Google Trends and Wrestlenomics

[Chris B]

Been listening to the Wrestlenomics podcast on and off recently - it's really interesting to look more into the financial aspect of the wrestling business. If you haven't listened to it, it's pretty in-depth in places, and looks into the financial reports and other information it can get. It's mainly from WWE, but not solely. One thing the host has done at times is look at Google information as an occasional measure of where audience interest and value is. Obviously, there are measurements like how much they get paid, how many people tune in for them, and how much merch they sell, but there's still some useful (and surprising) information in there. So, generally, this topic is for some of this information - the financial stuff, the contract stuff, etc. 

But I also thought I'd take a look at a few Google Trends over the last year for various wrestlers and see what gained people's interest, and in some cases why. And figured it might be something others would possibly enjoy for some of the things they like. Partly, it's not bad as a measure of relative popularity. (I'm not ruling out that I might find this far more interesting than everyone else, so this might be a bust topic).

The way Google Trends works is to show you a comparison in interest - so 100 is the most anyone was interested in that person, and the rest is how close they come to that the rest of the time. So a one-off spike means there was likely something major happened that gained a lot of interest. And it shows you week by week - if you go to the tool, you can check specific weeks.

As a quick example, let's look at, Cody Rhodes. He's obviously one of the bigger names in AEW, but what's interesting to me is when people search for him and why. You can see, towards the end of the year, his numbers are WAY up on normal - which coincides with his time on the Go Big show. It really shows how much mainstream attention things like this get (and why it's a good idea for AEW to do this kind of cross-promotional stuff). That big, big spike at the start of the year? At first, I thought it was Revolution, but it's actually the week after that - it's the week where Jake Roberts cut that debut promo against him.

 

 

Now, where it gets interesting is when you compare multiple wrestlers against each other. This can begin to give you an idea both of spikes and of general popularity. So, to compare a few different people in AEW - Jon Moxley, Chris Jericho, Cody Rhodes and Kenny Omega.  You can pretty much see when Revolution happened at the start of the year, and Jon Moxley winning the AEW championship was pretty much the biggest interest point people have had all year. Title wins and big events tend to lead to that. It's also now shows comparative data, with the averages - showing that Moxley and Jericho are their two biggest guys. Omega was the lowest, but winning the title meant a lot of people were searching for him.

 

However, it's interesting to see just what a big difference there is between WWE names and anyone else, especially when you have an event like Wrestlemania in the mix. It totally resets the scale - outside of AEW's biggest names, everyone else would effectively flatline. So I kept Jon Moxley as a comparison, but added Drew McIntyre, Roman Reigns and John Cena.  Drew's overall a bigger search engine draw than anyone in AEW, but a lot of that Wrestlemania - without that, it'd be a lot closer between the two of them. That said, it shows just what a big deal Roman Reigns is for WWE these days - if they have a genuine star, he's it. His biggest spike was at Summerslam for his return (outside of Wrestlemania, which changes all the results, but it's interesting there were so many people searching for him for a show he wasn't even at. However, you can definitely see why they'd do anything to bring John Cena back. He's still the biggest star they have associated with him - and that massive spike in October? That's when Cena got married - anything that hits the mainstream news coverage makes for a lot of searches. I found that one interesting, because I'm not sure if that even got picked up by most wrestling fans, but it was a big deal elsewhere.

 

 

That said, the biggest search point of the year pretty much flatlines everything else. The sad death of Brodie Lee was the biggest wrestling news story of the year, and gained a lot of mainstream attention (as it's a subject rather than a strict search term, it'll also bring in associated terms, so probably covers searches for Luke Harper as well). 

 

 

I thought this might be interesting. I thought it might also be fun if anyone else suggests their own trends info, and sees when, say, most people were searching for Adam Cole or Jungle Boy or whoever. Again, while it's far from a perfect measure of popularity, it's an interesting one. 

[Chris B]

Rereading that this morning, I was a bit misleading on one point. I said 'what a difference there was between WWE names and everyone else'. By 'names', I don't mean 'anyone in WWE', I mean their biggest names. Taking two of their mid/upper-carders and comparing them with some AEW names means a much closer mix. So, Kenny Omega, Kevin Owens, Orange Cassidy, Big E and Jungle Boy shows a much closer comparison. Cassidy gets a nice spike for his match with Pac, which is bigger than anything Big E has done, but the average interest in Big E is higher overall, particularly around Rumble time.  Jungle Boy is at the bottom of the pack, but he's still in the conversation.

 

[air_raid]

Forgive me, but looking at graphs just makes me think we’ve just got enough time for a quick look at the Currency Cat.

[Your Fight Site]

Can we re-open the “Set your mind to ‘blown’” thread, please…?

[IronSheik]

Interesting stuff. 

If CM Punk joins AEW it'll be interesting to see him impact.

[Vamp]

I wonder to what extent "casual" fan interest (if such a thing exists anymore) impacts the numbers around WrestleMania. Namely if people are searching to find out why Roman Reigns isn't there or who Drew McIntyre is. 

Edit: I know Drew's been around forever but if you only pay attention once a year he's not necessarily someone you'd remember until now. 

Edited February 17, 2021 by Vamp

[boshealecta]

Love stuff like this!!

[Chris B]

1 hour ago, Vamp said:

I wonder to what extent "casual" fan interest (if such a thing exists anymore) impacts the numbers around WrestleMania. Namely if people are searching to find out why Roman Reigns isn't there or who Drew McIntyre is. 

Edit: I know Drew's been around forever but if you only pay attention once a year he's not necessarily someone you'd remember until now. 

That's exactly what I think happens. Lapsed viewers and people who were fans from years ago are still likely to check what happens at Wrestlemania, and google a name they don't recognise. So I don't think it's lot of WWE fans going 'Did Drew McIntyre Win?' - I think it's lots of people seeing people talking about Drew McIntyre winning and going '...who?'. And I'm not saying that in a bad way.

It's also, probably, people searching for youtube etc of the latest news - not looking to watch Dynamite, but looking to see how Kenny Omega won. The spikes in this are entirely about casual interest (and also, it's why it's interesting how much bigger in casual terms the 'bigger' names are).

 

The latest Wrestlenomics podcast was making an interesting point. They compared year-on-year ratings on cable generally with wrestling ratings. We might look at Raw's ratings as disastrous, but they're falling slower than the average cable viewership, which means the value could actually be increasing. Compared to average cable fall, Dynamite and Impact are doing best at the moment. WWE is falling from a consumer viewpoint, but it's continuing to grow from  a business-to-business side. There's also this article about them putting raises and promotions on hold (which is also on the podcast).

https://wrestlenomics.com/2021/02/16/wwe-employee-raises-and-promotions-put-on-hold-as-shares-stagnate/