Since this taping of iMPACT is going to be in 19 days I thought I'd give an updated on whats going on. Heres a pic of the seating plan from Ticketmaster.
The arena holds any where between 8,000 and 8500 people since they decided that to cut the seating in half as the picture shows. It can hold anywhere between 4000-4250 people. According to ticket master the 60$ seats are sold out so are the 40$ seats so the only seats available are for 29$ with so little tickets available it seems that there will be around 3,000 4,000 people in attendance. I'm Very surprised at how well tickets have sold in such short notice and with 19 days left till the show, if tickets keep selling as fast as they have they may need to change the seating plan to allow for people to attend.
So out of curiosity i had looked up this arena today and was gonna start a thread about Impact being on the road when i found this thread already existed. When i was on the tickmaster site i was actually dissapointed to see that the arena was being cut in half for the show, i guess i was figuring that the goal would be to fill an arena.
After doing some research i came upon the fact that the Impact Zone only holds about 1300 people at max capacity. The Crown Coliseum is listed as a 10,000 seat arena on their website. Now if that listing is fixed seating and doesn't include seating on the floor it means that cutting it in half would be 5,000 plus floor seating probably putt ing it up to aroun seating for 5,500 people..
I was thinking cutting the arena in half would make it come off bad on t.v but thinking about it your looking at a crowd 4 to 5 times the size of the crowd in the Impact Zone. If they could sell just 80% of the seats it will still come off much better than the Impact Zone.
If what i've read is accurate then they planned on taping 2 episodes of Impact that evening. So if the event is successful and they decide to tape once a month out of Orlando and hold at least half their PPV outside Orlando the profit that can be brought in should be huge. It would also allow 2 episodes of Impact every month not taking place in the Impact Zone.
A lot of people have mentioned how most of the talent in TNA is there for the lighter work and travel schedule, yet most of those talents don't live in Orlando and have to travel there twice a month for 2 days of tapings each time. So in theory if you tape 2 episodes of Impact on one night out on the road somewhere your actually giving the talent an extra day off every month. So I can't see there being any actual complaints from the talent about it being an extra work load.
The bigger crowd can do nothing but wonders for TNA at this point. It should come across much better on TV. The company will be bringing in money not only from ticket sales but merch sales as well. I can't see their merch sales being great in Orlando when 3/4 of the crowd are the same people every week.
The big question is will this help in their ratings???? I think only time will tell in that case. Initially there may be no change, Its still gonna be a taping so spoilers are still gonna be available on the show and i think that is one of TNA's biggest ratings killers. However some fans who read spoilers but don't watch the show are probably gonna be interested how it comes across with a bigger crowd and finally a different crowd. If done right you should see a possible rise in the ratings.
Now also being on the road for Impact is your chance to draw in new fans. Lets say 1 guy is a TNA fan and his 4 friends are wrestling fans but more prone to watching WWE. However, he has them come out to see TNA they like what they see and start tuning every week to see it. Now the next time TNA comes around each of the 4 friends brings 2 of their friends with them to see. As long as the product is entertaining this should lead to a huge growth for TNA.
In the long run i think this is nothing but good for TNA. As long as they can sell the tickets they need to sell to start off eventually it'll lead to growth both financially and in popularity. If they can't sell in the areas they start of in then we may be seeing the end of TNA. Impact right now is watch in the area of a million viewers every week which i can't see that being bad for any company to know that many people tune into your programming. Sure its nothing compared to WWE, but it could be possible that if all goes well with this it could increase viewership to maybe getting 2.0 in a year or so.
Only time will tell but for TNA's stake if they want to make money instead of going out of business the time is now or never.
