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Money left on the table


tiger_rick

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I still find it incredible that the WWF in the midst of their best year ever in 2000 did WrestleMania in Annaheim in front of 20k fans. Surely they should have done somewhere three times as big. What were they thinking?

Nearly as bad is Mania 15 which had a similar crowd in Philly. I give them more of a pass on that one in that it was possibly planned before they exploded in 1998 and it's not like you could do outdoors in the North East in spring. It's still a ton of money left n the table though. Imagine the gate and merch they'd have done in a dome or stadium for those two years. Baffling that it took until 17 to do it.

Thoughts? Other examples?

Edited by tiger_rick
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22 minutes ago, garynysmon said:

Especially seeing that they weren’t adverse to booking big stadiums, such as Royal Rumble 97 and that Raw at the Skydome.

They ran the Georgia Dome in October 1999 and it wasn't like business got any slower. I'm surprised booking or not they.didnt switch things around but then in 2000 wrestlemania felt like just another ppv infarct No Way Out and Backlash felt like bigger deals to me. 

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The mystery for me is after doing big houses in the Astro Dome, SkyDome and Safeco Field prior to making the obvious exception for MSG at Mania XX, why they had two more Manias in big cities but in Backlash arenas until Vince’s famous “I want to go back to stadiums (sic)” edict.

Although some of the stadium atmospheres have been shit and selfishly I wish they’d thought with their hearts rather than wallets for Mania XXX. I’d spent a few years thinking about going if it had been MSG and can you IMAGINE how a New York crowd of 20,000 diehards would have reacted to Cesaro’s big win, Lesnar pinning the Undertaker, Bryan winning the big one and their favourite racist coming home?

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While it seems odd on the face of it that WWE didn't/wouldn't have wanted to book a larger stadium for those 'Mania's such as 15, 16, 21 and 22, considering the merch money that wasn't grabbed, I'm going to guess financially they didn't make out much differently. 

I believe the bigger stadium shows come with higher rent and significantly lower ticket prices than the smaller arenas, particularly if those arenas are in major cities. My guess is they made more money for 'Mania XX at the gate than 'Mania 19. The merch is the difference, and how that matches up to the difference in rent between stadiums and arenas. 

Who knows how correct this is, maybe it's way off the mark, but it would be interesting if Brandon Thurston, David Bixenspan or someone like that had some info comparing this type of thing. 

Edited by WeeAl
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22 minutes ago, WeeAl said:

While it seems odd on the face of it that WWE didn't/wouldn't have wanted to book a larger stadium for those 'Mania's such as 15, 16, 21 and 22, considering the merch money that wasn't grabbed, I'm going to guess financially they didn't make out much differently. 

I believe the bigger stadium shows come with higher rent and significantly lower ticket prices than the smaller arenas, particularly if those arenas are in major cities. My guess is they made more money for 'Mania XX at the gate than 'Mania 19. The merch is the difference, and how that matches up to the difference in rent between stadiums and arenas. 

Who knows how correct this is, maybe it's way off the mark, but it would be interesting if Brandon Thurston, David Bixenspan or someone like that had some info comparing this type of thing. 

Plus, even now I think they still offer a heavy amount of comps for locals to fill seats, so 15 years or so back before Mania became the proper, proper  international tourist event when they went back in to the big stadiums in ‘07 and ‘08 that make sense. 

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Don't cities actually have to make bids for WWE now for Wrestlemania now? 50,000+ wrestling fans coming from outside the city (and a large number from internationally) for 3-5 days staying in hotels, going to the bars, restaurants, local shops, using services and tourist attractions injects millions in the local economy. I imagine most the local costs for WWE to hold Wrestlemania are subsidized massively.

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A fuckton of money was left on the table by never coming together with WCW in 98/99 to do some real interpromotional stuff. Imagine Austin/Goldberg at the top of a big When Worlds Collide type card with McMahon and Bischoff in the opposing corners. They were both World Champs at the same time in Summer ‘98 as well. Would’ve done unholy business.

Thinking about it - I can’t remember ever hearing of overtures being made in either direction to do interpromotional stuff when both companies were peaking, which just seems insane. Like I understand why it never happened, but I find it hard to believe no one ever raised the possibility? And yet in the thousands of hours of podcasting and shoot interviews we’ve had about that period I’ve never heard a peep along those lines. You’d think there’d be some ‘JJ reached out about having Sting appear at SummerSlam but got told to fuck off’ type stories in the ether.

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1 minute ago, Pinc said:

A fuckton of money was left on the table by never coming together with WCW in 98/99 to do some real interpromotional stuff. Imagine Austin/Goldberg at the top of a big When Worlds Collide type card with McMahon and Bischoff in the opposing corners. They were both World Champs at the same time in Summer ‘98 as well. Would’ve done unholy business.

Thinking about it - I can’t remember ever hearing of overtures being made in either direction to do interpromotional stuff when both companies were peaking, which just seems insane. Like I understand why it never happened, but I find it hard to believe no one ever raised the possibility? And yet in the thousands of hours of podcasting and shoot interviews we’ve had about that period I’ve never heard a peep along those lines. You’d think there’d be some ‘JJ reached out about having Sting appear at SummerSlam but got told to fuck off’ type stories in the ether.

Egos. Who would win in an Austin/Goldberg bout in 1998?
 

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2 minutes ago, TomJones233 said:

Egos. Who would win in an Austin/Goldberg bout in 1998?
 

Have Vince double cross Austin to give Goldy a tainted victory and further the Austin/McMahon storyline. Or just do a double count out/schmozz if you need to.

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Mania is/was like the superbowl in recent years where cities would compete to land the event in the hope of fleecing the tens of thousands of fans that pour into the city because of it. I think the whole axxess/hof in the week beforehand has a lot to do with that, it created a proper week long event for fans as opposed to them just flying in on the Friday night before Mania  or whatever. I don't really remember those things being hyped by WWE back in the late 90's/00's as much as they were pre-covid. First time I can remember Axxess being on TV was during the run up to Mania 17.

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11 hours ago, tiger_rick said:

I still find it incredible that the WWF in the midst of their best year ever in 2000 did WrestleMania in Annaheim in front of 20k fans. Surely they should have done somewhere three times as big. What were they thinking?

Nearly as bad is Mania 15 which had a similar crowd in Philly. I give them more of a pass on that one in that it was possibly planned before they exploded in 1998 and it's not like you could do outdoors in the North East in spring. It's still a ton of money left n the table though. Imagine the gate and merch they'd have done in a dome or stadium for those two years. Baffling that it took until 17 to do it.

Thoughts? Other examples?

WCW not touring the UK during the red hot years of 1997-1999, and then when they finally did in 2000, trying to burn the town by presenting The Mamalukes v The Harris Brothers as the main event of a sold out house show (over 16k) at the MEN in Manchester.  

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20 minutes ago, bbabba said:

WCW not touring the UK during the red hot years of 1997-1999, and then when they finally did in 2000, trying to burn the town by presenting The Mamalukes v The Harris Brothers as the main event of a sold out house show (over 16k) at the MEN in Manchester.  

Definitely. Having Hogan, Savage, Sting, Flair, Goldberg, Nash et al coming over for tours in that period would have definitely benefitted the company financially. Esp as the UK was and is a huge market for the WWE. 

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WCW was a disaster for things like that. Not doing regular shows in Canada when they got Bret on the roster was another financial blunder. If they had managed to do something useful with him creatively in early '98 and frequented the large Canadian markets, they would have made out pretty well. Politics didn't allow it I guess. 

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