were it is because they have peoples that knows how to market the shit out of the product, that's where the credit will go. The wrestlers are just characters in a TV show that the WWE is producing and deserve no credit at all for their success at less that's what the higher up at WWE are thinking.
 
When it comes to WWE, the person who tends to get criticized when things don't go well is Vince McMahon. Why? Because it's his company and he's the man who makes all the final decisions when it comes to...well...anything concerning his company. Sure, WWE is a publicly traded company so Vince doesn't "technically" own it, but the way the company is structured in terms of stock shares and voting power pretty much gives Vince the same sort of power he'd have if WWE were still a privately owned company. Vince has like 90%+ of the voting power and owns somewhere close to half the stock, which means that Vince's net worth right now is probably just a little bit over the $2 billion mark. Now, when you're someone who wants as much control as Vince does, then, in my eyes, that means you're someone who has to take it on the chin when it comes to criticism because the buck stops with him. Nothing goes down in WWE without Vince McMahon's approval, even if it's an idea he doesn't come up with, he's still the one who endorses it and who's endorsement matters the most.

With that being said, however, Vince is also someone who doesn't get remotely the sort of credit he deserves. People are quick to jump down his throat over the tiniest little thing but praise fro a job well done or decisions made are extremely, extremely slow in coming from a lot of internet fans and may dirt sheet writers. I pecker slap Vince as much as anyone when I think he's making bad decisions, but I do have to give the man credit; I don't think he's as strong on the creative end of things as he once was but he's still got the corporate aspects of things down.

I'm of the opinion that there doens't need to be a singular face for WWE. Vince putting all of his eggs, or at least most of them, in one basket, as we saw with John Cena beginning in the mid 2000s, did sometimes result in boring feuds, a stale & sterilized creative process and an underpowered roster because damn near everyone Cena faced for a long time never came off as a credible threat to him. When you look at the WWE roster right now, there are wrestlers who have the crediblity, while some have the credibility, to step up into the top spot of the company without seeming like placeholders ready to hand it back to Cena, or Roman Reigns in this case because Reigns hasn't been built up to the ridiculous level Cena was during the peak of his career.

The roster is important in the sense that the roster is what sells the product, you can't have a wrestling company without wrestlers that people want to see wrestle. However, if Roman Reigns left tomorrow, it wouldn't impact WWE's bottom line one iota. If WWE could survive Daniel Bryan having to leave, a wrestler who was the most popular on the roster, sold a lot of merchandise, helped sell a lot of tickets and who's segments/matches were often the most watched parts of WWE TV, then the machine will chug along just fine if/when anyone else on the roster leaves. One of the few to create even a ripple would be Brock Lesnar but it's not like Lesnar is bringing in record ratings or anything.
 
Nah. If any one performer made a difference, it was probably Rhonda Rousey. The big deals are more about the value of live events and failure of broadcast tv to create a week's worth of shows with a loyal audience.

And even if Roman did deserve the credit, it doesn't mean that I am going to start enjoying his segments.

That all being said, it will be interesting to see how things go once 2019 rolls around. Will USA bury SD in the last days on their network? How will Vince divide talent between the shows? How much influence will both networks have over talent and stories? This is great news for WWE, I'm not sure what it means for the rest of us.
 
Somebody placing you as a leader doesn't really make you a leader... Nobody really placed Undertaker as the leader back in the day, but he was the #1 dog backstage and everybody looked up to him. Nobody really looks up at Roman Reigns.
Except he kinda is. He is credited by several wrestlers as locker room leader and when Enzo was giving them shit he threw him out of the bus.

Does he deserves a credit for earnings? As a part of the roster and product in general sure. As somebody who is responsible for that? He is most prominent but he really doesnt show that he alone boosts that. His merch reportedly sells great but ratings and all other stuff is in decline. I mean sure, ratings are almost always in decline for over 10 years now but you can see boost, for example, when Cena has gone to Smackdown and came back after short vacation. Not really sure that Roman would pull that. Also, business as a business has changed. You can sell the product on different ways then just TV and you can make it to more homes then just American homes now. Before I have to watch wrestling recorded from few weeks ago on local TV. Now I have all that at just a click on my phone live whenever I want. Audience is broader and ways to sell the product are many. Plus after Fox focusing on sport after Disney deal pretty sure that had an impact to the decision.
 
George Steele's Barber said:
Nah. If any one performer made a difference, it was probably Rhonda Rousey. The big deals are more about the value of live events and failure of broadcast tv to create a week's worth of shows with a loyal audience.

And even if Roman did deserve the credit, it doesn't mean that I am going to start enjoying his segments.

That all being said, it will be interesting to see how things go once 2019 rolls around. Will USA bury SD in the last days on their network? How will Vince divide talent between the shows? How much influence will both networks have over talent and stories? This is great news for WWE, I'm not sure what it means for the rest of us.

I credit Rousey more also. However, Reigns is a merch and ticket seller according to WWE.
 
Nah. If any one performer made a difference, it was probably Rhonda Rousey. The big deals are more about the value of live events and failure of broadcast tv to create a week's worth of shows with a loyal audience.

Agreed Rousey has the biggest name appeal in the roster now and probably gave the WWE more leverage.

I credit Rousey more also. However, Reigns is a merch and ticket seller according to WWE.

Still even if he's the #1 in merchandise its during a time with a dwindling fanbase. I am sure 1996 Shawn Michaels and 1995 Kevin Nash were top merchandise sellers as well.
 
I credit Rousey more also. However, Reigns is a merch and ticket seller according to WWE.

I have to agree about Rousey. As for Reigns, all the wrestlers sell merchandise, he isn't the only one. When I used to buy tickets for house shows, I didn't buy them to see Reigns it was to see the whole show. Quite often we beat the crowd out if Reigns was in the main event.

JH nailed it perfectly. No one on the roster right now is a make or break company guy. Cena has become almost non existent and he's the guy who carried the company on his back for the better part of a decade. It hasn't hurt the WWE at all. If Reigns, Rollins or anyone else left or got injured tomorrow the show would go on, fans would just start booing and cheering others.

Besides can anyone name a feud lately that would make Reigns invaluable to the company's bottom line? I can't.
 
Roman Reigns deserves credit in the sense that he's the main focus for the ire of the smarks, and they love watching him get beaten up. Roman getting annihilated by Braun Strowman is probably how most of the fans remember him fondly.

Does Roman deserve the most credit? Hell no, that's not even debatable. Roman Reigns is the Steven Segal of the WWE, their appeal fizzled out pretty quickly. Now Roman's marketability is in how the fans that he upset want to see him get obliterated. Smarks can typically smell another cheesy match meant only to build Roman's reputation, like when Roman fought Samoa Joe, and have evolved from booing him mercilessly to flat out ignoring him.

Roman was supposed to be the guy that took Lesnar's spot, and now it's looking like Lesnar is going to retire as champion. Every other viable competitor has already had their feuds with Lesnar, and I suspect that they were unsuccessful because the whole point was to make Roman look better than everyone.

The WWE has done a spectacular job marketing themselves in areas other than prowrestling, their reality tv ventures are insanely popular. The WWE recently released another (!) freemium mobile game, of which they're likely to rake in an extra $10,000,000 this year.

If I had to pick one person who deserves the most credit for the WWE's rise in positive notoriety among the business community, it would be HHH. I never thought I'd say this, but the McMahons lucked out big-time with him.
 
No. Because he's not the leader. THe original poster seems to be talking storyline leader. If that's the case, it's Brock Lesnar. He's the champion. He's the guy they make a big deal about. He's the guy people know from UFC. He's the guy also in the main events, but he's the guy who Roman "can't" beat. So going storyline, that's it.

True, PR wise, John Cena is probably the "leader" due to visibility.

But there's a lot of reasons for the TV deal. Rousey is part of it. Cena's crossover is part of it. WWE's ties to The Rock and Batista, and the potential for another person like that to appear, is part of it. WWE having a pre-built "will never leave" fanbase is part of it. Live TV is part of it. Having shows on E! is part of it. Having people with large podcast (Stone Cold, Jericho, others) and YouTube (Xavier) presences is part of it. Building out more "sports" content is part of it. The fact that Wrestlemania weekend is now like a mini-Super Bowl is part of it. International growth is part of it. It is not predicated on any one person.
 
Roman Reigns deserves credit in the sense that he's the main focus for the ire of the smarks, and they love watching him get beaten up. Roman getting annihilated by Braun Strowman is probably how most of the fans remember him fondly.

That explains why the audience were more into the beach balls than Lesnar pummeling Reigns at WM34?
 
The new TV deals are just like the major pro sports, they’re paying for the brand not the player. People get injured or retire, a company isn’t going to put all that money on one person. The WWE is all about the brand not the performers.
 
I think many have said it already. I support the idea that it's not any ONE person who is to credit for huge TV deals, it is the brand of WWE itself.

Like it or not, WWE as a brand on TV has been around since about 1993 in a consistent, weekly format. Ratings have been up and down since that time.

Ratings are nowhere near the highest they have ever been. But they are pretty consistent at about 2-4 million per episode of Raw or SmackDown. Ratings aren't trending up, however. So there is a LITTLE reason for concern.

But from a TV Channel's perspective, they can look at WWEs two main shows as consistency. A 5-year deal for SmackDown means 5 years of investment in a 2 hour show once a week (and possible repeats throughout the week) that will consistently get between 2-4 million viewers per show every single week of the year. This is opposed to the station trying to launch a new show in year 1 and it get hardly any viewers and have to cancel it and try another show, then another show, and another.


Now, yes, WWE's shows are consistent but we'll see in 5 years from now if ratings continue to drop and maybe become less of a 2-4 million figure and more of a 1 million and occasional 2 million figure. Then, it will be evident that the actual content and product being delivered to the people is not pleasing their tastes often enough.


If WWE gets TOO comfortable with status quo then there's no reason to believe their ratings will not continue to drop and their overall appeal, even amongst young people, will continue to decline.


WWE should count themselves lucky to have such big TV deals despite the product they are putting out and hopefully take this as an opportunity to increase their appeal by offering a more compelling product.
 
Another point that i just though of will reading the above post. I think Smackdown might not suffered as badly as Raw will with those new deal. The fact is Smackdown moving to Fox even on a friday night is a good deal for the company. Normally, Friday night as always been considered as family night on T.V., that's why Smackdown was move to friday when it was on UPN/CW. So by moving to show back on friday night on Fox, they have a good chance of getting more families watching the program then what they have right now with USA. So in the end even if they lose some of the hardcore male audience that would rather do anything else then watch wrestling on Friday night, you still get the families that probably will sit down and watch since the show isn't a a school night anymore and kids can stay up late to watch the whole show, while raw will be the more grown up show and will have to adapt the product to make sure their fanbase they still have don't leave.
 

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