PPV costs

[ASKane]

This is not going to be a post criticising how much PPV's cost in America but this will compare it to costs in England and I want to see how Americans react to it.

American cost
I have seen people saying WWE PPV's cost anything from $45-$65(£28-£40)

English cost
In England most WWE PPV's are available on box office at £15($24) while some are free on Sky Sports. I will add that all PPV's on Sky Box Office are £15 so its not just WWE.

Your thoughts on the fact that the cheapest American price I've heard is nearly double what us in England have to pay

 

[Y 2 Jake]

You can say that some WWE PPV's are free in the UK, but I pay about 25 quid for Sky Sports each month on top of my existing Sky package. Then for the big shows I'm asked to pay an additional £15 for a PPV. There's nothing free about it. It's very expensive.

Considering my lack of interest in anything other than Premiership football & wrestling, I'd say I'm drawing about even on PPV prices with the Yanks.

 

[Jaffa]

Well in Australia we have to pay $30 a PPV plus 7 replays except for $35 for mania plus 7 replays. Our PPV channel comes with our basic pay tv so we get off early there. Downside is I live on the West Coast so PPVs start 8am Monday. YAY!!!

 

[Tyrant25]

What more to say than its unfair? Every country should pay the same price for the same thing. I don't know why it varies between countries.

 

[Jaffa]

Not really unfair, supply and demand and WWE know seeing as they slog us $400 for front row seats for house shows and $30 for one t shirt to be shipped over that we should at least get other things cheaper.

 

[MCMG]

It does seem that the price in the US is a little high. If they have to pay for every PPV that is probably 5 times the amount someone in the UK would spend in a year.

£15 for a PPV is probably a fair price. I mean obviously some PPV's are worse than others but on the whole that is a decent deal. Especially, if lets say three different people watch it. Also, having Sky Sports you sometimes get PPV for no additional cost which again is very reasonable. As Y 2 Jake pointed out, we do have to pay for Sky Sports but I would do that regardless of wrestling so its not a big deal.

I wonder how internet streaming effects buyrates and prices in the future. One can watch the entire PPV for free and at a fairly decent quality. It is a very easy alternative to spending £15 or $50 on a PPV.

 

[d_henderson1810]

In Australia, we get PPVs really cheap ($29.95 per month). Don't know what that translates to in U.S. dollars, but it is quite affordable.

The reason we get it cheaper is because, back in 2003, the WWE were thinking of lifting the price of PPVs dramatically. A lot of cable companies went along with it, but Australia's cable company (Foxtel) (which carries wrestling) refused to comply, saying that customers wouldn't agree to the new cost, and they won't get people buying it on the PPV channel.

As a result, Australia were stripped of WWE programming. They lost the right to renew contracts to show "Smackdown" and WWE PPVs, and only kept Raw because its contract with the station for showing "Raw" still had six months to go. So, Australia had little WWE TV at all in 2003. In fact, I had to watch WMXIX at my local movie theatre, who were the only ones who could afford the new cost of the PPVs.

However, WWE planned to come to Australia for a tour in 2004, after the successful Global Warning Tour (which was the highest attended WWE tour show at the time). Ric Flair came down to promote it. Two weeks later, WWE was back on TV in Australia.

The story goes that Flair was met by angry Australian WWE fans, who were irate that they no longer got WWE television. When word got back to WWE, they were worried that it might affect ticket sales for their upcoming Australian tour (since Australia is so far away, and had hardly had any WWE tour, other than the GW Tour the previous year, for over twenty years, it looked like their tour could have taken a major hit).

As a result, WWE re-negotiated with Foxtel, and WWE got all the shows, including PPVs, put back on, and we were only charged $5 more per PPV.

I suspect that the US and England pay a lot more because they gave into the WWE's massive price increase, for fear of losing WWE product on their TV, but Foxtel in Australia (as well as two other countries, I believe, were the only hold-outs) refused to play ball, and eventually their stance bore fruit.

So you pay so much for PPVs partly because of WWE, and partly because the people who screen WWE in your country don't have a set to stand up to WWE.

 

[Cade]

I'm not entirely familiar with international television deals and pricing, but I want to throw out something that seems to be a pattern in pricing, based on this thread.

Other countries appear to have WWE PPV programming, at least part of it, as part of a 'package' deal, where you pay monthly for service and get the premium shows as part of that, as well as other programming.

There's nothing like that in the U.S., not that includes wrestling, anyhow. You can get premium boxing matches that way through channels like HBO sometimes, but not WWE.

It appears to be almost like a newstand vs. subscription price for magazines sort of issue. You pay newstand for every issue, you'll end up paying 5x what you would have had you just subscribed. So it appears to be with WWE PPV pricing in the U.S vs. other countries - we only get the 'newstand' option over here.