Reigns & Rollins drive ratings, first AEW Collision rating | Wrestlenomics Radio
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Hello everybody and welcome to another edition of WrestleLomux 3.
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That was not me.
There was me.
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Not only did I leave the podcast in a bad mood, like the first thing I did was tell some
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Yes.
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Just this last week, we talked to Dave Meltzer just hours after the AW collision rating came
out.
So that is out there for free for everybody.
If you haven't listened to it already today, if you want to participate with a super chat
and have your question or comment read and answered your encourage to do so if you're
listening to a live on YouTube.
So the AW collision rating came out.
0.33, I think I should have gone back and wrote down what our predictions were.
Do you either of you remember what your predictions were for this podcast or for this
raise rate?
My was 0.20.
So yeah, they just what did you predict?
If I were to call correctly, I think I said 775,000 viewers and I know I set up 0.27.
0.27.
Yeah.
So I went slightly lower than a typical dynamite.
I think I, I don't have a written down here on this post note, in fact, yeah, goal said
0.20, Jesse said 0.27, I said 0.30, we were all low.
I was the closest.
I mean, I did a poll.
We got a new poll.
We're going to talk about that one.
But I did a poll for this episode asking people, what do you, what do you think the rating
is going to be?
Everybody thought it was going to be way lower than what it was.
Very small minority thought it was going to be in the range of what it was 0.33, 0.33.
I figured it was probably going to do what a dynamite rating does.
This can do in the range of what a dynamite rating does for the first one.
And it did even, you know, sort of slightly better than that, although the dynamite this
week did exactly the same, peat in 49 right now.
There's no total view.
In total viewers, there's a little bit lower than a typical dynamite, but was younger skewing.
Right.
As it's going to be, I think, you know, this, it's going to get lower and it's going
to get older.
This, the median age was 45, I believe, which is under what any wrestling show is really
doing right now.
So the percentage, which is, I mean, when we talk about the, we can talk about the percentage
of viewers in the demo who are watching as a percentage of all viewers, because obviously
the linear TV viewership in general just tends to be older.
So we can talk about the percentage of viewers of that as highly correlated with whatever
the median age is.
But anyway, I mean, that's what that's what we saw early on in rampage, for sure.
I don't have median age data for like the early dynamites, but I'm sure that's what was
happening with the early dynamites.
The disproportionate, relative to usual, the disproportionate young viewers who are
gathering and tuning in and making sure that they're seeing these early episodes, this
stuff that's important, that's, that's what's really happening for these, I don't know,
newsworthy, highly anticipated events.
And as things get more run of the mill, the viewership I expect will get a lot older.
But number three, among cable originals, outranked by, I believe, what UFC and the college
world series on ESPN, but this is, I have to say this was a good rating, better than
I was expecting.
Again, I was expecting, I was predicting a 0.30 and did better than that.
Again, this is not last night's, this is not the second episode of collision, but the
very first episode of collision.
We have quarter hours here.
I don't think there's surprises here in the quarter hours.
I think there's a slight surprise in that.
The demo for the promo was lower than the demo for the match.
So this show opened with the CM Punk promo, talking about one bill fill, counterfeit
bucks and all that stuff.
And that did 440,000 viewers in the demo, main event though, did 468, 467,000 viewers in
the demo.
So slightly above, it's not like, so I mean, I was sort of thinking the promo is going
to be more anticipated than the match, but, and we did see the inverse in total viewership
for what that's worth.
And maybe there's a little bit of inheritance for whatever, I think there's a movie on
right before.
Maybe there's a little bit of inheritance of older viewership at the beginning.
That's sort of distorting that view of the, of the first quarter hour, which did 168,000
and then ended with 134,000.
So beginning higher and total viewership than, than the end.
I guess I, what I think when we look at these quarter hours, both in this case, and for
Don and my general is that the demo is giving us a more honest look at what, what the, what
the interest is in the, in these quarter hours, you know, I mean, like, because I think
there's more distortions and misleading data in the total viewership, which is disproportionately
coming from obviously older viewers, and, and there's, there's more external effects
that I think are affecting those people, including most of, most of all, the lead in,
in any case, the match had a lot of interest relative to the promo, which is slightly surprising
to me.
Any thoughts there?
Yeah, I mean, I agree in the sense of, and, you know, the 18 to 49 number, even popping
back up for the, you know, Andrade versus Buddy Matthews match, and the kind of stuff
at the 845 quarter is, I don't know if that's interesting, but going from 390, you know,
viewers in the 18 to 49 to 441 is pretty sizable for that, for that quarter hour, right?
Usually it's the 9 o'clock quarter hour that would tend to go up, but seems like I don't
know if there's people earlier.
The normal kind of tuning into the collision, but I thought that's kind of notable.
Yeah, I would imagine the promo would be the most interesting aspect of, seeing a punks
return, but obviously people are interested in the match, and I think that, at least from
collision last week, punk is presented in a way that nobody else in AEW is presented,
and it's much more similar to how WWE presents its few, like, chosen talent, whether that's
Cody Rhodes or Roman Reigns or Seth Rollins in the sense of, they're going to have two,
a minimum of two quarter hours really built around them, right?
They're going to come out and they're going to do a promo at the start of the show, and
then they're going to be in the main event later tonight.
And I think that has been beneficial in establishing those names as big stars that fans view as
being important in the things that they're doing as important.
I think it's done wonders for Cody Rhodes, using him like that, and AEW doesn't use anyone
else like that.
MJF may be sometimes, but really it's like they have one segment and that's it.
And if collision is going to be the punk show, and punk is going to be the really main driving
force for interest in the show, the fact that they're using him in a similar way to,
I think, WWE uses his top stars is notable, and I think it's a more effective way.
We know that CM Punk is the biggest star in AEW, and I think this is just kind of hammering
home that they view him as a different level star than anyone else in AEW, because he's
presented in this specific way in a way that even someone like a Kenny Omega is not.
I mean, the structure of this show in terms of how it was laid out, it opened with live
promo.
I mean, last night's collision did not do that.
Yes, I know they did the setter night main event style, cold open promo, but it was not
a, have a big star come out, get in the ring and talk for 10 to 15 minutes.
That's what the first collision was.
I mean, this is something that WWE does a lot in how they structure shows, especially
in the Vince McMahon era, maybe less so since Vince has been less involved, although
we know he was quite involved this past week.
But it's definitely a pattern of WWE, you got to get a set the table pal and then have
a main event with that same star or set of stars.
Was it advertised?
Like, that CM Punk was going to lead off the show with a promo?
Yes.
Well, you will hear from CM Punk was that, was advertised on the Dynamite prior.
All right.
Yeah, and I don't necessarily think it has to be like a structure from you have to start
with the promo and then end with the main event.
I just think it's the way you present two separate quarter hours based built around one
guy, basically.
I know the main event is other people wrestling, but it's punk anchoring kind of two separate
quarter hours as opposed to, okay, here's a 20 minute window and this is when we're going
to do, you know, the elite stuff and, oh, here's another 15 minute window, that's when
Chris Jericho is going to do his segment.
That's kind of the extent of what you hear from people as opposed to WWE, they tend to
sprinkle in their top stars more throughout the show.
I think that's how collisions using Punk.
I do think that collision from a, like a layout standpoint is going to look very similar
to Dynamite.
I can already see like the partisan narrative between people who have picked aside between
the elite versus CM Punk and, you know, Dynamite versus collision and people are going to argue
that.
Collision.
People are going to argue collision so different because, you know, supposedly punk has
a creative role in it and it's like collision is going to be a different show because it's
the punk show and it's going to look very different to Dynamite and it's going to appeal
to different fans.
To me, they're at the same show because they're being run by the same person in Tony
Kahn, but we'll see, you know, as we get more data from week to week, if there really
is any significant difference between the two shows.
I will say from having watched both collisions and, you know, I pay attention to Dynamite.
I usually have it on mute, but I think it's a relief for my personal taste.
To watch an AW show that's not littered with backstage segments where people are constantly
interrupting each other, there's less of that on collision so far, two episodes in.
There's less like somebody's backstage for a problem, oh wait, they get interrupted
because you've got to do an angle for every single match, thus making all angles feel
all the more meaningless, but anyway, the numbers.
So I'm trying to figure out, you know, trying to think about what's the second collision
going to do?
What's happening with the rating is, I'm sure there are fast nationals out there in
the media industry that are being looked at this morning, but not this media industry,
not the wrestling media.
So to try to predict what the second collision might do, I looked at what did the second
Dynamite do, what did the third rampage do, which was after the second rampage, which
was the CM Punk debut.
And the answer is, the second Dynamite was down 28% from the first one, the second rampage
was down 36% from the second rampage.
The third rampage was down 36% from the second rampage.
So if this second collision was down 36%, it would put this second collision at 522,000
viewers, it would put it at around 0.21, P1949 rating.
So I think that's probably too hard, that's, I don't, my vibes, that's why we have the
vibe slide here, my vibe, my, my vibe will meet or tells me, I don't think we're going
to see as precipitous a fall for the second collision as we did for the second, the third
rampage, in part because the debut of Punk was such a big deal, the return of Punk,
it was a big deal, but it's not certainly not the peak that that moment was, right?
So I think, I don't know, I put out the poll here, I guess I feel like jumping to this
right now, but I put out the poll here and the plurality of people think that 1849 rating
for the second collision is going to be somewhere in between 0.26 and 0.29, and I think I agree
with that.
Does that sound right?
I agree with it as well, though, I'm weary of the historical undershooting of these polls
that I should be probably going to be even better than or higher.
I don't know if it's going to be better, but it seems like people universally pessimistic
in terms of AEW business.
I don't think it's going to be a 0.30 or higher, though, which is the next stop.
I don't.
That seems unrealistic, right?
It seems like 0.6 to 0.29 seems right.
I guess the argument for it to be higher would be, is there less of a novelty factor?
Like the first dynamite, right?
Huge novelty factor, right?
People tune in just as what was going to be like that, the first, or I guess the second
time page, right?
Massive novelty factor.
CMP, almost a decade.
Okay, the novelty factor was it's a new show for AEW, CMP is going back, and I had a
commercial, I'm just pretty controversial, but probably the last one was a novelty factor,
then either the debut dynamite or CMP for turn to beressling for the second episode
of rampage.
So in that sense, you could tell me that collision has maybe a more stable debut that could
be repeated for episode two.
I would also add that you do have the, there was the, you know, a go home show for Forbidden
Door.
I think that there's some momentum there.
There's some extra interest that you wouldn't see in maybe a more typical episode of dynamite
or collision.
Obviously the dynamite rating this past week was very good, but there's some more momentum
for the promotion.
I feel it could be followed up on, you know, what CMPunk said during his promo during collision,
I think was the talk of wrestling a lot of cases and this stuff, you know, he said about
counterfeit bucks and things like that, people would be interested in tuning in and seeing
what he's going to do this week.
That's all the case for the rating to be very similar.
I see .26 to .29 seems right, but historically people have kind of undershot what AEW is capable
of doing.
.30 seems unrealistic, but I can't say I'd be super duper shocked if they hit it again.
Yeah, I think, I mean, the big question is what this show does a couple of months from
now on average, what's delivering on a consistent basis.
Just look at what the competition was on Saturday night briefly.
It's not that strong.
I mean, there's USFL football on NBC last night.
There's baseball on Fox.
There's more men's college world series and not that much else to speak of here.
If we look at what was the baseball game, most of the country is getting Houston Astros,
there's just LA Dodgers, some of the country getting Minnesota twins versus Detroit Tigers.
So don't see that as huge competition on the media call, which we'll talk about more,
but I don't want to touch on the, there's a little bit of ratings talk on the media call
with Tony Khan on Thursday, where he was being asked, you know, what's, I think I have
it in the notes here.
He said, I do know that past performance in the time slot would be a good comp.
So the, you know, the question is, what's a, what's a good enough rating for Dynamite
and Tony is saying, well, compare it to what that time slot normally does.
And I read that to mean, it's got to do better than that.
So what does that time slot normally do?
I think the primary, primary thing to compare it to is not the sports in the time slot,
which it's going to be preempted for, which has, which has been everything from NBA conference
finals between the Celtics and the heat.
I forget how that one ended, where that did 8.7 million viewers.
Did a point, did a 2.961849 rating, huge rating, it's not going to do anything near that.
And that's why collision is going to be preempted by NBA by NHL Stanley Cup finals,
which are going to deliver better than collision is going to deliver.
There's a little bit of college basketball in here during March madness.
There's even some soccer here, which maybe it wouldn't be preempted for
because it only did a 1, only did a 0.15.
I don't know, though, could still see soccer pushing collision out.
But anyway, all star games, all these, all these, they were soccer last night, too.
I don't believe the game was until I think it started at 10 p.m.
Was it on after collision?
Because there was no way networked it was on.
They were playing the question already after making it last night.
So anyway, what I want to ask is, so what normally airs when there's not special
occasion sports here?
Well, it's movies.
And do we have any data for what those movies deliver at 8 o'clock on Saturday night?
We have a few.
So through spoiler TV, you used to be ratings Ryan, but now it's spoiler TV.
We do get the weekly top 200 reruns.
So we don't have every single rerun to look at here, but we do have those that have
finished in the weekly top 200.
So so far this year, there are three instances of Saturday night, 8 o'clock movies on TNT
that finished in the weekly top 200.
We have three instances of that.
What do they do?
In the demo, they did a 0.12 or they did a 0.13.
So that's the basement for what this show, if this show does not deliver better than that,
it's bad news, I would think.
Scott deliver better than that.
So that's what I think is, that's the bar that they have to clear by a decent margin.
That's pretty low realistically, because if we look at like what rampage does at 10 o'clock
on a Friday night, they do a little bit less in the key demo most, but right around that
number and the key demo, and you would think that collision, which is airing in prime time
as opposed to a 10 p.m.
has clearly more star power and are dedicated towards it, at least at first, should be
up to, it should definitely be clearing out, you know, 0.12 and those are kind of outliers
too for a movie, right?
And most of the weeks it doesn't have that, you know, 0.2, 0.12, it doesn't have the top
200.
Hey, I would think it's the case that usually if we had every data point of what the
movies are doing on Saturday night in prime time, it's on average, probably a little less
in this even, because unless the weeks that it didn't make it are just elevated across
the board and the top 200, you know, but that's likely not the case.
I could look and, you know, sort of verify that, but I did not look, but it's probably
going to be this or a little bit lower, right?
So I was doing some thinking last night.
And by the way, if you hate ratings talk, I don't know why you're listening to this
podcast, but if you hate ratings talk, and you think it totally is pointless and consequential,
again, I don't know why you were listening to this podcast, but this is, this is more
consequential ratings news this week and then weeks to come, then then really at almost
any time.
It's on that level.
The most important and crucial time for ratings numbers that I think are meaningful.
This is up there with the best of them, because wherever this show settles, and I get,
and I, you know, I totally grant that week one, week two, don't tell us a lot.
It tells us what the peak is that it's going to fall down from.
But the big story is in terms of economics is where collision ends up.
What does collision deliver on a regular basis?
Because what collision delivers on a regular basis?
If I'm at the WBD executive, I'm going to weigh heavily into how I negotiate with AEW
for the next TV rights deal.
So I'm doing a bunch of math here and basically weighing out how various pessimistic, moderate
and optimistic outcomes could weigh into how AEW's TV rights fees are valued.
So these TV rights fees are going to be valued by ratings, but also by time spent.
How much viewer time is AEW helping WBD deliver?
And we do the math and we come out to, you know, it's either going to be something like
70 million hours on an annual basis, 78 million hours on an annual basis or 84 million
hours on an annual basis.
And this is extrapolated from the rating.
So the three scenarios I've got here is let's say collision ends up delivering on a regular
basis by like September, October, December, delivering about a 0.14.
That would be pretty bad, right?
Because that's only at the level of the movies just slightly above what the movies are doing.
That would be pretty bad.
I think, and then I did a more, what I consider to be a more moderate outcome, which is where
collision is delivering on a regular basis, a 0.20 in the demo 0.20.
And then I have a more optimistic outcome where they're delivering a 0.24.
So I don't think that that would exceed my expectations if it's soon in a 0.24.
I think that's on the high end of the realm of possibility.
So let's call that the optimistic outcome.
The moderate outcome 0.20 and the pessimistic outcome 0.14.
And then we can extrapolate from that three additional scenarios for each case where you've
got a pessimistic multiplier on their TV rights fees, a moderate multiplier, and an optimistic
multiplier.
Basically that's just the pessimistic outcome is that on a viewer per hour basis, WBD says
we're only going to pay you exactly to the rate that we're paying you now, which is about
a dollar per viewer hour.
I'm going to assume that AW is now getting about $75 million on an annual basis for the
additional collision as a weekly program.
We know that they were getting about $44 million on an annual basis.
I've said at least 70, so let's say it's now about 75.
So if collision doesn't do that well, they're not going to get a raise, perhaps, or they're
going to get a very small raise, perhaps.
But if it's sort of this moderate outcome, I can see them getting as much as $168 million
on an average annual basis, or if the multiplier is really nice, 180.
And then we have on the really high end here, values over $200 million at a general basis,
which over the course of five years will be over a billion dollars, one bill fill.
So what I'm saying here is where this rating ends up has ramifications in the tens of
millions of dollars, and over the course of many years, hundreds of millions of dollars.
There's a wide spectrum of possible outcomes here that could help AW make hundreds of millions
of dollars a year, or could result in them not making that much more money on an annual
basis than they are currently.
So this is meaningful wrestling ratings discourse.
Are you suggesting that there's non-meaningful ratings or some ratings discourse?
Not as meaningful as this.
This is more meaningful.
I mean, because there's so much unknown here, I guess, nobody has a good reason to have
a strong opinion about what this show is going to deliver on a regular basis.
It's really going to be determined by how important this show is and feels to viewers and
how much people are really to an end.
There's a lot of unknown and a lot of impressions with viewers that have to be made here.
And now is the time these next few months before we hit the fall is the time when collision
is probably going to stand to do the best for my competition standpoint.
Outside of baseball, there's really not going to be any life sports competition.
Most Saturdays running head to head.
When the fall hits, you'll end up with college football, which I think is going to be a totally
different ball game for a collision that's a ratings monster.
It's going to be very difficult for collision if they're running head to head against prime
time, college football games on ESPN or even the CBS games spilling into that window.
So that's a critical time.
If we talk about ratings, of course, that's probably not meaningless or is meaningless.
The 0.33 rating, the debut rating that collision is now going to be consistently compared
to forever.
If it doesn't hit the 0.33 people, wonder what happened to the 860,000 people?
Those people don't matter.
We're talking about things that matter, but I'm pointing out like in a sense of even
your optimistic number here is a 0.24, which would be significantly less than that rating.
Will they be maintaining a 0.24?
What time period are we talking about this?
Are we talking about over the next two or three months before we hit college football
season or are we talking about the end of the year?
Practically speaking, at whatever point a TV deal is being agreed to, which could be
at any time between, I would say, late summer and I don't know, in the middle of next
year.
Right.
And logically, the people at Warner Bros Discovery would anticipate the rating to be lower during
college football season when you're facing that level of competition.
The same way that everyone kind of expects that money at Ross ratings go down during
money at football season and it's not necessarily held against them and people aren't necessarily
running for cover thinking, oh my god, what's going wrong when something that happens
every year, and you could probably anticipate that happening for collision as well.
So yeah, I think you expect college football to be on every Saturday night during football
season.
It will be.
It's not a particular box.
It's not a particular ESPN as well.
Yeah.
I believe so ESPN or ABC typically will have the big, you know, matchup that will air
on Saturday nights there.
It might have been changed because I know the SEC deal is inspiring, but I'm not sure
if it kicks in at this year.
Typically, the biggest game is also like a four o'clock or 330 game on CBS, which could
conceivably, if it starts video, I don't know if it starts a little later or goes into
overtime, could spill into the collision window as well.
Perhaps.
But the other thing about culture falls that is really not a particular long season in
the sense of we're talking about maybe like 13 weeks, you know, from late August through
mid-Deauvember, realistically, it's like provided competition.
So it's really only a few handful of months, but I expect the collision rating to really
be impacted by that because that is a level of head to head sports competition that
they're not going to face really at any other time except for, you know, the NFL games
that start rolling out on Saturday, which again, will also be a factor in the winter months.
Yeah.
For a few weeks.
So I guess the point that I'm trying to make is, you know, we know what dynamite is
delivering.
It may slide here there, it may rise here and there, but we know it's going to deliver
for now somewhere between like a 0.26 and a 0.34 or something like that.
And it's going to deliver in that range on a regular basis.
It may diminish over time with the weakness of linear TV, but we know what it's going
to deliver.
We kind of know what rampage is delivering at this point, but what collision is a black
box and we're going to discover that over the course of the next few months, what it's
really capable of.
And that's going to be hugely determinative to what the value of AWP programming is because
we kind of know what dynamite's value is.
We kind of know what rampage is value is is a lot less, but we don't know what the value
of collision is.
And if if your WBD, it makes a lot of sense for it not to be true, that you already committed
to a TV deal with the addition of collision because you don't know what the value that
it's capable of delivering is, you're going to know what it is after a few months here.
Or maybe you can kind of assume what it's going to be even at that point based on what
you expect the hit from college football to be.
So and same for WWE, at least in the case of Ron Smackdown, we kind of know what Ron
Smackdown are doing.
They're doing better than they were last year, but we kind of know where they're going
to land.
NXT is being souped up here to do better ratings than it's done before, but we have
a general base.
We know as a base what that show is going to do, just the unknown within a much wider
range, I would say, do we know what collision is going to do at this point?
And we will learn with great excitement what the numbers will be as the weeks move on.
So moving on, again, if you want to do a super chat or a comment, feel free to if you're
watching and listening live on YouTube.
Dynamite this week, the same rating as collision, 0.33 in the demo, did 900 more viewers
in total, older viewers by median, 900 in 2000 viewers, 900 in 2000 viewers, no million?
Yeah, 0.33 in the demo, this was driven overwhelmingly by older viewers in the demo.
The younger half of the demo, 18 to 34 was actually slightly down by a few percent, single
digits is a percent, it was down.
But in that older half, 35 to 49, me and Golo, we were tuning in in greater numbers, people
of our age.
The field demographic, it kind of is, isn't it?
Would you say that that is the CM Punk demographic?
The people who, I don't know, they're now between the ages of 35 and 49 and they were what?
They were the more of a prime age for CM Punk's run in WWE.
Yeah, I mean, when he shows up at ECW-106, I'm going to be 36 and in 06, I was like 20 or
no, I was 18, 18, 18 years old, yeah, that makes sense, yeah.
So, I don't know if there's more to analyze there, but that's, that's, the dynamic did
a better brain than it's been doing in the last few weeks, this was, it's best rating
I believe actually since February, in the demo, in the demo.
This was not a spectacular number in total viewership, but it was much better than usual
in the demo for Dynamite.
Next T, all right, Seth Rollins, is he a draw?
Is Seth Rollins a draw?
Nobody, as we know, nobody in wrestling is a draw, especially not in WWE, well, we're
going to put it to the test on Tuesday night on the USA Network 8 o'clock PM Eastern against
Braun Breaker, NXT on Tuesday night, 773,000 viewers, which is its biggest audience in
more than two years, you have to go back to April 2021, so just after the Wednesday night
were ended, to find a rating, an audience that is as big on average as this one was.
If you want to look at the demo, 0.23, it's been since the Halloween Havoc episode in
October 2020, October 2020 was last time, NXT did a demo that was this big, number
two in the demo for Tuesday, get this, NXT has never, never ranked as highly as number
two in the demo on its night, ever, so big rating here.
It was up in demos, we have it on the screen here across the board, I mean, men were up,
men in the demo were up the highest among the demos we're listening here, so, but was
it really Seth Rollins?
I mean, there was a lot on this show, it could have been Dana Brook and Corey Jade, it
could have been Wesley and Tyler Bate, it could have been Chase U, but the quarter hours
tell us that this audience peaked at the end.
NXT unlike all the other shows has an overrun, the overrun varies in how long it is, it's
always under 15 minutes, just about, this was an eight minute over on this week, which
averaged across those eight minutes, 950,000 viewers, 950,000 viewers.
In the demo, it averaged a 0.29 across those eight minutes.
The quarter hour eight, it's the last full quarter hour of the show, grew the audience
15%, grew the audience 17% in the demo for the Seth Rollins versus Braun Breaker match.
So as far as testing whether Seth Rollins can at least for one week, pop a big rating
for NXT, the answer is absolutely yes.
Will people be pointing at this one week of NXT ratings when Seth Rollins, Hall of Fame
discussions start?
I'm ready.
Seth Rollins was in fact a draw, remember when he popped that big quarter hour on NXT?
I'm ready.
So I don't, I think I don't expect for Seth Rollins to be on NXT every week, but I do
think that this is a really useful data point for WWE in terms of what they could do with
NXT in the sense of if they wanted to, if they chose to do so, they could incorporate
more star power to NXT, they could intertwine some level of NXT stories onto a Raw or a Smack
Down like we saw Braun Breaker was on Raw this week and they promoted Seth Rollins
is going to wrestle him on NXT tomorrow night, which probably led to more people tuning
into NXT obviously, but it shows that WWE has the capacity to, we can put some top stars
on NXT and it can finish number two in the night.
That is something that WWE can do if they choose to do so, would it be diminishing returns
if he did it every week probably, but it does show that those tools are at WWE's disposal
which maybe wasn't the case because if you go back to the Wednesday night war era, there
was a time where WWE did have a lot of main roster stars coming down and wrestling people
NXT famously Charlotte won the NXT Women's Championship and was down there every week.
And their return on those stars going to NXT was relatively minimal in February call
correctly, and that's not the case now, you can definitely see, there's a little bit
more of a main roster influence on NXT over the last month or so in ratings have been
up and obviously this was the big one Seth Rollins by far the biggest star that they've
done that with coming into NXT wrestling, a young guy who's kind of presented as NXT's
ace in Braun Breaker and you see the results which is a very healthy jump in the 18-49.
And why are they super up NXT to the extent that they are popping these ratings for NXT
with people like Seth Rollins?
Does anyone have any theories why this is happening right now?
Media rights?
Media rights fees.
When do the NXT media rights fees expire the current deal for NXT?
When is that expire?
That's the year right?
September.
This September or October, sometime in this fall, this deal is expiring very soon in the
next few months.
So in media interviews and calls and such, Nikon has hyped up the idea that NXT is a valuable
property they view it as a third brand just like Ron Smackdown.
So there's obviously a focus on making NXT feel more important obviously and trying to
reduce the ratings by moving some top stars that haven't had matches on there.
And the returns have been successful.
I think long-term, what does that mean for NXT?
What does that mean for if they get a bigger television deal, will they be forced to commit
more star power at NXT in the future?
Is it going to revert back to what it was before, which is less focused on developmental
and more trying to focus on just presenting a really strong product that people are going
to be invested in?
Is unclear, but obviously the attempt is right now to make NXT feel as important as relevant
as a possible can.
I think the big question this fall is whether we've learned that NXT has been simply extended
for a year so that it becomes co-terminus with Ron Smackdown rights, which are expiring
next year fall.
Which is also kind of BMO for WWE right, if you require their next ATV rights were also
extended to, as you said, co-terminus, we expire at the same time as the Ron Smackdown
rights.
So they kind of want to put this bundle together all at once, even if they do end up selling
them to different bitters.
Yeah, and it's probably a question of just what gives Nick Conn and his team the best
leverage to pull the best deal for Ron Smackdown rights?
Is it does somebody offer them such a good deal for NXT rights that it's worth committing
or it does extending it to one year give them additional leverage to make a better Ron
Smackdown deal?
Brandon, what is your suspicion about what WWE is being paid for NXT on USA right now?
Somewhere I would, if I were to guess like 15 million average annual values, something
like that, maybe 10.
Pretty small relative, obviously relative to.
Yeah, if we, I was doing the math last night, like if we valued it at the rate that
Dine Might is being valued at, it would end up being something like 2015-20, I think.
I just don't know, because the partnership is already there with USA and obviously with
the Peacock content, so and the ratings up until lately have not been much stronger than
what reruns, what like law and order doesn't in that time slot.
And that's a very interesting data point in the sense of up until about a month ago that
NXT's ratings to USA were not that different than what reruns were doing, but in the last
month, that's obviously changed.
The fact that they could get a USA up to number two on Tuesday nights this past week is
probably pretty alluring in the sense to USA in the sense of what kind of content can
we have that will draw ratings and make our cable stations stronger.
It's relevant that in the last month, they've seen NXT can maybe go from a net neutral
assets in terms of what it would do versus running a rerun or something like that, to something
that would do significantly better than your typical rerun in.
Can that number be sustained over the next few months or couldn't even be increased?
And then if I'm going to say, I want to have discussions all the time, but there'll be
about like, so it's doing great ratings, wow, this is awesome, we love you, okay.
But is this how it's going to be a year from now, two years from now?
Convince me of that.
If I was USA, I'd also ask the question of, why did you change the formula of NXT a couple
years ago to basically remove all identifiable star power from the show and focus on all new
wrestlers that often lack experience?
And we saw the ratings go down.
I would ask that question if you clearly have the capacity to do more than NXT, why did
we focus, I don't, because if I'm USA or NBCU, I don't really care that NXT is a developmental
project.
I don't care about WWE needing to get these guys wraps on television really, I'm interested
in what kind of ratings they can provide, and they kind of intentionally sabotage the
star power of NXT a couple years ago when they relaunched to NXT 2.0, and I would probably
want to know, why did you do this if your intention was to make it the third brand like you're
telling me it?
You're supposed to be now.
And I think the answer is, because Vincent, people who think like Vincent Noblesse and
they thought that the old black and gold at that time, vision of wrestling where you're
relying on smaller people who are work rate wrestlers, that's not what's really going
to draw and feed the main roster well.
What's going to feed the main roster better is people that we can use as blank slates
and draft from, you recruit from various sporting fields and turn them into our vision
of what a sports entertainer is, and that they were not supported in the last couple
years.
Right, and they were, but when, as ratings have gone up over the last month or so, they
really were reverted back to what NXT used to be, which would be, which is heavily focused
on wrestlers who are, we're trained outside of the performance center.
A lot of the times it's smaller wrestlers, Carmelo Hayes is their champion at the moment.
And it's not, it seems like NXT over the last month or so, especially if you go back and
look at that takeover card from last month, is much closer to the super indie promotion
than it is the performance center promotion in terms of what talent is being highlighted.
It's, you know, Carmelo Hayes is the champion obviously, but you also have wrestlers like
Ilya Dragunov and Nathan Frazier and Tyler Bay.
Well, they all came through the performance center, though.
So they're all WWE trainees.
Right, well, you could have said that back during the, you know, Johnny Gargano and Adam
Colday's, too.
Yeah, same for that.
We, we, we, we trained them.
Right.
They went to the performance center.
But obviously the philosophy is, as flip flop back and forth, and I think in WWE's
mind, the, you know, pushing the ex college athletes and the true performance center trainees
is probably a better investment in the sense of NXT as a developmental project, but that
has to be balanced with NXT, a business entity in something that you can sell television
to.
I conclude this.
It's 10 years since the performance center opened in July 2013.
My opinion is that there seems to be something institutionally in the way of WWE's performance
center being able to produce wrestlers who have outstanding value to WWE based on the
resources that you have and all the advantages that you have by being WWE.
I think it's greatly underperformed in delivering wrestlers versus the value that they've gotten
out of people who had wrestling experience prior to coming to WWE.
And my conclusion would be that maybe there's something about what we do that just doesn't
make us the best creator of talent.
Now that's not to say that we should stop training people altogether and stop recruiting
athletes and all that, but to acknowledge, understand and work with the fact that maybe
there's something about our institution that maybe we can improve or maybe we can supplement
to deal with the fact that there's, that we're just not the best at creating talent from scratch
all the time and that there's a lot of other talent that we can pull in and get value out
of.
And even if you look at last, so NXT 2.0, what did they launch that was that last year
or was that two years ago?
September 2021.
So we're looking at close to two years, like a little bit more than 18 months since that
has happened.
On the main roster right now, if you look at the main roster, which one of those like NXT
2.0 names that they trained in the performance center and started pushing NXT 2.0, who is
having an impact on the main roster right now?
That would be one of those people.
Austin Theory.
Right, but you know if the theory's not one of those guys.
But if as far as anybody who's not paying attention to wrestling, which is the majority
of the people, I think that their business partners are, are, are and they're, you know what
I mean, they will, I'm moving past the business part, I'm just thinking, you want to talk
real?
I'm talking about like a talent, value, value, value standpoint, you spent 18 months dedicated
to this NXT 2.0 model, training the superstars for tomorrow.
And if I look at the main roster right now, who is making an impact on the main roster
that is a true performance center trainee that, you know, emerged over the last 18 months
on NXT 2.0 and is now on the main roster?
Over the last 18 months, I don't know, I'm Bianca Belair, but you're, but that's probably
that's the one before, before the deadline you try to talk about, um, I don't know.
Right, I think there's a, a small amount of people that are still in NXT that I would
say WWE is pretty high on, I would say Ron Breaker, I would say Tiffany Stratton, I would
say maybe the Creed Brothers.
And I think those people will continue to be-
Gunther maybe, but you know, I, you'd all agree, Gunther was trying to sit down to be
before you ever step, stepfully in WWE.
Yeah, I mean, 10 day away L.A. night, he might have been there in a little bit of the
two point in the ring, but I'm talking about like people that were actually trained
by the force.
But did they know how to look in the camera and, and work for the camera though?
I think pretty deadly will become a big deal for them, but that's still fairly new.
Okay.
Right, I'm just thinking of people who, what are my results 18 months after we started
this experiment of NXT 2.0, where, what are the results so far?
And I would say look at the main roster, who is making influence the main roster right
now.
I mean, I'm trying to think of anyone who's even been called up, it's probably pretty
limited.
You could say like someone like Zoe Stark, who didn't have a ton of indie experience
before coming to WWE, but was around the indie scene.
Talks of attraction got called up.
Right, but those are veteran wrestlers, right?
Yeah.
Uh, yes.
All three of them though.
No, the one that I wasn't with company anymore.
Well, yeah.
GG Dawn is.
Look at that.
What I just brought up, I think pretty deadly is the only other really example probably
that didn't have, they didn't have experience before.
I don't think that they.
Who?
Anyway.
Oh, the tag team pretty deadly.
Oh, pretty deadly.
Yeah.
I'm not sure.
The level of like, this is difference between a guy like, you know, a Volta level wrestler
signing the WWE or LA Knight, who you mentioned like versus, you know, someone who has maybe
a years of of scattered indie appearances and then got signed by WWE.
It's like, as a data observation, I want to point out here what I'm just going to affirm
my own narrative over the last couple of years is just saying that core hours are interesting.
They're often misleading, especially when it's not remarkably.
Wow, look at, I mean, this, this core hour trend that we see here in NXT and the core
hour trend that we're going to talk about in a minute with Smackdown, these are truly
meaningful, undeniable changes in the core hours across the show that I have to attribute
to the content.
Now, what's happening on a lot of times, especially with the dynamic core hours that people hyperanalyze,
what we're seeing is differences that I don't find to be particularly meaningful in the
alternative, I would suggest looking at these charts that I put in the TV ratings reports
every TV show that look at everything by segment and yes, YouTube doesn't draw a lot
of money, but I think it's a more reliable indicator of interest than core hours often
are.
My point being here that look, the core hours clearly reflect that the Seth Rollins and
Braun Breaker match did well.
We see that corroborated in the YouTube data here where the most viewed YouTube clip
for NXT last Tuesday by far is Rollins vs. Breaker, and then secondarily, Hayes Rons
from a Baller attack, which is the post-match angle.
And then even after that, that freaking Rollins makes his return to NXT, another video,
which is by far more viewed than the others.
So if you're looking to see who's a draw, which is one of the most important questions
that we can ask in our entire lives, the YouTube videos, I think, tell us a more reliable
story than the core hours do.
Anyway, we're reporting core hours and we're reporting YouTube views.
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Uh, every week.
Now, here's Roman Reigns.
Looking into the camera, directly at Jessica and saying,
you at home, acknowledge me.
Roman Reigns drew another strong quarter hour
and the Usos.
The Usos did.
I don't believe Sami Zayn was a part of this angle.
Last, this is two now two Fridays ago.
June 16th.
This is the Usos turning, I guess, on Roman Reigns, as well as Solicicoa.
Uh, the final quarter hour grew the audience.
19% in total.
16% in the demo.
This show, which averaged 2.4 million viewers,
peaked at almost 2.8 million for the final 15 minutes.
Uh, another in what is becoming a preponderance of data points
showing how strongly the bloodline angle is performing
and is corroborated by YouTube videos
that just these two videos for the Usos Superkick Roman Reigns
and the decision, which is Jimmy Usos making the decision
to stay with his brother, Jimmy,
just soaring with about 2 million viewer views
each for these two videos,
just soaring about everything else,
which at best had 300,000 viewers below it.
So just doing multiple times more views on YouTube
than than the other stuff is doing.
So the case for Roman Reigns being a draw continues
to get forwardified here.
Any responses?
You're muted, Jesse.
You're muted, Jesse.
I can't unmute you because you've muted yourself.
If you are going to the, I'm curious,
I'm just just a general question.
This is true for all YouTube channels.
If you go on like the WWE YouTube page,
and on like the actual channel itself,
like a video automatically starts playing,
does that count as a YouTube view?
Probably counts as a view.
That ruins the data, doesn't it?
They probably just Roman Reigns up there at the top.
You can't count it.
Yeah, probably counts, yeah.
I mean, it's really good.
I would suggest that the data in the quarter hour,
especially, we could be so over.
And look at this, 300,000 versus 2 million.
Right, in the sense of that obviously,
people are interested in it, you know, it's interesting.
I think the, you have the, the overnight's from,
from Friday night.
It appears they're going to do another strong rating, right?
It's going to be down from this, this past week.
It's going to be down from the 16th, but good still.
And Reigns was not on the show on this past Friday.
It was more centered around, I think, like Paul Heyman
and the Usos and so was Sakoa.
So I'll be interested to see like week to week.
Like, I don't know when, or I assume Reigns
is probably going to be on the show next Friday,
because that's a go home show.
Just, I'm sorry, I'm behind.
Is there a match announce for money in the bank
for Roman Reigns?
Yep.
They are doing a, there's some kind of attack.
It's a tag match.
It's a, yeah, bloodline civil war, I believe,
this, this how it's being built, yes.
Usos versus Reigns and Solskau.
Right, so people are obviously, that's probably going to be,
he's probably going to be on the show Friday.
They'll be interesting to see, you know,
Reigns is present on Friday.
We'll, what kind of rating that we'll do in the sense of,
we've seen it kind of, we saw, you know,
really good rating last two weeks.
This past episode probably down,
I'm going to be slightly without Reigns.
What happens when he comes back?
Will the rating go back up?
Will it be about the same?
Did it peak when the Usos finally made their decision?
Because that's kind of the big moment in turn
that people were waiting to see.
That's not relevant data, but obviously,
this is the best period of Reigns's career
in terms of being an identifiable draw.
It's a huge feather, and it's a huge feather
in the cap for the Usos as well,
who I think emotionally are kind of the pivotal characters
in the storyline.
So in terms of their status as a drawing act,
their status as a main event team
that can, that can really move business.
I don't know if, you know,
what they're kind of Hall of Fame resume
is going to look like for the Wrestling Observer Hall.
This is a very notable moment for them in the sense of,
is Roman Reigns probably the primary factor for this business?
Yes.
But at the same time, the Usos are really pivotal players.
And in a lot of ways, carrying a bulk of the emotional storytelling
and the investment isn't them to a degree.
So it's a huge benefit to them.
And I guess Paul Haven, I mean, as a character,
is obviously very important.
Yes.
And he believes that there were some people almost a year ago
that were saying, some guy named Drew McIntyre
should have won the title when they were in Cardiff.
Do you remember this?
Yes, well, he should have, but that's neither here nor there,
right?
With this, and then people have, you know,
kicked and screamed about Cody not winning a WrestleMania,
is this all as successful?
Is it diminished at all?
Or to what degree is it diminished?
If Reigns had lost the title in either,
either case at WrestleMania or at Clash,
it's kind of impossible to prove.
So is it worth debating at all?
All right, I heard you in my audience.
It's not, yeah, go ahead.
You and John Paul talked about this on Wednesday,
in this sense of this storyline between like the bloodline
dissolving, right?
Roman Reigns does not necessarily have to be champion
for it to work.
And one could argue that it would actually make more storytelling
sense if Roman Reigns had lost the title because it would show,
be an excuse for broader insecurities that Reigns has to emerge
and to become more suspicious and jealous of the Usos.
The fact that Roman Reigns still has the championship,
but largely because the Usos and I guess Elisakoa
have continued to help him retain the title
for some level of logical questions towards why
would Usos and Roman Reigns have this problem.
But largely, you could say that Reigns is,
Reigns is need to have the title.
The Reigns is need to have both titles,
not even just one of the titles, but both titles.
Set three belts.
Yeah, I guess he has three titles.
It's a triple-crunch, you know.
You know, the need to have the creation of the new title
for forever, for a raw and things like that.
One could, you could easily argue that it's not necessary
to the end.
Reigns loses the title.
Then there's no Seth Rollins belt to give and have him go to NXT
with either I'm being facetious sort of.
If you want to participate, by the way,
the Super Check go for it.
For Bidendor tonight in Toronto.
We did have a, not an earnings call, but a media call
with one Tony Khan.
There were a few, a few items that we can talk about
from the For Bidendor Media call which happened on Thursday.
The biggest one, I guess, being that there had been a report
earlier in the week from Ariel Hualani on the MMA hour saying that,
you know, it's been reported reliably that
that Bellator and I believe Scott Corcor has confirmed.
The Bellator is exploring a sale.
Bellator is the MMA company that's currently owned by Paramount.
You know, that company formerly known as Viacom, CVS.
So they're shopping Bellator.
There have been reports that PFL, Profiter's League,
which is another MMA organization, is interested in
merging with Bellator.
Ariel Hualani is reporting that the Khan family is interested
in acquiring, has looked into it, has looked into acquiring
Bellator. Liberty Media also, he mentioned as another company
that's looking into acquiring Bellator.
Liberty Media is the owner of Formula One, the Atlanta Braves.
Yes.
Anything else remarkable?
I think those are the two biggest assets.
There's, I think there's like, some type of communications thing,
but yeah.
Liberty One, we highly believe, was, it did make a bit on WWE
in the strategic alternative process,
but obviously did not come away with it.
So Tony was asked about this on Thursday, and he says,
quote, I was surprised to see that report.
I haven't had any conversations with them about that,
so I don't know what that was about.
My father, who's Shad Khan, hasn't had any conversation about that either.
Of course, he went on to disparage
Eric Hualani, continuing his long-running blood feud with Eric Hualani.
So that's that.
I guess we're not going to see a merged UFCWV versus a merged Bellator,
and AEW after all, which seems like a possibility for a day or two there.
So there's that.
Other things he said there.
We've already got nine-figure revenues.
He said this when being asked about the one-bill-filled line.
He said nine-figure revenues, so that means $100 million,
and that's consistent with like the $100 million even,
very close to $100 million even, that I believe AEW generated
when I did my estimate for 2022, so not far over $100 million,
but about $100 million is what I believe they do.
He's saying comments that aren't consistent with that.
On the subject of one-bill-fill, so Dave wanted to know,
does he know something that we don't know,
and this is kind of what we talked with Dave about on Wednesday.
Wondering if does Punk know that there's a TV deal worth a billion dollars,
I guess this would be over five years,
that would be worth as much as that,
that that's within their grasp.
And Tony said, we're growing and growing,
and pushing to hit that magic number that Phil referenced.
This is one comment that Tony said,
in the course of a long response, of course, to this question.
My read of that comment, again, we're growing and growing,
and pushing to hit that magic number that Phil referenced,
that that tells me that I'm sure Tony is aware of the rumors as well,
of you know, with the rumors of several weeks ago,
where there's, oh my god, there's a billion dollar deal,
we're five, you know, over five years,
that's obviously not the case now,
but that this comment tells me that he sees that as something that is attainable.
Would you agree?
He was also asked by Bix.
When the rumor was going around about that number,
we did a lot of discussion and analysis on,
is that a possible number that could exist?
And I think we determined that it was something that could possibly exist.
So is it a realistic goal for AW to shoot for?
I would say yes.
It has to be a five-year deal, though.
Like, do you think it could be over, like, say, for example, seven years,
which is a little under 145 million year?
Yes.
You know, like a same being.
I mean, look, the W candidate deal is 10 years,
so I think that, and then NFL deals are really long,
right?
Not that we should compare much as the NFL deal.
But an ACC deal, I think, was like 15 years.
Some crazy like that, yeah.
Anyway, I could see a wrestling deal being long in five years.
And there's also additional components such as
could pay for views, be moving to each of your Macs or something like that,
that could also factor in how much money the deal is worth.
Right.
And next day writes for AW currently have no owner, no one monetizing them.
So that's something that could fit on Macs,
and wouldn't even have to be live, obviously,
because those would be next day writes.
He was asked, Xastin Y Punk said,
I'm trying to run a business here at the infamous All Out press conference,
in September, and Tony said, that's just a colloquialism.
I own the business, but he's one of the top stars,
and he has an interest in AW being a strong box office business,
Bix followed up and said that he had
messaged with Tony, and Tony made it even clearer
that Punk does not have an ownership stake in AW.
So, um, and finally,
Stephanie Chase asked him if there were any women in creative,
he mentioned Madison Rain and Sarah Stock,
not just once, not just twice, not just,
but actually three times.
He mentioned their names three times.
Does that count as having six women?
If you say that you have two women involved in coaching and in
agenting, does that count as having three women in creative?
If you say their names, or I'm sorry,
six women in creative, if you say their names three times.
I don't think so.
Okay.
It was, that was humorous, I thought, that he,
he was being asked if there were women in creative,
and he mentioned two women who were working as coaches,
and then mentioned, uh, Pat Buck and Sanjay Dutt,
and you might have mentioned Brian Danison,
and he mentioned himself, and then mentioned Sarah Stock,
and Madison Rain again.
I feel like we have a lot of questions,
like a lot of discussions about AW creative,
and who's creative, and who's writing the show,
and I mean, in general, it seems kind of pointless
because it does seem like like Tony we know is,
for all intents and purposes,
Tony is the only person who's really in creative.
And then there are a lot of other people
that might have some sort of level of influence,
and it could be coaches,
it could be the top stars,
which Tony has conceded,
often have influence over their own programs.
So you could make a case that there are 50 plus people
that are involved in AW creative,
or there's only one person, and it's Tony himself.
I think focusing on like, who's in creative,
who's not in creative,
when really have no idea how big,
if you've individual influence,
is like a meaningless discussion.
I think it's a more important question to ask
as the amount of content that AW is creating
has, I mean, multiplied since the beginning,
right, because it's gone from being a two-hour show
to being having three hours of weekly content
to three hours of weekly content,
and a ring of honor show now,
three hours of weekly content,
a ring of honor show,
and a collision show every week,
where, you know, more output,
you think leads to more delegation.
For Bindor, as of, believe me,
this was yesterday or this morning,
for Bindor currently has 13,000 tickets out,
13,336.
They're freeing up some tickets here and there,
so this is going to be a pretty packed
Scotiabankerbina tonight in Toronto.
Last night for collision,
by half the crowd.
6,358 was the most recent count,
as we sit here from Russell Ticks,
I don't think that's a final count,
I might change a little bit.
6,358 again,
over 13,000 tonight for the pay-per-view.
So that's where it is.
The collision, we got two collisions so far as live events,
9,284 the Chicago United Center collision,
6,358 for Toronto,
and the others are yet to happen,
but Hamilton, 17,000,
it's no longer under 1,000,
it's actually, I guess, doubled since I'm
ever looking at it when it only had 800,
even 600, it's not up to 1,700,
and Regina is actually lower with about 1,400,
and the others have,
you know, Calgary has about 3,600,
Newark has about 4,600,
Greenville 2,000,
Greensboro, 3,100.
So these are doing, I know,
some of these are doing dynamite level.
In the ticket movement over the last week
for the Toronto show that eventually got to,
probably around 6,500 or so,
was tremendous,
because a few weeks ago,
I was like, I can't believe whether they were at,
like, under 2,000 tickets out,
and I was like, I can't believe they're so low
given that this is a,
the day before a major sold out pay-per-view events
that should theoretically have a lot of fans flying into
who would want to watch this show.
So the fact that they got up to what I would consider
a pretty strong number is, is, is, is impressive.
Obviously, the Hamilton number is still very disappointing,
but given that it's, they've more than doubled
the ticket sales over the last week is valuable.
I think there's a lot to kind of my original notion
about why the ticket advances for so week was that people
didn't know what collision was going to be.
They weren't sure if it was going to be like rampage,
which is a largely skippable show
with nothing really major or important happening on it.
I think so far establishing collision as the CM Punk show
and as the show that, you know, major stars are going to wrestle on
and there's going to be matches and angles of consumments.
They continue to do that.
We'll see ticket sales continue to improve for collision
because fans are going to understand what they're going to get.
And it's not going to be a B or a C show.
It's going to be something that's just as relevant as dynamite.
It's a, it's not as important as the TV ratings,
but it's, you know, we're finding out what collision is.
Is it just going to be a rampage level B show?
That's not really that important.
Or is there really going to be another show
where important things happen to the degree
that they happen on dynamite?
And they continue to be aggressive
in terms of what buildings they're running in.
They're not running in 3,500 seat buildings.
They're in some very large buildings,
you know, coming up in Calgary,
in Newark, in Greensboro.
We're talking about, you know,
NBA and NHL sized arenas.
I know they announced an upcoming date for the,
I think they're going back to the Reparina in Lexington.
Or is it the young center in Louisville?
I know they announced a Kentucky date for collision.
Later this August, but either way,
they're going to be in another gigantic building.
Like they are not running little, you know,
2,000 seat theaters and stuff like that.
They are anticipating collision to draw just as well
as dynamite.
And they're running in the biggest buildings
they can find for the most part.
Okay.
Do you think, let me ask you this,
if you want to talk about the Fubindor ticket sales,
do you think that Fubindor should be
in a larger venue next year?
A lot might depend on what ticket sales in general look like.
I hear from now,
but do you think that given that they have,
you know, quickly sold out,
you know, your typical NBA sized arena
with both the United Center show in Chicago,
and now the Scotia,
should they run a bigger venue for the next year?
I think about this as a thought experiment.
Like if this was this paper you tonight was at
Roger Center, how many tickets would they sold?
Have sold.
First stadium show,
A&W is running North America.
Obviously the Wembley show proves at least
that people will go to a stadium show
because they feel like it's special, right?
Yeah, yeah.
In the sense,
I know this, this got over 13,000 out.
Cannot.
I mean, if this was at Roger Center tonight
in this, this, this at environment, this card,
certainly over 20, 25, 30.
And what's the break even point?
What is the, you know,
what do you, and where would you run it?
I think Toronto, which is,
this is the first paper view A&W has ever run in Toronto.
They've only been in the market,
you know, really one time before.
They also have a indoor arena
that is not like a 75,000-seater arena,
but it's like a 40,000-seater arena,
which is a pretty rare building.
It's really looking at a few other baseball stadiums.
Did you talk about the Roger Center?
Yeah, like kind of like, you're not running,
you know, the Mercedes-Benz arena in Atlanta,
or the Louisiana Superdome,
or the, you know, AT&T stadium in Dallas.
You're running like kind of like a,
where if you put 25, 30,000 people,
it would look close to sold out as opposed to
if you were running a, you know,
WWE's new summer slam in four fields, right?
And that's probably going to be like,
half-filled, or it's going to be a little bit more than half-filled
based on the traditional capacity of that building,
and how many tickets they have out for that.
Which is good if you're WWE,
and you can do that, you can sell for 40,000 tickets.
But I'm thinking from like an ATW perspective,
you have to have the right out,
currently, for summer slam.
For summer slam?
Yeah.
Yeah.
In like a 65 to 70,000-seater building,
which is, again, they've done this
for the last few years for summer slam,
and it's worked out fine for them.
So, but I do think like,
you have to pick the right market.
Toronto's a great market for UW,
as evidenced by the fact that they have sold 20,000 tickets
over what, they're going to do 20,000 tickets this week,
weekend alone in Toronto.
What would the other markets be?
So let's say we've got,
Forbidden Door next year,
a pretty strong card.
Yeah, I think this is a much stronger card
this year than last year.
I think we would all agree on that, right?
And let's say it's next year.
Well, Tony Conn and his,
Tony Conn thinks everything is great at all times.
Well, I'm saying like last year,
the build for there was a mess.
People didn't know what kind of matches we were going to get.
We didn't even know like a Volcata was going to be on the show
until like the last day.
There were injuries.
There was maybe some lack of communication
between New Japan and AEW.
And I think Antonio was talking up big
in the presser.
And I think he's being truthful in the sense
that there's much more of a cohesive build to this show.
We've had New Japan wrestlers.
When is the embargo on the truth open up about a year later?
Right, but we get the sense that
he said that last year was the most injuries he's ever
dealt with in any capacity,
including his time,
you know, with the Jaguar's and full on,
which is pretty remarkable.
If you're familiar with the 2019 2020
full-on Premier League season in terms of
how bad the injury situation was for them there.
It was the fact that he said that it was worse last year
on Forbidden Door Time.
It's pretty impressive.
But he, I would say there were also other reasons
why some New Japan talent was not available.
That was not just injuries, but we'll leave it at that.
Right, but there's a lot more questions.
I mean, this show, you know,
probably like a month ago, right?
Or at least early June, right, during Dominion.
We got Bryan Danielson versus Okada announced.
And we got Kenny Omega versus Will Osprey announced.
And so those are your two real marquee matches.
Everything else, in a lot of cases, is going to be gravy.
But, oh, even, you know, they've had,
they've been able to build up those shows.
Will Osprey has been on AW Television,
you know, the past two weeks they've had more
new Japan stars trickling in.
Obviously, on Dynamite this week, they were all over the show.
So there's a lot more of a cohesive build for this show.
And it's done, you know, great business from a ticket selling standpoint.
And I would expect the people to be pretty strong as well.
And as we've discussed before, it feels like a special event
in a way that the other four AWP reviews don't
because of the New Japan connection,
because it's really like a dream card of map matches.
And I think that helps sell tickets.
I think it helps with getting traveling fans to come to the show.
It's like, if you're going to go to one AWP review a year,
you want to go to the one that feels special.
And this is the one that feels unique and feels special.
The Wembley Stadium Show will feel special and unique
when it happens, again, this August.
But if you're just looking at the calendar,
if we've been doors to one day of the year,
where AW kind of does feel like they have a special event,
as opposed to the other pay-per-views,
which are all very similar.
And I think that helps sell tickets.
So I guess the challenge is,
if you're going to do for Been Door next year,
let's say it's an equally strong card.
Equally strong macro environment,
as far as what the momentum is of AWP,
and maybe the wider economy,
what market do you pick to run for Been Door in a stadium
if that's what you're going to do?
Well, the fact that it takes place in June helps,
in a sense, so if you're not dealing with cold weather
for some other cities that you could go into,
I mean, New York would be the obvious case now.
If you're going to New York, you're probably looking at
maybe MetLife Stadium, which is probably
a very expensive and very big venue.
Does that affect whether you do Arthur Ash
in September, as has been the tradition?
I feel like they just still keep doing it.
I mean, Arthur Ash is two or three months removed
from Been Door.
I would say, you could look at City Field.
I would say in New York, as a potential venue.
Brooklyn?
It's in Cleveland.
No, that's the former shape stadium.
That's former shape stadium.
It's the old shape stadium, yeah.
Yeah, okay.
Well, actually, I don't know where,
where City Field is next, relative to where
shape stadium was, but I don't think it's in Queens.
It's in Queens, yeah.
But that's, you know, that is a baseball stadium.
You could probably easily do 30,000 people there.
And obviously, New York is an awesome market,
given the size and its proximity to other major markets.
Google tells me the capacity of City Field is 41,800.
For baseball, I don't know what that means for a wrestling show.
I think there's only one wrestling show.
They were actually, which was that Legends of wrestling.
Yes, they did like the nostalgia show, right?
Was it was Goldberg on that show?
Yeah, yeah, he was, but he just did like a running.
I was in a similar show that was like that in Buffalo.
So it was Brandon.
That was the same type of group.
The show we did in Akron, is that your top off?
Yeah, that same type of group did the show in City Field.
Brian Nobs told me you go out there and kill it, and I did.
Brian Nobs tried to not pay me, and I told him no.
If you, if you look at like other strong markets for EW,
obviously, Chicago is one of their strongest markets.
Soldier Field is a, it's not quite as big as like a MetLife stadium,
but obviously, you know, 6,000 seed venue.
You could do Wrigley Field or whatever.
Soldier Field?
You think it's Chicago not getting saturated with this stuff?
Does it not make it a weaker market for you to do this?
I'm just looking at the traveling audience just sort of offset all that.
I'm just looking at who are their, what are their best markets that they could go to for
ticket selling purposes?
With the West Coast to much more risk because of, because of the,
I speaking for myself, I haven't gone to, I went to Las Vegas, but I was not going to go
to San Francisco for revolution because it was just more expensive for me being one of the many
people who's on East Coast of the United States.
It just makes the, the travel, the barrier.
Right, and getting theoretically much of your restrictive towards the European
travelers as well, flying to Toronto, flying to New York, even flying to Chicago.
Maybe you probably get direct flight to a lot of those markets as opposed to
man going from like, you know, London to LAX.
And that's not going to be offset by the, by the fans of traveling from Japan to go to Australia, yeah.
I mean, I mean, that's probably a small, a small amount, but we're talking about the
traveling fans. It's true.
Going, I think one of the reasons Chicago is a consistently strong paperview market for them
is because Chicago is an unbelievably easy place to get to.
It's to be aware of the West.
Yes, right.
So Chicago, Atlanta and Houston have like the most connection.
So you can get to that.
Right, and Chicago is in the middle of the country.
So it's not too far from the West Coast, not too far from the East Coast,
within easy driving distance to a lot of, I mean, one of the reasons I think Toronto,
despite it being an international market, is because Toronto is, is, is really strongly located,
not too far from the Midwest, not too far from the East Coast.
Obviously, the international flights too.
Yep, in Toronto.
Toronto metro area is obviously a overly large metro area.
But yeah, I mean, if you're looking at like places, the fact that you can do it in the summertime
makes it less restrictive if you don't necessarily need to be in a dome.
It obviously helps to be endorsed from a weather perspective, but you could do a baseball stadium.
Now you're, it's during baseball season.
So it has, that's a scheduling aspect that would need to be rectified, but plenty of baseball
stadiums host concerts and stuff during the baseball season.
So it wouldn't be impossible to get something done like that.
Okay, so I guess the conclusion is, it doesn't really matter what the market is,
if it's, if you're going to draw from people out of the market in, and that,
I think it's, I think it definitely matters to travel to.
Yeah, I think it matters to an extent.
I wouldn't run it in, it's a reason they have a factor because you're, you're relying on.
There's a reason they haven't done a stadium, it's a reason, there's a reason that
Tony Khan owns a NFL stadium and they haven't run a stadium show there.
Run it in Jacksonville, but it's Jacksonville is hard to get to.
You'd have to make it.
I definitely have.
Jacksonville is not a strong market for.
There's a hotel issue to in Jacksonville.
Yeah, like when the Super Bowl is there.
Yeah.
So, you know, Atlanta, I mean, and we're talking big domes.
I would say that you could get away with like a baseball stadium or even like an MLS
you know, a mid-size stadium that you could, that's 25,000 people.
Well, I don't know why I said no, the Seattle's MLS team.
Did they play in the Seahawks stadium?
I can't remember.
Yes, they did.
Okay, so Portland would be more what I would be thinking of.
Like, but Portland, you could do a safe go field in Seattle with a Mariners play.
That's it.
That has a double.
The Seattle could be a really good market.
I mean, it's being expensive for East Coast travelers, but.
Yeah, I mean, if you want to do West Coast, you could.
If they go to Montreal, so the Olympics stadium still open,
Montreal, I have no idea.
No.
Okay.
I do have, I was saying off here, I do not, I was not going to be able to do ELO draft,
an ELO draft update, but I will.
So, if you haven't listened to an episode we did like a month or two ago,
we all picked five wrestlers, three of us picked five wrestlers,
who we thought would perform strongly in their ELO, which is a chest rating,
would perform strongly in their ELO ratings,
treating wrestling matches like chest matches in terms of the scoring.
We do have an update, which yeah, I think about a month ago, right?
Because I've got this early May.
So, this is about two months ago, I guess.
Anyway, the answer is I'm still being everybody by a wide margin,
which is how we started, right?
I have Moxley O'Cotta, Reigns, Shita, Shingo,
Gull has Jay Cargill, who's, who's going to become an active soon, probably.
Worth Cassidy, Gunther, Hook, Sonata, Jesse has Athena, Camille, Wardlow,
Bianca Belair, Nick, all this.
And for people watching, you can see the amount of the green on my,
yeah, these are the green ones.
I'm going to wrap up the practice at this rate.
You also suffered a loss here as Wardlow lost the title.
I'm guessing that's what this is, although it should have counted on the 17th, anyway.
These numbers have not been verified, but an independent auditing committee.
But Wardlow did clearly suffered a loss recently, probably, to lose interest source when he lost
the ante title. Nick, all this, all this is, is starting to, which is a Jesse wrestler,
is starting to slowly gain. I believe he is number one in TNA, though, or I'm sorry, in fact,
wrestling. He's wrestling for the impact title, against Alex Shelley, I think that's soon.
So, it could be the jam.
Any other interesting changes here? Orange Cassie, of course.
Orange Cassie was a good bat as he was, you know, continues to gain in ELO score as he
continues to win matches. I've got no changes in my score going way back here, which
doesn't make a lot of sense. I don't know if this conditional form any is correct.
Anyway, I'm winning by a wide margin here, so I apologize for that.
Anything else to talk about? Brady, can you take the listeners to what your schedule is today?
I'm going to edit this podcast and get it uploaded and ready to go for the podcast feeds.
I'm going to make sure I have everything I need, but it's, I'm just driving.
But so, I'll make sure I'm ready to go. I'll get in the car. I'll drive to Toronto, which will take
about two hours. I will go to the forbidden pour nearby the arena. I'm going to have to find
parking, which is I've anticipated is going to cost me like $15 US or something.
And I, you know, I will park. I will go to the forbidden pour probably. I will go to the show.
I have full disclosure. I have bought a resell ticket. AW will comp me, but I have spent money,
like $49 on a resell ticket, so that they're not giving me gifts greater than $15.
I will be at the show. I will probably walk around a great deal and not sit in one seat very much.
Then I will go to the press conference. Whenever that starts, probably like 1130 or midnight,
and the press conference will probably go well over an hour, and then I will drive home.
And I would anticipate being home around three or four AM.
And why are you doing all this, Brandon?
It's fun to do. Who are you doing it for? For the listeners, the subscribers who allow me to do
this, because it's not totally free to make it there. I have to drive. It's not as expensive as
flying. But I want everyone to know the kind of dedication and effort Brandon is putting in
for you, the listeners. I want you to put your finger in the air and acknowledge the effort that
Brandon, Brandon, you need to make the Roman Reigns pointing out the screens to the viewer at home
face, because people want to be acknowledging you, but the effort that you're putting into
doing everything, do you have to, are you working tomorrow?
I took a day off from my day job tomorrow, because I knew that was not going to work.
So when I went to Las Vegas, I went home in the next day. I don't know, I got home at
prime time hours, and then I went to work the next day, and that was challenging.
So I decided I'm going to take Monday off. So I do have Monday off.
So I'm going to have to get up early on Monday.
I wanted to highlight the dedication that Brandon is putting into traveling, to going to the show,
what he's going to be asking questions in the press conference that are, he thinks they're going
to be pretty in towards the interests of his listeners.
And he suggests the questions for the press conference that you want to give me.
Depends who's there.
Right.
If I was interviewing Tony Khan, I would bring up his
pulling tweet, where he
retweeted a football aggregator who was spreading a rumor that was not true about one of his
full employers being a potential having a potential release clause, and that contract, and he said,
definitively, they'd not have a release clause on this contract. And I'd ask him,
you must see W, you know, false rumors about your wrestlers and your wrestling promotion all the
time. How come you don't take it to social media and equivocally deny them at the same rate?
Because I do think a lot of problems in AW could be avoided if Tony did take that tactic,
as opposed to giving non-committal answers to any real serious questions that are asked
to film in terms of personnel, in terms of contract situations, in terms of when we're going to see
wrestlers again and things like that.
Yes. So if AWPR is listening, now they know what to prep Tony for, if you can give him an old
still. I think it's interesting, we're two months out, we really don't know what all in's going
to be on yet. So that should be a question asked, especially that's the next big major event.
Yeah, well, all in, what about all out is supposedly still happening in Chicago,
but it hasn't been enough for me. We've only heard from Anthony Bowen's, right? He's the only one
like, it's, you know, Megaparic did do an interview on a wrestling podcast. The name escapes
into this a couple of months ago, but she did mention that they are, she mentioned it's sort of
impassing that yeah, we're going to the UK and then just a week later, I'm not quoting her
directly, but she says something to the effect of, then a week later we're going to be back in
US for all out. So it's, I believe it's happening, I've expected to be in Chicago.
I've got to, why not announce it?
They, yeah, I mean, they've usually announced the next pay-per-view right after
the current pay-per-view, right? I think they've, so like, I remember at the press conference for
full gear, Tony's sort of looking to Raphael Morphe and saying, basically saying, yeah,
we can announce the Chase Center for revolution, he's like, yeah, I sure, something like that.
So that's sort of when that was confirmed. And I guess in terms of selling tickets to all out,
I don't think they're particularly concerned about, like, they, they feel like they can probably
announce it with less of a build up towards it and still sell, you know, 10,000 tickets to the,
what's the building of the run-in now? Since he's the old Sears Center.
Interesting. No, now Center. Now Arena. The now Center, yes.
He used to be the Sears Center. He used to be the road, he used to be like the Rosemont Horizon
Center. The now Center is not the Rosemont Horizon. Oh, it's not. The Rosemont Horizon is
different. Yeah. Arena. Yes. Oh, wow. So that we're talking about a fourth arena now in Chicago.
Yeah. So, so now is way out in, in like the suburbs in Schoenberg. Yeah.
And all state arena is closer to Chicago, but it's not actually in Chicago. It's in Rosemont.
Yeah. And then the night center is down in Chicago. But all out.
When trust is something else, yeah, I think it takes place at the all state arena.
No, AW has never run the all state arena slash Rosemont Horizon.
All out and all in both took place at the now Center, also known as the Sears Center.
Wow. I gotta get my Chicago venue straight.
I'm also planning. I'm planning on going to Chicago. I'm planning on going to Summer Slam Detroit.
I'm planning on this is my latest ideas that so all out will be in Chicago that Labor Day weekend.
WD just announced payback in Pittsburgh. So my plan is to drive to Pittsburgh, fly to Chicago,
fly home via rental car involved in that. So that's my current plan. We'll see how that all
plays out. Anything else? Once again, if you're not a subscriber yet, to patreon.com slash
Roselomics, if you want to listen to this podcast every single week, subscribe to patreon.com slash
Roselomics. You will get to continue to listen to this podcast every single week in both audio and
video. It will not be available to free listeners any more than one week a month beginning July 9th.
So we will be back for everybody for free on YouTube on the WrestleNomics podcast,
but this is the last episode that is of Roselomics radio that is on the post wrestling feed.
Pollock and Thursday continues to be wide as possible distribution for everybody on both post
wrestling on Roselomics going forward. So that's what's happening there. Thank you all for listening.
I'll talk to you next time. I'll be at the press conference. Maybe you'll hear me there,
but otherwise I'll be back with John Pollock next week. I guess I'll say we're going to talk to
Mike Strawh, that is our current plan to talk to Mike Strawh, who is a video game reporter,
also from Buffalo. One time friend of mine and Mike Strawh could go.
There you go. And this will be just after A to B fight forever has been released.
So he will have played the game by then and we will discuss it and whatever that means for A to B
in wrestling business. Talk to you then. Bye.