AEW to WWE

[Meej81]

The librarians 

[TomJones233]

Cage. That dude has Vince written all over him.

[garynysmon]

1 hour ago, BomberPat said:

I'm not sure what the stats would be now, but less than ten years ago there was a survey that showed something like 2% of WWE viewers could name another wrestling promotion. Before you get into any sense of them "learning to work WWE style", or suggestions that Vince actively works to undermine talent he's paying large sums of money to sign, you have to factor that point in - someone coming in from WCW, AEW, TNA, NJPW, or anywhere else, is a nobody to the vast majority of people watching.

Notwithstanding WWE's market dominance, I've always been fascinated by such claims tbh and how the semantics of it work.

We've all heard stories of people like Flair and Kevin Nash wrestling for TNA every week and people coming up to them in airports and asking why they weren't on TV any more, but I wonder to what degree that's been the case?

I'm sure there are parts of the world where the only promotion that has TV is the WWE, but when you consider that even post-WCW both TNA and now AEW have had periods when they had over 1m regular cable viewers in the USA, how could that percentage possibly be?

Even 10 years ago RAW was doing 5m viewers compared to TNA's 1m or so (so approx 20%), and now  Dynamite is creeping up to about a half of RAW's audience. Even so, surely most WWE fans are now aware of AEW and TNA previously, even if they weren't watching.

 Can the crossover be so low?  

 

Edited December 14, 2020 by garynysmon

[The Cutting Edge]

3 minutes ago, TomJones233 said:

Cage. That dude has Vince written all over him.

Look wise yeah but he seems to only want to wrestle like he's in a computer game, smashing big moves without meaning. 

Dunno if he can be coached to work smarter or not.

[unfitfinlay]

17 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

I'm not sure what the stats would be now, but less than ten years ago there was a survey that showed something like 2% of WWE viewers could name another wrestling promotion. Before you get into any sense of them "learning to work WWE style", or suggestions that Vince actively works to undermine talent he's paying large sums of money to sign, you have to factor that point in - someone coming in from WCW, AEW, TNA, NJPW, or anywhere else, is a nobody to the vast majority of people watching.

You can't just throw them on TV as a done deal and have them walk straight into the main event, they need to be built to that position. That said, WWE's production quality and amount of TV coverage, is in theory good enough that they could accomplish that build within a few hours of someone debuting, and they often choose not to.

That's a great point.

It's also worth nothing that, from all accounts, WWE is booked for a target audience of one person: Vince McMahon and he is an aging workaholic who simply doesn't care about the world outside of WWE. He didn't know who Captain Jack Sparrow was but we expect him to know the best way to book Shinsuke Nakamura?

Plus, as I said in another thread, it's hard to claim that "Vince is bitter and sabotaging his own product" when the booking is shit for absolutely everyone. How come it's only bitterness when they misuse Goldberg or Sting but not Aleister Black, Rusev or Braun Strowman?

3 minutes ago, TomJones233 said:

Cage. That dude has Vince written all over him.

He's got "Suspended for breaching the Wellness Policy" written all over him.

[RedRooster]

5 minutes ago, TomJones233 said:

Cage. That dude has Vince written all over him.

I'm not sure he does. He's 6 feet tall, so in a WWE environment he wouldn't come across as being anywhere near as large as he does in AEW. 

[Merzbow]

Marko Stunt, in 5 years when Vince finally finds out what Fortnite is.

[DavidB6937]

6 minutes ago, Merzbow said:

Marko Stunt, in 5 years when Vince finally finds out what Fortnite is.

In 5 years? He'll probably be making a Duke Nukem reference by then.

[LaGoosh]

Cage previously had a development deal years ago but they sacked him. Doubt they have any interest these days.

[HarmonicGenerator]

13 minutes ago, garynysmon said:

Notwithstanding WWE's market dominance, I've always been fascinated by such claims tbh and how the semantics of it work.

We've all heard stories of people like Flair and Kevin Nash wrestling for TNA every week and people coming up to them in airports and asking why they weren't on TV any more, but I wonder to what degree that's been the case?

I'm sure there are parts of the world where the only promotion that has TV is the WWE, but when you consider that even post-WCW both TNA and now AEW have had periods when they had over 1m regular cable viewers in the USA, how could that percentage possibly be?

Even 10 years ago RAW was doing 5m viewers compared to TNA's 1m or so (so approx 20%), and now  Dynamite is creeping up to about a half of RAW's audience. Even so, surely most WWE fans are now aware of AEW and TNA previously, even if they weren't watching.

 Can the crossover be so low?  

 

With WWE I suppose you've got the addition of people who used to watch and don't anymore, with a dwindling number of recognisable names from when they did. They've still heard of WWF (it would be an F). They'll only know Jeff Hardy, Triple H and Edge and ask who else is still on it. When you've checked out from the one company you've heard of, chances of being aware of any other wrestling even existing must be small at best.

[BomberPat]

13 minutes ago, garynysmon said:

 Can the crossover be so low?  

I'd like to know the figures now, for sure - AEW has probably already made more of a dent in people's consciousness than TNA ever did, because they've got a much better marketing function and have picked up genuine mainstream press in a way that TNA have never managed. It used to be said, morbidly, that Vince's worst nightmare would be someone like Kurt Angle dying on TNA's watch and the headlines still reading "WWE Wrestler Dies". I don't think AEW are in that position at all.

In terms of getting circa 1m viewers; maybe that just accounts for the number of quote-unquote "wrestling fans" that can be generally expected to follow things online and keep up with multiple promotions. But they're still the minority, compared to the number of viewers that watch WWE and nothing else.

There's obviously an element of us being in the bubble as wrestling fans, but also being a few steps removed by watching from the UK - we're used to RAW being on at ungodly times, and even WWE having been something that we had to go out of our way to follow in any real sense, so our market self-selects for people more likely to be aware of other promotions and a wider wrestling world. I think what goes underappreciated is how many people in the US watch RAW on a Monday night because they've always watched wrestling on Monday nights - it's habit viewing, and they wouldn't go out of their way to find more or to follow it up online any more than your average Eastenders viewer would be on message boards reading behind the scenes gossip.

The gap has absolutely shrunk over the last decade, but I'd still say that a clear majority of WWE viewers don't watch any other wrestling, and that a large part of that majority are only notionally aware that other wrestling exists, if that. 

[simonworden]

14 hours ago, BomberPat said:

I'd like to know the figures now, for sure - AEW has probably already made more of a dent in people's consciousness than TNA ever did, because they've got a much better marketing function and have picked up genuine mainstream press in a way that TNA have never managed. It used to be said, morbidly, that Vince's worst nightmare would be someone like Kurt Angle dying on TNA's watch and the headlines still reading "WWE Wrestler Dies". I don't think AEW are in that position at all.

In terms of getting circa 1m viewers; maybe that just accounts for the number of quote-unquote "wrestling fans" that can be generally expected to follow things online and keep up with multiple promotions. But they're still the minority, compared to the number of viewers that watch WWE and nothing else.

There's obviously an element of us being in the bubble as wrestling fans, but also being a few steps removed by watching from the UK - we're used to RAW being on at ungodly times, and even WWE having been something that we had to go out of our way to follow in any real sense, so our market self-selects for people more likely to be aware of other promotions and a wider wrestling world. I think what goes underappreciated is how many people in the US watch RAW on a Monday night because they've always watched wrestling on Monday nights - it's habit viewing, and they wouldn't go out of their way to find more or to follow it up online any more than your average Eastenders viewer would be on message boards reading behind the scenes gossip.

The gap has absolutely shrunk over the last decade, but I'd still say that a clear majority of WWE viewers don't watch any other wrestling, and that a large part of that majority are only notionally aware that other wrestling exists, if that. 

I think a lot of the shrinking audience is partly down to the fact its and aging audience. How many of us now have full time work, partners, families and other commitments that come along over time. When we were younger it was our world. We've hung on to some extent but I'm sure most of us have reduced our viewing greatly over the years. The less interested switched off anytime in the past 10 to 15 years.

The companies are not attracting newer younger viewers as they need to be and right now if you are trying to attract kids from 8-15 who were born post glory days WWE then in theory it's a more level playing field. If promotions don't work out how to do this successfully then Covid being over won't matter as all the fans will be physically incapable of climbing arena steps due to age anyway making it pointless to use them. 

[Guest]

With the growth in social media, a lot more people will still see what guys are doing after they leave wwe than in the days where they would just disappear off tv 

[Carbomb]

23 hours ago, BomberPat said:

It used to be said, morbidly, that Vince's worst nightmare would be someone like Kurt Angle dying on TNA's watch and the headlines still reading "WWE Wrestler Dies". I don't think AEW are in that position at all.

I would argue that it's still a problem for him at the moment, because it would still reflect back on him, or be perceived to, if the headline simply read "Wrestler Dies". His marketing strategy has been that comprehensive and successful.

[wordsfromlee]

3 hours ago, Carbomb said:

I would argue that it's still a problem for him at the moment, because it would still reflect back on him, or be perceived to, if the headline simply read "Wrestler Dies". His marketing strategy has been that comprehensive and successful.

Agreed. Even if the wrestler was in a rival promotion, the article would still start with “former WWE wrestler...” rather than “AEW/Impact/etc wrestler...”, accompanied with a photo taken from their time in WWE. 
 

Even if they’d never been in WWE, they’d still be though of as one to non-fans who read the article. To them, all wrestling is WWF/E.