Wrestling's fanbase at its lowest ever level?

[simonworden]

It's prob harder than ever to get a real idea of the size of the fan base to be honest. Also its much harder to define a fan. In the past you had two options essentially switch it on and watch it through or don't and then you missed it, if your mates mentioned something happened then you knew you had missed out. These days it's so easy to watch something at a click of a button. I can watch the bits of Raw I want to on Youtube and save myself 2 hours 45 minutes in the process. I still consider myself a fan but I choose what I watch. 

I do wonder how many people are exposed to the product through 'clicks' and watching 5 minute videos, I do know of plenty of old fans who watch things because they pop up on social media or youtube feeds and curiosity gets the better of them. Perhaps the new business model is getting those 'clicks' to be something people pay for, reminding people the Rumble is coming up for example, getting them to watch highlights and paying for the network for a month or two to watch it. The latest clip of The Fiend has 1.3M views already in 24 hours, that's a great number if they can convert it to something monetary wise.

Broadcasters want WWE because they know generally its an almost guaranteed number of people that will watch the advertisements.  WWE have to keep that up to what they promised which is what they should be worried about now, however TV in my opinion will eventually only be used to create the 5-10 awesome clips most viewers take the time to watch each week, those watching the TV are going to be the die hard fans, those with nothing else to watch and channel hoppers I guess. WWE just need to make sure enough of them stay watching to keep the average quarterly or yearly ratings up. I imagine even they know that a few 'special Raw's and the run up to Mania will suffice in doing this though. 

If we take young people for example, I meet a lot of younger teenagers as a teacher and i've noticed that a few years ago they were very into TV shows like 'The Walking Dead', 'Game of Thrones' and even things like 'X Factor' or Korean dramas, taking the time to watch them on TV. Now however they all have some form of interactive screen which expands what they watch but reduces the time they spend watching each clip. Besides that they spend a large proportion of the screen time playing games over watching things. It made me think the games are really even only for hardcore fans these days, no wrestling offerings really appeal to kids do they? Some form of snappy online multiplayer game would go down a treat but any incarnations I can recall are terrible or too gimmicky to be a real wrestling game.

[BomberPat]

In my experience, younger kids tend to love the idea of wrestling if they've ever been exposed to it, disproportionate to how much they actually watch. One of my nephews is seven years old, with a John Cena poster on his wall, and last weekend all he wanted to talk to me about was playing at "wrestling" with his mates - which was clearly a mixture of him recounting an actual play-fight, and telling tall tales about what he did to "win". His dad doesn't have Sky, and hates wrestling, and I don't think his mum has Sky either. So his actual access to wrestling is extremely limited, but the idea of it is enough of a cultural touchstone to fill his brain with ideas about it. I'm pretty sure I was similar at his age - when I think back, the extent of my wrestling obsession was completely out of proportion to the amount of wrestling I watched, or wrestling-related content I had access to. Anecdotally, I know plenty of other kids - children of friends', etc. - that are in a similar situation.

If there's a lapse, it seems to be mostly with teenagers. Wrestling isn't "cool", but nor is it at the Marvel/Star Wars level of something that can be considered "geeky" but acceptable, or somehow be seen as a badge of counter-culture despite being one of the largest media properties in the world. As someone involved in the "family-friendly" kind of wrestling show, I'd say teenagers are our biggest blind spot - we get young kids and families, and we get adult fans, but teenagers are too cool for it. They're not young enough to get caught up in it all and believe what's going on, but nor are they old enough to allow themselves to be suspend their disbelief. They're at an age where they'd be embarrassed to be seen enjoying it.