Interesting
Does ratings and PPV buyrates mean quality in wrestling?
- Thread starter Hard Hit Prince
- Start date
Interesting
Kodo Sawaki
Championship Contender
OK, i read this whole thread(dont know how i managed but i did) and i think i finally get the point. I will try to be somewhat like mediator here and spoil a fun a bit.
History, Haiku didnt said that PPV buyrates means that it would be bad and matches with zero entertaining quality on the card. It would be ridicolous because buyrate doesnt mean quality of the product. By that logic you could argue that the Superball is most quality game ever simply because its Superball and the buyrates are ridicoulosly huge and the other matches have no quality because they werent Superball. Fact is, not every Superball game has quality and some of Divisional games are far better in terms of quality then Superball. We expect the quality of Superball and thats why we watch it but it doesnt always deliver.
Now, get this
Haiku just said that drawing power means money and that there are more people to turn in and to expect to be entertained if the match on the card is Cena- Punk then lets say Show- Tensai(just an example). WWE is scripted show and its all about the money so if its a higher drawing power match they would really try to build it properly and match himself will last longer and perhaps be more entertaining then some squash midcarder match with no build up at all. Take upcoming Punk- Rock match at RR(not yet officially but it will probably be booked after New Year). We get the match with higher drawing power, so we could expect from WWE to build it good and to get the good match because a lot people would tune in to see The Rock and Punk going back and forth with talk and in the ring. Therefore it would mean that they would try to deliver good TV so that all those millions of viewers be entertained. It has better chance of being a good match and with that good PPV then some other minor PPV build up match in witch almost everybody know who is gona win and what will happen. In other words in professional wrestling sometimes more buys means more entertaining because simply, they try more to give it to us. Doesnt mean that you or anybody else will like the match or that you might think that some other match from minor PPV was better, just means that more people will turn in expecting to be enterteined and therefore perhaps more entertaiment will be provide to more people. So in some terms PPV buys means quality of entertaiment but it doesnt mean that it was obligated and bound to happen.
History, Haiku didnt said that PPV buyrates means that it would be bad and matches with zero entertaining quality on the card. It would be ridicolous because buyrate doesnt mean quality of the product. By that logic you could argue that the Superball is most quality game ever simply because its Superball and the buyrates are ridicoulosly huge and the other matches have no quality because they werent Superball. Fact is, not every Superball game has quality and some of Divisional games are far better in terms of quality then Superball. We expect the quality of Superball and thats why we watch it but it doesnt always deliver.
Now, get this
Haiku just said that drawing power means money and that there are more people to turn in and to expect to be entertained if the match on the card is Cena- Punk then lets say Show- Tensai(just an example). WWE is scripted show and its all about the money so if its a higher drawing power match they would really try to build it properly and match himself will last longer and perhaps be more entertaining then some squash midcarder match with no build up at all. Take upcoming Punk- Rock match at RR(not yet officially but it will probably be booked after New Year). We get the match with higher drawing power, so we could expect from WWE to build it good and to get the good match because a lot people would tune in to see The Rock and Punk going back and forth with talk and in the ring. Therefore it would mean that they would try to deliver good TV so that all those millions of viewers be entertained. It has better chance of being a good match and with that good PPV then some other minor PPV build up match in witch almost everybody know who is gona win and what will happen. In other words in professional wrestling sometimes more buys means more entertaining because simply, they try more to give it to us. Doesnt mean that you or anybody else will like the match or that you might think that some other match from minor PPV was better, just means that more people will turn in expecting to be enterteined and therefore perhaps more entertaiment will be provide to more people. So in some terms PPV buys means quality of entertaiment but it doesnt mean that it was obligated and bound to happen.
Hard Hit Prince
Not really working as a
Still, that rating isn't anywhere representative about what SmackDown delivered that day as aren't any ratings. Therefore I explained that the three hours Raw has been making SmackDown look stupid, as their talent aren't exclusive and build a lot of the things at Raw.
Now Sly I get the point you're making, the bigger stars bring star-power and with that a legion of fans that enjoy them, but still that doesn't mean that they are entertaining as they can let us down too. Let's see if they use John Cena vs. CM Punk for a PPV by principle that PPV has to be one with the bigger buyrate because you have there the most popular stars, ence the more entertaining and ence the one's that should draw more, but that was not the case as this year Night of Champions had only 189.000 buys, still it was up from last years, but I give that to the media attention that WWE has been getting for all 2012 and I give all the credit for the return of The Rock and Brock Lesnar.
But you said that we can only evaluate that not looking individually but looking in retrospective so let me look for 2011:
Royal Rumble 2011: 446,000 buys
Elimination Chamber: 200,000
Wrestlemania XXVII: 1,120,000 aprox.
Extreme Rules: 209,000
Over The Limit: 142,000
Capitol Punishment: 170,000
Money in the Bank: 195,000
Summerslam: 296,000 (big fucking disappoint)
Night Of Champions: 161,000
Hell In A Cell: 180,000
Vengeance: 121,000
Survivor Series: 281,000
TLC: 179,000
With that numbers I'm forced to assume that most of the world didn't enjoy the product and I'm sorry but there is absolutely no way of that to happen. I give you that I find CM Punk overrated but that time between Capitol Punishment and Hell In A Cell was freaking insane. We had good match after good match, and good content after good content but still do I have to believe that I was the only one that enjoyed it? I'm sorry, but no fucking way. I could make the same argument about 2010 as well, because it was a shitty year in terms of buyrates and ratings.
Now onto the fall of WCW in 2001 you said that by logic WWF should have grown more, but it didn't and the fall of WCW just hit wrestling like a rocket. Just think, WCW was a mainstream brand, everybody had at least heard that name and they connected it with wrestling and now all of a sudden the company dies and there are only one mainstream option, but the company we are talking about hated WWF and they gave us that impression every show they clicked the nerves of the WWF fans and they gave WCW fans that mentality as well but still the Invasion PPV had something like 700.000 buys in 2001 with guys like DDP and The Dudleyz defending "WCW", those guys that are not even considered big draws - more than half the fans here can agree that the PPV sucked for the most part of it, but still they got an amazing number in mids July, I for once actually enjoyed it, but half the people thought it was shit. But still, the end of WCW meant the end of a mainstream company that also pushed wrestling, when you lose that, you end up having only one company pushing the name of wrestling to the fans. It's pretty much the basic concept to analyse a market - one company monopolized the product, leaders of the market and now they can do whatever the fuck they want because fans will always be there, but wrestling as a whole lost a lot of media attention therefore the market sunk and there is no absolutely way to deny that. So the dead of WCW was a big hit in the medium/long-term.
How can you know that? I believe I've a good wrestling mind as I like the product. I don't have time to review shit, but I've seen a lot of wrestling in my life, I read wrestling books and what not so that statement is a big lie, but you can say what you want and believe what you want - I'm only here to prove you wrong many times as you want to.
Do you actually think about what you're typing?
Exactly. And the better the entertainment, the bigger the star, and the more fans likely to watch.
It may not mean they are entertaining every single night, but it does mean they are far more consistently entertaining over a period of time, as well as entertaining on a higher level than others.
Think about what you just said.
Night of Champions had 28,000 more buys (189,000 compared to 161,000), and just so happened to feature the two guys you claim are arguably the most popular stars. I don't know if I'd say Punk is one of the two most popular stars, but he certainly is a big one. And we see an increased buyrate from one year to the next.
In fairness, though, that's still not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about trends, not specific shows.
So when big stars, who are very entertaining, appear on the show, the quality of the product increases?
That's what I've been saying.
You'll have to explain the "most of the world" comment. There are nearly 7 billion people in the world. Most of them don't know anything about the product.
You're not the only one that enjoyed it. Look at the huge increase in buys for Money in the Bank after Capitol Punishment. Compare Money in the Bank 2011 to the same show in 2010. There's a big increase there.
Summerslam 2011 is kind of a different animal. There was a very real economic fear around this time regarding the US debt ceiling, and the idea that if it wasn't raised, our country could go into a serious economic downturn. The fact this show didn't get as much interest is due in part to a poor build (the hottest wrestler in the WWE at the time wasn't even around for half of the build to Summerslam), but also due to economic concerns.
PPV buys, revenues, merchandise, etc. is very hard to gauge in 2009 and 2010. The United States was in a very bad way economically, with unemployment rising to over 10% in 2010. It's not at all surprising to see lower buyrates in those two years.
In this case, one of our former constants changed, which was the economy. It's not really a good control to use.
Which validates what others were saying in that the product in 2002 simply wasn't nearly as good as it was in 2001.
That's the point.
Not really. It had much more to do with Austin's limitations and Rock's flirting with Hollywood.
Holy Run-On Sentence, Batman!
WCW controlled a very small percentage of the wrestling audience when they went out of business. They averaged a 2.3 rating for their last shows in 2001. Compare that to the 4.9 that Raw was averaging on the same night. The fact is, more than double the amount of fans were tuning into Raw that were tuning into WCW.
WCW's death had nothing to do with the decline in ratings in 2002.
Your understanding of economics seems to be as strong as your understanding of pro wrestling.
Do you use the term "facial tissue" or Kleenex? Do you call it cola or "Pepsi and Coke"? Do you trim the lawn or "Weed Eat"? Do you use Microsoft Windows? Do you do an Internet Search or do you Google? Do you watch streaming flash videos or do you Youtube?
The fact is dominating the market has never shown to be bad for business. In fact, the opposite has been the case. WCW going out of business didn't affect WWF fans in the least.
Because every time you post, you make it abundantly clear. You're not saying anything significantly different than what a lot of new and uneducated Internet wrestling fans say. Some of them continue on, secure in their ignorance, and others like to learn and understand more about the business. There are plenty of people on this forum who have chosen to learn and understand.
Why don't you try to become one of them?
I like playing Minecraft on my computer, but that doesn't mean I know how to write the code which creates it.
Liking something doesn't mean you understand it.
But you're not proving me wrong. You're actually proving me right, as I've pointed out here on a couple of different occasions.
You seem to think me calling you ignorant is an insult. It's not, it's just the truth. Ignorance is only bad if you stubbornly stick to the ignorance when others try to show you the truth. You've illustrated the increase in interest from one year to the next in Night of Champions when two of the biggest stars went head to head. You illustrated the difference between MITB when those same two stars went head to head after Punk's dynamite promo. You even credited the higher interest level to the return of two incredibly entertaining and popular wrestlers.
You've been demonstrating exactly what I'm saying, even agreeing with me when you mentioned Rock and Brock. Just take a step back for a moment and think about how EVERYTHING I've said fits with what has happened in real life. You cannot find a single example of where my logic does not explain that which has happened perfectly.
Seriously, just think about an example and think about how I'd explain it. And tell me how far you get before you cannot think of an example where my logic does not explain it. That's not me thumping my chest about being right, that's a serious challenge for you to take an opportunity to see if you can learn something.
But you said that Smackdown was very poor quality and used the ratings to support that claim.
I'm not looking to get into a detailed debate with you. I think I understand what you're trying to say. Ratings don't mean anything to you when it comes to entertainment value. That's fine. I get that. I have defended 1993-1995 WWF here many times. You're arguing from the point of view of yourself, one individual. The others are telling you ratings and buy rates are a trend that results come from the interest of the general public, not one single person's opinion.
I think you might like this thread.
http://forums.wrestlezone.com/showthread.php?t=129795&highlight=generation
In this thread I asked people to give their opinions based on their own personal enjoyment. I asked them to ignore ratings, buy rates, attendance, etc. The purpose of that thread was to see what people thought from a personal point of view rather than a business point of view. Correct me if I'm wrong but I think that's the same idea you were going for here. Since I enjoyed 1995 more than 1999 I can certainly relate to holding a minority opinion. I will tell you that I found 1995 to be a better year than 1999 from my point of view but I would never try to convince you that 1995 was a better year than 1999 for WWE.