AEW Double or Nothing

[IANdrewDiceClay]

If NXT was a regular promotion without the McMahon's backing, it would have went under within 6 months. They lose millions per year. Its basically a fantasy booking promotion, using your favourite indy stars.

[UK Kat Von D]

8 minutes ago, IANdrewDiceClay said:

If NXT was a regular promotion without the McMahon's backing, it would have went under within 6 months. They lose millions per year. Its basically a fantasy booking promotion, using your favourite indy stars.

Losing millions never stopped TNA from existing. If they were a regular promotion they would have a stacked roster now without WWE call ups.

Does the money lost include performance centre and all the guys under contract in training? 

[WyattSheepMask]

No “almost guaranteed to get tickets” presales this time, first come first served basis

[tiger_rick]

I'm not sure what the relevance of that is. It's not a regular promotion, it's a feeder. A loss leader. No football academy could pay the vast wages of staff and facilities on the couple of hundred weirdos who turn out to watch reserve and youth games. That's not the point though. The rewards for that investment come later.

[JNLister]

The actual promotion side of NXT doesn't necessarily lose that much, it's more the costs of the performance center. If they're regularly getting 1-2,000 on house show tours and aren't paying most of the crew big six-figure salaries, the shows themselves shouldn't be big money losers.

Plus they don't get credited with any TV revenue even though they produce a weekly show and specials that are among the most popular programming on the Network, which brings in $200 million or so a year. Even if you say just five percent of Network subscribers are getting it primarily/solely for NXT and would cancel otherwise, that's $10 million a year, which is more than NXT's on-paper losses.

[UK Kat Von D]

Yeah saying NXT loses money is pretty weird when

A) it isn’t actually there to make money

2. It doesn’t have all the usual ways to make money

 

If they had the spike deal that TNA had they’d have been far more successful in that same slot.

[PunkStep]

It doesn't have to make money, not every aspect of a business is there to make money directly- but as long as they can see a benefit to the business in other areas then it's a worthwhile cost.

Seeing as it serves a purpose by preparing a constant stream of 'new' wrestlers for their main roster, providing a buzz around them to generate interest in the WWE product overall and having a state-of-the-art performance centre to help all of this whilst (and look great form a PR perspective), then it's an affordable cost as they are making ridiculous amounts of money through their multiple revenue streams.

[BomberPat]

22 hours ago, tiger_rick said:

Now NXT is the "third brand", they could almost do with a new OVW underneath NXT so they can try and produce their own guys. Whatever they are doing with the PC and NXT, as impressive as both are, doesn't seem to work because the people who are starring in NXT are still the finds from the indies and Japan.

I think the "new OVW" is effectively NXT house shows and the Performance Center. As NXT has grown into more of a pseudo-indie supershow and less of a developmental territory, it's meant the spotlight has gone (for the most part) to the indie darlings, but they're still laying the groundwork with the homegrown talent at the PC and on house shows, you just don't see it on TV so much. And in a lot of ways that's probably better - would Cena, Batista, Orton and Lesnar have been the standouts they were from OVW if we'd all been watching them on OVW TV every week before they ever made it to the WWF?

[tiger_rick]

24 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

would Cena, Batista, Orton and Lesnar have been the standouts they were from OVW if we'd all been watching them on OVW TV every week before they ever made it to the WWF?

For three of them, I'd say yes. No doubt about it. Orton, Lesnar and Cena were too good not to have made it. Batista needed a bit of luck and the right push so got there in the end. Funny thing is, three of them came in with little explanation or character, like the guys now but made a completely new character and became stars. Obviously Cena was floundering until he became Eminem, Randy was doing nothing until the injury and the little news updates and Batista was the "Deacon". Lesnar was the only one who hit the ground running and has never really stopped. You'd think they'd learn from that. It's an incredible lesson.

There's another in the use of Batista (and Orton to a much lesser extent) in a stable that allowed him to learn and be protected at the same. When it came time to break him out, he was ready.

[FUM]

I miss the "who the fuck was that guy" element you used to get from a Lesnar type turning up. 

WWE have lost the skill to give folk a reason to tune in the following week and things like that were why you tuned in cause you wanted to know who that beast was. When was the last time they had a cliffhanger where you had to tune in next week to find out what the fuck had gone on? Nexus? 

[Kamaras-Tash]

Back on to AEW, I just noticed that the Fyter Fest show is free to watch in America on BRLive so you would assume/hope that the full show will be on ITV4 as well has anyone seen anything about that?

[Carbomb]

43 minutes ago, tiger_rick said:

For three of them, I'd say yes. No doubt about it. Orton, Lesnar and Cena were too good not to have made it. Batista needed a bit of luck and the right push so got there in the end. Funny thing is, three of them came in with little explanation or character, like the guys now but made a completely new character and became stars. Obviously Cena was floundering until he became Eminem, Randy was doing nothing until the injury and the little news updates and Batista was the "Deacon". Lesnar was the only one who hit the ground running and has never really stopped. You'd think they'd learn from that. It's an incredible lesson.

There's another in the use of Batista (and Orton to a much lesser extent) in a stable that allowed him to learn and be protected at the same. When it came time to break him out, he was ready.

I'd say it's because back then the lower card was their NXT at the time, their means to create, build, develop and establish characters. And because it was on the main programme (and Heat and Velocity were also tied in with them rather on separate schedules), it meant that the whole audience rather than a small portion got to see their stories.

Going from how people are talking about things on here, it doesn't sound to me like NXT's the problem - it's Creative's ability to properly manage the transition from NXT to main roster, and possibly it's because they've effectively "lost" the lower card by hiving it off to NXT, at least in terms of the wider viewing audience. They're basically trying to debut successful NXT guys as midcarders or uppermidcarders straight away, because they're already too big for a lower card.

Not saying they need to go back to how things were - just that they need to figure out how best to use this new system, because at present it's not as effective as the old one for creating stars in a similar vein to those four. But that's largely down to the simple fact that the old system was developed over time and had a lot of testing. NXT is still comparatively new, and they need to start ironing out the creases and developing a new approach to making it work with their current model, instead of treating it like simply a continuation of the old model.

Edited June 12, 2019 by Carbomb

[UK Kat Von D]

You only have to watch American Alpha against Revival to make it blindingly obvious that NXT is doing its job but WWE doesn’t know how to carry that momentum over. 

Would it really be that hard to do a month of video packages covering someone’s time in NXT before chucking them out the main roster? Mini series for call ups would make the world of difference, probably get more network subscribers by advertising NXT and add something fun to watch on main shows. If they wanna commit to it properly they could do 15 minutes half way through Raw and give the crowd an intermission  

[Yakashi]

A month of video packages wiuldnt make any difference if they still 50/50 everyone. It would just be more "hey, here's this guy. Hes going to win and then lose and then win and then lose but we cant figure out why hes not over"

[Carbomb]

5 minutes ago, UK Kat Von D said:

You only have to watch American Alpha against Revival to make it blindingly obvious that NXT is doing its job but WWE doesn’t know how to carry that momentum over. 

Would it really be that hard to do a month of video packages covering someone’s time in NXT before chucking them out the main roster? Mini series for call ups would make the world of difference, probably get more network subscribers by advertising NXT and add something fun to watch on main shows. If they wanna commit to it properly they could do 15 minutes half way through Raw and give the crowd an intermission  

That's exactly what I'd do. Build someone up every week with a brief, digestible vignette covering their story before debuting them in the last week of the month. "NXT Rookie Of The Month" or something like that.

Of course, should really only do that with truly stand-out talent you really want to push. There's also a need for an actual lower-card and jobbers, so maybe just call up the less stand-out talent via jobber matches or battle royals or multi-man tags or something.