You’re right. They’re in the shitter. I wish they had fired 12 wrestlers today instead! When the ratings are down, you shit on them. When the ratings are up, you shit on them for something else. Perhaps you’re just full of shit all the time?
I'm full of shit for pointing out things that are factual? You're doing a touchdown dance over a rating that didn't even come close to beating the lowest viewed Raw in company history. Some of you live in a total alternate reality when it comes to AEW.
Yep…the only metric that matters is ratings. Cool. Glad you and the 12 year olds are living it up. Have fun.
Because as I’ve said numerous times…I DONT GIVE A FUCK ABOUT THEM. I like watching good wrestling. It happens in spades on Wednesdays and Saturdays.
This was the lead in to my all time favorite Cole moment: Picking Top Dolla to win a battle royale because he can’t go over the top rope.
It's just annoying that your entire presence in this thread seems to be to like every criticism, valid or not, sarcastic or not, about AEW. You don't find people who have given up on WWE doing that. It's all you and it's tiresome af You only ever post AEW ratings when they're bad. I post one time in a long while about AEW having a great rating (far and away number 1 on their night) and you have to pounce. Come to think of it, I can't recall any genuinely positive comments about any wrestling since you started posting itt. It's just misery all the time with you, despite the business being as good as it's been in a long while.
Anyway MJF has been the best draw on Dynamite and Collision since his storyline with Cole started (tag match with Cole on Collision was the shows biggest rating by far) Spoiler Going to be hard to justify taking the title off him anytime soon
wait are you going to act like your “AEW is doing just fine” reply to all the WWE releases wasn’t begging for a response? I really don’t want to get involved in the back and forth but it seemed like that’s what you were looking to do.
does it hurt your feelings when people make fun of the Mets in the MLB thread? or the Clippers in the NBA thread? Little brother/secondary franchises with cringe-worthy owners get mocked all the time on here, I don't see why AEW should be treated any differently. I post about what I think will draw money and what I think won't. Who I like and who I don't. if you want an AEW circlejerk, Reddit exists
100% I wasn't even thinking about the releases when I posted that. I definitely was reacting to ZPZ's constant dooming about AEW. Then being #1 for the night and way ahead of #2 seemed worthy of a post.
Gun to your head, in 4 months do you think MJF re-signs with AEW or signs with WWE? I think the latter would be more interesting and better for his career long-term. To be fair, I think it would be awesome if some of the WWE guys that have contracts coming up who are kind of lost in the shuffle went to AEW. I think main event level talent jumping every few years is good for wrestling.
I think he's already reupped for several years. You're right about talent flipping between the two companies. Will keep the feuds fresh
Guys AEW has an attendance problem in the US. Whether you give a shit or not about live attendance or not is up to debate but whether it’s over saturation of the market or whatever it is, they aren’t drawing people to the product like they used to and thats a problem. Picking up 100k viewers over normal on tv for a big show that two years ago had around a 50% decrease in live attendance is a problem. TV numbers are the same and to be honest are less than they were on average a year ago and live audience is dwindling. It’s a problem.
When a new company consistently has massive crowds and hits over a million viewers more times than they don’t and then they lose 15% of the tv audience and even more on the live audience it’s a problem. I don’t give a fuck how much you liked the Penta vs. Orange Cassidy match and that Dave gave it 8.5 stars. I don’t watch WWE unless it’s a really good PPV and watch Dynamite every week and everything else as much as I can and pay for almost every PPV but numbers don’t lie.
the decline in TV ratings you can at least partially chalk up to the fact that TNT/TBS/USA are in 20% less homes than a year ago due to cord-cutting. The fact AEW mostly gets the same rating week in and week out now isn't even necessarily a bad thing. Their core audience is reliable and consistent. The fact they only seem to spike upward when it's a "big" Dynamite like Grand Slam or Blood & Guts is whatever, I don't even think that's concerning. But yes the domestic ticket sales lately are absolute dogshit for AEW and as much as people want to blame ticket prices or running the same markets too often, at the end of the day if something is hot, people will spend the money to go see it. WWE tickets are just as expensive, if not more, and they are still doing great numbers most weeks for Smackdown and Raw. The people vote with their wallets when it comes to who or what is actually resonating with the audience.
There is a reason that they only shot one side of the crowd at Arthu Ashe last night and every other arena they are in. Book smaller venues, get your shit in order and start booking good storylines again that will hook people. They have done every flippy thing, hardcore, etc type of match over and over and over again that none of it means shit anymore. That’s why there is some type of dumbass tournament every other week because they have no story besides one or two.
And I know everybody hates Cornette but just about every story they have is about a friends turning on each other. That’s literally all they do. No good feuds built out of anything other than I thought you were my friend. It’s fine for a story here and there but everyone of their feuds are based around that.
I don’t even really care that much about the attendances being shit when live gates account for such a small percentage of revenue for WWE and AEW these days. This isn’t the 1990s where the live gate was the biggest driver of revenue. TV money dwarfs everything now in AEW/WWE. Well except maybe WWE’s Saudi deal. Like WWE is setting live gate records just about everywhere they go now yet that only accounts for 10% of their revenue. AEW did like 11 million for the All In live gate and that’s not even close 1/10 of what their TV deal is worth. And that was AEW’s biggest live gate by several factors. Hell, the All In live gate was probably equal to several months worth of weekly tv live gate at AEW’s attendance peak. Even if they did a million dollars in live gate revenue on average for the weekly shows it would still be significantly less than what WBD is paying for the TV rights. And even at their peak they were nowhere close to pulling a million dollar live gate every week. You can likely count on one hand the # of tv tapings in AEW’s entire history that have drawn a million dollar gate. Think their first was Grand Slam 2022, which had a higher gate than Grand Slam 2021 despite having around 7,000 fewer tickets sold. Then you add on the millions they make in PPV buys for every PPV and it dwarfs what the live gate revenue is. Even an average AEW buy rate of 140K buys is bringing in several million more in revenue than what their best ever non-All In live gate has earned them. All Out 2023, which was their lowest buy rate since the pre-Punk era, would have drawn in several million more in revenue than any live gate they’ve had outside of All In. I mean are all sources of revenue important? Yes, of course it is. All sources of revenue go towards covering expenses after all. A dollar from live gate spends just the same as a dollar from TV or PPV. But other than the All In live gate, it’s just a drop in the bucket compared to TV/PPV money That’s not to say the attendance drops should be completely dismissed. When added up over a year that’s a lot of money they are missing out on. But like I said, live gate isn’t the revenue driver it used to be. Now if WBD pulls out an apocalypse type TV right deal by saying they don’t want Rampage and Collision anymore and will only give them like $50M for Dynamite, then okay it’s five alarm fire time. But that’s highly unlikely. I see at least a 2x increase in their current tv deal because it’s by all reasonable accounts really undervalued. Then you add in the digital component, which they have none of right now other than monetizing YouTube and streaming PPV buys. Their library on Max is going to be a pretty lucrative deal, and that’s going to be all brand new dollars they haven’t been getting. How PPVs factor into that is anyone’s guess. Then there is the next day streaming rights, which will also be a pretty big chunk of revenue that will be all new dollars for them. Though I imagine that will end up being part of the Max deal instead of what WWE is doing with next day on Hulu with the library/PLEs on Peacock. And of course this digital component will greatly increase their potential audience because Max alone has millions more subscribers than every linear TV provider in the country combined - that includes cable, satellite, and stuff like YouTube TV - and those subscribers tend to be much more heavily in that coveted 18-49 demo.
reading that post from Shawn should be the punishment you give the guy that finishes last in your fantasy league
The last fantasy league I was in at work “required” the loser to have a fantasy football league loser license plate frame, display a losers “trophy” in their office until the end of the next season, and buy everyone a round of beer at the next seasons fantasy draft. Somehow the losers never managed to quit unless they happened to take another job that required them to leave the area. Even people that left the company still stayed in the league if they were in the area. I was impressed with the commitment.
As long as Tony and Shahid don’t care about AEW profits, then neither should anyone else. It’s of course better overall to be in the black but it’s probably worth it to Shahid to have Tony not focus his energies on the Jags and Fulham.
if they’re losing money (I have no idea if they are) with no end in sight, there has to be a limit, right? that’s the only reason to worry about it. I know they’re rich but rich people don’t continue to pour money into losing ventures no matter how much they enjoy them.
Feel like with the success that AEW has had, can easily justify another decade if they’re not bleeding too much.
I don't know if they're losing money now but when they sign their next media rights deal they will definitely be profitable