Brewster's Millions : ROH

[neil's bitch]

I think he means post's like this generally, not just about ROH, as to be fair, you could see there was some sort of "I'd hire kimbo slice, and host *some stupid non-funny idea* event hahaha!", posts coming.

 

So not a knock on anybody in particular, but im thinking he means more like "Why do people have to come in and post stupid shit".

[King Pitcos]

I don't know how it could really help. $20m isn't enough to get them from where they are to competing with WWE, and probably not enough to get them competing with TNA. If you spend that money on proper wrestlers and decent production and try to make it a proper show, you probably still don't get anywhere near the big two, and you risk alienating the current ROH fanbase. It'd be a waste of twenty mil, really.

[Richie Freebird]

I

[Devon Malcolm]

I

[CleetusVanDamme]

I'd hire Kimbo Slice.

[Richie Freebird]

Tournament of Death is my Wrestlemania mate.

 

But narr, I wouldn

[mickfan]

First of all (I'll get my joke in 1st) the relative must fucking hate you to leave you 20m then force you to invest in a shitty wrasslin' company.

 

Seriously though, I'd hire Honky Tonk Man on the booking commitee as in his shoots he seems clued up on the business and knows what works and what doesnt. I'd also hire Jake Roberts as a road agent for help with creative ideas and helping the boys out with promos and that side of things. I'd have Teddy Hart both on the show and get him on the booking commitee charged with getting the young, teenage demographic tuning in (his ideas for Matrats/rockets on turnbuckles/waistcoats you can put in the fridge would be quality given the forum to utilize them.)

I'd make the show broad as poss and try to appeal to as many demographics as possible (I'd have each segment of the show solely devoted to each genre of wrestlings bringing in legit tag/hardcore and lightweight divisions). I'd try to bring back the fans WWE lost in going PG and to MMA (You could even have cage matches with MMA rules - bit Brawl for All esque). I'd try to bring back the fans from the Attitude era by booking more lads from that era to get those fans interested. I'd pride the company on being an actual wrestling company and stick in sloagans stuff like "The only WRESTLING show on telly", "We started this WRESTLING shit, is this the motherfucking thanks we get?!" and "Were bringing WRESTLING back...them other promotions don't know how to act!" much the same way WCW should of used its connections with TimeWarner to do adverts with Sting and Flair telling an animated Bugs Bunny to do one cause WCW didnt do 'cartoon characters like them in New York'.

[RancidPunx]

Ok. Will try and keep this short(ish)

 

Below is the order in which i would spend the cash.

 

1. Would invest approx 3 million into production. Would improve the lighting, get rid of all the darkness such as the dark ring barriers, the dark canvas and give it such a brighter look and feel. I would hire a few outside TV consultants to get their input as to how the visually improve the product. This also would encompass getting getting making sure all the talent had new distinctive ring gear, that they looked their best. Would purchase HD cameras and profession video editors to make sure production looked as professional as possible.

 

2. Would "lock in" some key talent such as Davey Richards, The Briscoes. I would try and get as much of the current roster under some sort of a long term deal as possible. You can't build up guys if there is a possibility of them leaving. Would assume that 2 million would sort the key talent for a while.

 

3. Would sign a talent trading agreement with AAA. Would try and get as much of the best of their talent for tv. The latino market has proved invaluable to smackdown in years previous. Would try and get as many bilingual marketable stars up from mexico as possible. This would help with international distribution also. Cost 500k

 

4. Would sign a talent trading agreement with NJPW. The Japs typically liked to send promising young talent overseas to hone their craft. I would try and take advantage of this as best i could. The Japanese strong style would fit in nicely with the ROH brand.

The reason i would go after NJPW is that i could try and avail of their involvement of Yukes(videogame company) Would see if i could get a ROH game applied to an existing game engine. At worst they could get something developed as an app.

Also i would try and get the exclusive rights to distribute existing archive NJPW footage on DVD in europe and the US. I reckon there could be a market for cards from NJPW 90's heyday overdubbed with english commentary. I am guessing this would be a nice little revenue stream with not huge costs involved. Cost $2.5 million in total.

 

 

5. Talent acquisition. ROH is in a bit of a sticky spot for acquiring new talent. If free, would spend the bucks to get Kurt Angle on a per date worked basis. If someone like Randy Orton became available then would spend the cash also. However i can't really say whom from TNA/WWE i would for as realistically contracts prevent me from window shopping.

The route i would go with this, is that of acquiring MMA talent on a short term basis. Guys like Ken Shamrock are totally past it, but would get the likes of Ken, Tito Ortiz, Josh Barnett, Mark Coleman , Wes Sims( has wrestled on the indies and has strong connections to Bill Goldberg. Basically any MMA guy that has had a wrestling connection and has some name value. Reason being, MMA has taken a lot of the key demo from wrestling. Would get even guys like Bj Penn( big fan in his youth) or Brock Lesnar in just to sit in the front row to give ROH some exposure to MMA fans who might not know what ROH is all about. I would also raid the ex- OVW and FCW alumni of the past 4 years to see if there is any talent that was ultimately cut from the WWE's feeder divisions that could be salvaged....e.g Ken Doane. Johnny Jeter. My focus here would be on offering talent contracts on a per date worked basis, iPPV bonus and a bigger cut of their merchandise than in TNA and WWE. No guaranteed contracts and i would offer bonuses' relative to how the company has performed.

Would spend $3 Million on this.

 

- $11 million spent, $9 million left.

 

6. Advertising/Establishing a brand. I would take great effort to hit people over the head with what ROH actually is about. A strong style , no nonsense brand of pro wrestling that present wrestling as a "legitimate " contest. Obviously i would never try and pretend that it was real but would certainly do more to keep up that pre-tense. Would tweak the "Code of Honor" ethos that the company had initially going to give it a more official set of parameters that hopefully would appeal to the MMA audience. I would try and make sure that every wrestling fan (from smart fan to young mark) knew what ROH was and how and why its different from WWE. Even purchasing advertising on USA network/Spike might be considered. Would try and run commercials in between MMA. I would definitely target legit sports fans as market ROH as basically pro wrestling without the stupid shit. Hopefully if all the above steps had been implemented sucesfully then you should have a pretty decent product to show people. Cost = $3 million.

 

7. Would buy TV time nationally and internationally. TV production still seems to be pivotal to how wrestling companies sell PPV(No TNA jokes thank you !). I definitely think its worth pumping money into producing a decent weekly TV show. Obviously the cost of the show is the main sticking point here. In years previous Vince Mc Mahon offered to pay to have his product on TV. This would be the route i would go too. You obviously would have to cut your cloth to your measure by doing a few weeks tapings at a time and not going live etc. But if you can produce something decent without breaking the bank and hold onto the international distribution rights then i think this could be a winner. Internationally, i would go to the main areas such as china, south America, SE . Asia, Australis and NZ, and try and get my tv program on tv. Even if it meant giving it to some no-name network for a godawful time-slot, i would still take it on a 6 month contract. After 6 months then hopefully we should be able to negotiate a better deal. My tv show would be more or a glorified informercial for my ippv's and to hit the roh website , obviously with great wrestling thrown in. $4 Million.

 

8 . Merchandising. Would pump around $1 million into various merchandise for ROH stars. Hopefully all the above is done correctly you should have a brand that people feel attached to, a healthy roster that hopefully have had some exposure. A pretty decent market(if international TV has done its job) to sell the gear. Also would try and hawk existing dvds on the tv shows.

 

9. Promoting iPPV's. 500,000k to develop and promote the concept of iPPV. I think ROH are onto a winner here. They are possibly ahead of the curve with this but i can definitely see the gap between TV and the Internet being closed in the next 5 years. The costs in producing an iPPV are relatively cheap and you potentially have a huge market that can easily access your product. All looks good on paper but i would spend the cash on advertising both the actual wrestling cards and also how to actually purchase the PPV's. I would assume my audience is thick as shit and needs their handheld and walked through this process. If things were going on my favour i would consider offering a decent calibre card for free on iPPV just to get people into the process of how the whole thing works.

 

10. Hire Paul heyman as booker . 500,000k. I think this is long winded enough without my expanding too much on this one.

 

 

 

So thats my Brewsters Millions for ROH. It turned out to be a lot more long winded than i thought. I know that most of it is pie-in-the sky but its not meant to be a 100% realistic business plan. Hopefully i didnt talk too much shite and have stimulated your thinking somewhat.

 

Yours sincerely

Rancidpunx aged 30 and 2 months.

Currently unemployed.

[cokeorpepsi]

With ROH I would not worry too much about gaining talent more than likely putting a few mill aside to give guys what they are worth. D million spent if possible on either a lease on an arena or a new one built just for ROH - not too big but big enough that it could be rented out by other acts and entertainment mediums when not a show day. (An decent stage set would have to be built also much much better than shoddy Impact Zone)

 

The remaining funds would be invested heavilly on production/advertising and home/international house show events. This amount of money 20 mill would have to be used to slowly but surely make ROH turn profits against that investment. Oh yeah and I'd get CM Punk for playbyplay

[Richie Freebird]

Rancidpunx: easily post of the week.

 

I

[nate diggity]

I'd also maybe buy them a venue. Custom build an awesome place to run regularly, on top of their usual touring. Kit it out real nice. Almost an Impact zone kinda deal... only less theme park visitors, more real wrestling fans, and the added incentive of having to draw fans month to month.

And when you're not using it for wrestling, it can be a kids play park with slides and a ballpit.

[Vamp]

Would try and run commercials in between MMA. I would definitely target legit sports fans as market ROH as basically pro wrestling without the stupid shit.

 

I've seen this idea banded about before and I'm not sure where it comes from. I genuinely don't get it. MMA fans like MMA because its real, and I don't see why you'd attract them to a fake product that just pretends to be real. To me it just means that your wrestling product is going to come off second rate. I won't claim to know the direction wrestling should go in, because I really don't know, but pretending to be MMA doesn't seem the way to go to me.

 

I do think something could be made out of i-PPVs though. They're a brilliant idea. I'd become a You Tube sponser and give out some really good free stuff to encourage people that there's something worth paying for. I'd also, and this probably isn't going to be popular, try and go down the celebrity route. Not crappy celebrities, but ones who are in the mainstream news at the time. If there's a celebrity divorce getting a lot of attention I'd chuck a ton of money at both parties to try and persuade them into coming into the PPV, then run adverts for it all over the place. Sleazy, I know, but you might get some attention out of it. It'd have to actually be something that's got everyone talking about it though.

 

I'd have a proper episodic storylne written too, all planed out with mysteries and so forth. Try and get somethign which people might speculate about.

[Richie Freebird]

And when you're not using it for wrestling, it can be a kids play park with slides and a ballpit.

 

Fienstien isn

[RancidPunx]

Rancidpunx: easily post of the week.

 

 

Listen to me, I

[King Pitcos]

Would try and run commercials in between MMA. I would definitely target legit sports fans as market ROH as basically pro wrestling without the stupid shit.

 

I've seen this idea banded about before and I'm not sure where it comes from.

Meltzer, ultimately. It is a mental idea, though.