ITV World of Sport: Tapings postponed until July?

[BomberPat]

It might be a very poor TV show, but it was a very poor TV show with 900,000 viewers.

You can't compare that kind of audience exposure to shirt-arse promoters getting ideas above their station. It's perfectly reasonable to assume that you could translate those viewing figures into decent live attendance - there's a conversation to be had as to why that hadn't happened, and I'd place the blame squarely on the lack of decent strategy or local advertising. The fact that the TV show wasn't very good wouldn't even factor into that conversation for me.

[Lord-Mountevans]

16 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

It might be a very poor TV show, but it was a very poor TV show with 900,000 viewers.

You can't compare that kind of audience exposure to shirt-arse promoters getting ideas above their station. It's perfectly reasonable to assume that you could translate those viewing figures into decent live attendance - there's a conversation to be had as to why that hadn't happened, and I'd place the blame squarely on the lack of decent strategy or local advertising. The fact that the TV show wasn't very good wouldn't even factor into that conversation for me.

So by your rule a "Very good TV show" would not draw any better than a "Very bad TV show"?

Perhaps we should start a promotional rivalry? We go on tour booking Arena sized venues (we could even book the same venues to piss each other off) and wait for the tickets to fly off the shelves because of our fairly recent TV exposure.
The only stipulation i have to this "turf war" , is that i promote the Very Good TV show. Good luck with your crappy product! Perhaps you should also employ some of the goons responsible for WOS Wrestling too? That way you can wave goodbye to your wallet even quicker!

[IANdrewDiceClay]

Martin Goldsmith is the man behind the tours. He promoted SummerSlam 92 and the TNA tours, so has the unique thing of being the man who promoted both WWE and TNA's most attended (paid) shows. He has connections all over the place. So if he cant sell your tour out, there must simply be absolutely zero interest in this thing. This isnt a thing where they've not advertised well, so have to cancel. This is good old fashioned nobody giving a flying fuck about WOS wrestling. And why should they? The TV show was a horrendous failure. A show moved around to save them from being hammered in the ratings, and still ended up with 100,000 for the final episode.

[BomberPat]

47 minutes ago, Lord-Mountevans said:

So by your rule a "Very good TV show" would not draw any better than a "Very bad TV show"?

By my rule, very bad or very good are objective, and what matters is how many people are watching. I didn't get on with WOS at all - I went out of my way to watch the first episode, caught the second one in a pub, and caught episode seven or so because it happened to be on while I was in a hotel and had an hour to kill. Nothing about it made me feel compelled to go out of my way and watch any more.

But my experience isn't representative; if hundreds of thousands of people watched it - and they did - that's hundreds of thousands more people than watched any indie show going on that weekend, and it's hundreds of thousands of people that, with a solid advertising strategy, you should be able to convert a percentage of into ticket sales. But you need a joined up advertising strategy to ensure that a good portion of those people actually know the shows are happening in the first place, and I'm not convinced that's happened.

[WyattSheepMask]

It can’t be a shock that some dates are getting cancelled, and I wouldn’t be shocked if a couple more go the same way. I’m not buying this “logistical issues” reason either, I’m willing to bet it is down to shift knack-all tickets.

The show started with around about 1million viewers, granted there will have been seen some checking out through morbid curiosity more than anything else, and from there the figures went down and continued to do so until it ended with around 200,000, meaning it lost 80% of it’s audience. What little audience they had, they couldn’t keep, because for all the talk of the UK scene ‘thrieving’ - and that isn’t a knock at any promotion or performers in particular, I don’t for a second question that the majority of them work extremely hard - those viewing figures prove that wrestling just isn’t popular outside of a certain core audience

[Sheffbag]

i'd disagree slightly with that. Whilst wrestling has a core audience which would watch regardless, it also had an opportunity to picked up lapsed fans or even gain new ones. The issue i had with it as many people posted was the presentation of the product. I class myself as a wrestling fan, i can remember the old WOS production, watched WWF/E since just before WM2 and go to support my local promotions when ever i can, But i watched the 1st episode and then turned it off halfway through the 2nd as the editing just made it unwatchable.

The quick camera changes just made it not flow at all even for a fan who loves the sport so i'm not surprised that the casual fan or any newcomer would struggle to get into it

 

[Egg Shen]

A fair portion of that audience would have probably be homes where the parents would just leave ITV on the whole of an early Saturday evening to entertain the kids. Any idea of actual live shows they could attend probably never even crosses their minds, or if they are a into actual wrestling surely those same families would keep their coin and attend WWE shows a few months later because those WOS tickets wern't cheap.

[WyattSheepMask]

35 minutes ago, Sheffbag said:

i'd disagree slightly with that. Whilst wrestling has a core audience which would watch regardless, it also had an opportunity to picked up lapsed fans or even gain new ones. The issue i had with it as many people posted was the presentation of the product. I class myself as a wrestling fan, i can remember the old WOS production, watched WWF/E since just before WM2 and go to support my local promotions when ever i can, But i watched the 1st episode and then turned it off halfway through the 2nd as the editing just made it unwatchable.

The quick camera changes just made it not flow at all even for a fan who loves the sport so i'm not surprised that the casual fan or any newcomer would struggle to get into it

 

Completely agree on everything regarding the production of the show, it was fucking horrific from the outset, and that has been covered throughout this thread.

To your first point though, even if you include lapsed & new fans, they still only (and I use that term loosely) drew 1million, and that was after things like recording & ondemand were taken into account.

It never knew what it wanted to be. Which lapsed fans were they trying to bring back, People that were watching World of Sport in the 80s? And you do that by putting on a show that doesn’t resemble that old show in the slightest. And if they did go the other direction, imagine a youngster sitting down to watch 2 guys go for 8x3 minute Rounds, it would have died on it’s arse even quicker than it did. The whole thing had an indentity crisis because it was carrying the albatross of the World of Sport name around the whole time.

Your other set of lapsed fans are the ones that watched the Attitude Era, who were never going to be satisfied with WOS because no-one was getting called a slut or having their dick cut off.

It was doomed from the absolute beginning.

@Egg Shen - I bet they’ll be cheap in the week before the show, assuming it hasn’t been cancelled

[Fatty Facesitter]

4 hours ago, Your Fight Site said:

There’s a difference between wanting or aspiring to hold shows in larger venues

...Is there? Don't they mean the same thing? 

4 hours ago, Your Fight Site said:

and booking a large venue such as a 10,000-seat arena and thinking you’re going to fill those seats with paying fans. 

Maybe you didn't read the part of my post where I said I don't think they necessarily think that they're going to fill all the seats with paying fans. 

Again, I see no convincing argument that promotions shouldn't attempt to run shows at larger venues at some point or another if they can make a financially viable stab at it. Lots of factors need to come into play for it to even be a possibility in the first place and there's every chance you'll make a loss the first go round, but if a promoter can't aspire to hold his shows in big arenas and can only dream of town halls and leisure centres, what's the point of being in the business (or running a business in general) in the first place? 

[BomberPat]

I've talked about the show's identity crisis before, and I do think that was probably the biggest fault of the series. In terms of booking and presentation tropes it was too beholden to the WWE format (show opening with a promo, heel authority figures, etc), the "WOS" name was too unwieldy when (as far as I can recall) they never even said the words "World of Sport" in the entire series, the booking was too rushed and didn't leave enough intrigue week-to-week, and the overall presentation fell in a hinterland where it felt too Saturday Night ITV for a wrestling show and too wrestling to be Saturday Night ITV.

All of that aside, in the midst of it being on TV I worked shows where people randomly started chanting for Grado. I've had people in pubs want to talk to me about it and ask my thoughts on it, which doesn't happen for the WWE, and certainly doesn't happen for any indie promotion. It was definitely reaching people that wrestling doesn't normally reach, and was definitely on people's radar in a way that wrestling usually isn't.

Even at their lowest ebb, that's around 100,000 people of which even 1% should be translatable into ticket sales. With a decent advertising push behind it - anything from ITV pushing it on TV to Billy Basics grassroots work sticking up posters and handing out flyers - they absolutely could have sold enough to do a run of decent sized venues. And it's in that lack of advertising that it reminds me most of Five Star Wrestling; I was in Plymouth the day of a Five Star Wrestling show, and the only mention I saw of it anywhere was a headline on the University's intranet, because one of the wrestlers was University of Plymouth alumni - but the headline didn't mention the name of the promotion, the date or venue of the show, nor the wrestler's gimmick name.

[Your Fight Site]

1 hour ago, Fatty Facesitter said:

...Is there? Don't they mean the same thing?

Yes, that’s why they were separated with “or”. The comparison came after the “and” just before where you chopped my post.

[Tommy!]

I recorded the whole series and never watched more than 10 minutes because it was shite and I never cancelled series link. 

Translating ITV viewing figures to paying audiences isn't as clean cut as it seems, it's not like Crockett selling a house show run on a Saturday night TV slot to fans who are already going out the way to watch a wrestling show on TV. A large portion of the people tuning in want something to fill the gap between X-factor & tipping point that doesn't require any thought or effort to follow or something to keep the kids quiet while the spaghetti hoops are in the microwave. 

By BritWres standards the viewing figures are great but by itv standards they were shite. Take out people watching just because its on after the last show, then people happy to leave it on because it shuts the kids up and how many are left to think about buying tickets. Then how many of them would want to travel too far and pay the rates when there's likely a show advertising in the local leisure centre twice a year or ads on WWE TV which has been put on for much the same reasons as they left WOS on, because wrestling shuts the kids up for 15 minutes before the ADD hits and they move on to something else. 

It's been dumped on by the "smart" fans who, from what I see and hear, make up the travelling market to things like ICW & Progress who had a lauded regular showing too. Casual fans aren't going to travel and pay through the nose and your average "watch because it's on" aren't buying tickets. 

I remember getting tons of free tickets, good seats too, to the X-factor tour with Sam Bailey as winner at the NIA because sales were in the u-bend. That did an average of 9.5 million an episode and will have had the tour hyped through the shows. A show where the tour was pitched at the end of episode 6 of 10 and viewing was at a hight of 1 million and has all the other limitations to its presentation & marketing it being a flop is not a shock. 

Still, while trying to find the ratings for WOS per episode (I can't so if someone help me much love) it was nice to see @Big Benny HG quoted in the independent. 

[CavemanLynn]

It really shouldn't have been that hard to walk the line between WOS and modern style for the supposed best in the UK. Some solid chain into a signature technical spot, a snug strike or two for the grandads who insist it were real in their day, and save the bumps for the finish. But then it took human tree trunk Bulldog Junior a second rope power slam to put away 8 stone wet Will Osprey, and no, I'm out. As much as the show was cut to ribbons in the editing room and Shane is a screeching biro-bearded twit, maybe the best of British weren't ready for TV and the unforgiving eyes of casuals.

[Fatty Facesitter]

14 hours ago, Your Fight Site said:

Yes, that’s why they were separated with “or”. The comparison came after the “and” just before where you chopped my post.

How you can’t see that wanting/aspiring/desiring etc don’t mean the same thing is beyond comprehension, while you’re post was chopped up so I could further expand on your points. I digress; what then, in your opinion, should these promoters do in order to achieve success in running a bigger venue? Why is it a detriment to them to at least try? They won’t be expecting sellouts but does that mean they shouldn’t aim for big gates anyway if, as Pat rightly states, the advertising/promotional aspect is done right? 

[Your Fight Site]

1 hour ago, Fatty Facesitter said:

How you can’t see that wanting/aspiring/desiring etc don’t mean the same thing is beyond comprehension, while you’re post was chopped up so I could further expand on your points. I digress; what then, in your opinion, should these promoters do in order to achieve success in running a bigger venue? Why is it a detriment to them to at least try? They won’t be expecting sellouts but does that mean they shouldn’t aim for big gates anyway if, as Pat rightly states, the advertising/promotional aspect is done right? 

They are the same! I never said they weren’t! You’re the one that chopped the sentence up to fit an argument. Like I say, the comparison comes after the “and”. You’re arguing a completely invalid point.

if promoters want to run bigger venues then they need to build a brand. Prove their business and that there’s a market for their product. No one books an arena for their first show and draws a good house.

If not enough people know or enjoy your product, then you’re not going to fill a big venue. It’s not rocket science.

Companies like ICW and PROGRESS moved on to larger venues because they built a fan base and regularly sold out smaller venues with ease, meaning there was an increasing demand for their product.