Which Medium is More Important for Indy Companies Going Forward?

[Thriller Ant]

For years, independent wrestling companies made money in 3 ways: merchandise, live event tickets, and home video sales. Of the three, video sales have tended to be by far the most important source of income. But, starting with ROH's Final Battle 2009, that three-tiered model was disrupted with the revelation of Internet pay-per-view. That first foray into iPPV earned Ring of Honor $7,500 (after all expenses and GoFightLive's cut was taken out; any income made at the event including ticket sales and merchandise are excluded. Source) To put it into perspective, $7,500 is the equivalent of 375 DVDs, and that doesn't include the amount of money the show made from the live crowd and DVDs.

Since then, ROH has put almost all of its major shows on iPPV and other companies, most notably Dragon Gate USA, have began using the medium. The question I pose here is simple, but it is essential for indy companies. What is the more important medium for them going forward, iPPV or DVD sales? Or can the two not be independently evaluated?

 

[Richard]

Online PPV's a great and all for actual purchasing the product but if it's just more exposure and spreading of word of mouth that a company wants to get themselves out to others, then we're in a great time to do this with social networking.

Facebook, twitter etc are great tools for an indy company to create awareness. Facebook allows photos, videos, everything to be uploaded. Links to their website, photos of merchandise that you can look at. It really is a great too, for any business really.

There is a small indy company in Adelaide, Riot City Wrestling and I have them on my Facebook and it's great, you can see when tickets go on sale, who's wrestling, who's injured etc. I think all the indy companys, not talking about ROH, but the really small ones, should try and take full advantage of social networking.

 

[Thriller Ant]

Online PPV's a great and all for actual purchasing the product but if it's just more exposure and spreading of word of mouth that a company wants to get themselves out to others, then we're in a great time to do this with social networking.

Facebook, twitter etc are great tools for an indy company to create awareness. Facebook allows photos, videos, everything to be uploaded. Links to their website, photos of merchandise that you can look at. It really is a great too, for any business really.

There is a small indy company in Adelaide, Riot City Wrestling and I have them on my Facebook and it's great, you can see when tickets go on sale, who's wrestling, who's injured etc. I think all the indy companys, not talking about ROH, but the really small ones, should try and take full advantage of social networking.

This is a very good point, and something I didn't even think of when making the thread. I completely agree that social networking is huge for these companies. Gabe Sapolsky has done an excellent job of this for Dragon Gate USA and EVOLVE. He has a Twitter account where he discusses happings in the companies with fans, and often even takes time for Q&A sessions. They also use email newsletters to communicate with fans.

Ring of Honor has Facebook and Twitter pages where they also plug their store, but get fans opinions on general questions (What is your favorite ROH moment, what was your first live show, etc.) and really make it fun for fans to interact with the company.

While social media won't directly make any indy company money, it is definitely a way to get awareness out there and maybe convince fans who otherwise wouldn't know that a company exists to become a paying consumer in the future.

 

[bringbackwrestling]

UFC used/use social media probably better than anyone and they are the model to follow. I am actually starting a promotion later this year and a lot of effort is going to go into social media. The only thing I would say is that a lot of promotions dont know how to use it (and I'm not going to tell them).

I would imagine that you will see DVD's dies off in the next couple of years.

 

[Poop Master Flex]

I totally agree that social networking in general is probably the most important tool for a small independent company to move forward and to get more exposure, its a cheap way for pretty much anybody to see what's going on with said company whether that be event's or even big names that sometimes pop up in the independent scene.

In regards to the original question I think DVD sales are probably more important in the long run. Missing an event on the independents isn't nearly like missing one for the WWE or TNA, its much easier to go back and watch a previous event and have no idea what is going to happen in the independents so the element of surprise can still exist, just because an event happened a month ago doesn't mean you are going to know what happened.

It would be a lot easier to move DVD's for a cheap price than to sell an iPPV because iPPV's require a person's time at a specific time and not when they get around to it. Very few people follow independent promotion's religiously and they would probably buy the DVD's and iPPV's anyways, so it's also a better way to get the few casual fans that come to an event more invested in the product, I know I would be more persuaded to buy a DVD for $10 if the event I just watched was really good, even if the DVD was 3-4 months old. As a matter of fact, that's how I ended up buying most of my wrestling DVD's. For example, when I started watching TNA in '05, I really enjoyed watching it, which in turn made me go and purchase old events on DVD and invest my time watching old TNA programming and finding out what I've been missing (Side note: Old TNA was way better than new TNA). With the iPPV's I would have already missed the event and would have to buy the DVD anyways so might as well just buy the DVD.

Lastly, iPPV's are harder to promote and get the word out, with DVD's it's more often for people to see the product whether it be the booth set up at every event or just seeing it at some friends house one day while they're watching it, overall DVD's expose the actual product to a greater mass of people and that alone makes it more important.