Impacts of illegal downloading of wrestling

[PowerButchi]

Hopefully they'll take Paypal.

[King Pitcos]

The problem won't be the geo-blocking, but paying for it. If it's not available in the UK at all, chances are you won't be able to pay for the subscription with a UK issued card.

It'd be a recurring card payment set up with WWE directly, wouldn't it, rather than being able to use Google Play Store balance? So buying US Google Play giftcards from a site like http://www.offgamers.com/buy/googleplaygiftcard.html would be no good.

 

There are certain apps that I can't download on my tablet, like Sons of Anarchy has one. It doesn't show up in searches in the Play Store app, and if I find its Play Store entry on the web, it says "not available in your region." I assume that if I sideloaded the .apk file and used something like Hola or a VPN, it'd work... But that's a free app. Is there traditionally any way around the country-locked credit card thing? There must be a website somewhere that sells those disposable top-uppable debit cards that poor people in the US use to buy things online?

 

Edit: Or an American friend or relative could sign up to the network and give us the login details.

[JNLister]

Those might work, though I don't know if it being a recurring payment would be a problem.

 

I'm wondering if WWE might just decide they won't launch it here until the current Sky deal runs out in the end of 2014, and then make sure the new deal explicitly acknowledges the existence of the WWE network.

[Benno]

I have massive doubts about the viability of this network being an online service but surely they'd be daft not to release it here as well as Canada, Germany, Australia etc. They can always do blackouts on problematic content like NXT and PPVs (obviously you'd need relevant price adjustments if we weren't getting PPVs.)

 

But yeah, for me with this network, the problem for me is the two extremes. There's the wrestling fan who would enjoy the network but isn't tech savvy enough to get it because it's only online- and there's the wrestling fans who are tech savvy but know they know they can see most of the Wrestlemanias etc on Youtube and every TV show they're after on torrent sites and the likes of Bollyrulez/WatchWrestling. Are there actually enough tech savy wrestling fans not as morally bankrupt as the likes of us posting in here?

[King Pitcos]

Downloading an app and subscribing isn't that hard. Netflix, Lovefilm, Spotify etc etc. These companies aren't making millions solely off people who work in IT departments.

[Benno]

Downloading an app and subscribing isn't that hard. Netflix, Lovefilm, Spotify etc etc. These companies aren't making millions solely off people who work in IT departments.

 

Right, but the sample size for people into their films/music is a thousand times larger than that of a niche product like wrestling..

[King Pitcos]

Yes, that's why WWE are offering pay-per-views on there as well as old content. They're going for as big a slice of the niche as possible. But the notion that you'd need a degree in computing to subscribe to the thing is as foundless as the notion that wrestling fans are all inbreds who can barely figure out how to press play on a VCR. It's not 1996 anymore, it's only mentals and the elderly who are scared to put their card details into the computer now. The rest of the world has moved on with iTunes and app stores and the like.