Good article. Interesting to think about this in an mma or tna context. Especially tna

http://adage.com/article/al-ries/exciti ... on/234145/

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Well, is ROH mimicking WWE? I'm sorry, and I like several guys at TNA, but I just don't see it happening. This would mean Dixie or her mother know something about retail marketing. And actually treat their wrestling product as such.

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Middle Aged Crazy, like Uncle Terry

That's what so frustrating. I always here about Dixie's business acumen and her background running other businesses, but she appears to have zero business sense whatsoever. I mean none. There's several articles out there with her as a "businesswoman" and how great she thinks that is as a minority business owner and all that. I think most of it is just exuberance of how "neat and exciting" it must be to have your own rasslin company and all that, rather than a legitimately run business in operation to make money. Just repeatedly terrible business decisions, over and over again and she learns nothing from her mistakes. Sometimes you swing and miss and lose money, I just think she's terrible as an executive. She's the very definition of a money mark. They don't charge for seats in Orlando, they do no ppv buys and not much marketing wise. All of their revenue comes from international distribution, which is ALL Jeff Jarrett.

As far as the article, almost everything pointed out in there applies to her business. What I took out of the article was when comparing #1 to #2, the company in the #2 position always tries to emulate #1 and fails. She's definitely guilty of this (moving to Mondays, etc) and should know better. Trying to copy the leader and do it better rarely works.

I also like:

1. Be the first brand in a new category, and then you are automatically the market leader. Now the job is to grow the brand as fast as possible until it achieves a leadership position in consumers' minds. That makes your brand almost impossible to overtake.

This is EXACTLY what UFC has done and TNA was never in the position to be (the first brand in a new category), so:

2. Be the opposite of the leader. You can't compete successfully with a leader by emulating what the leader does. You can only compete successfully with a leader by doing the opposite.

^ This is what I really took out of it. TNA was the opposite of the industry leader for a while. They had the 6 sided ring, x-division, wacky stip matches, (ultimate x) wrestling instead of Sports entertainment, great ppv's. TNA was originally a lot different than wwe and they were good for awhile. As soon as they tried to be like wwe they started sinking fast.

the other point was, "While McDonald's was expanding its menu, Burger King should have done just the opposite." I agree with this too. As wwe is doing these branded or theme shows, tna should cut back to a lot less than 12 ppvs per year. Make ppvs special again.

Then on the mma side, StrikeForce and Affiction killed themselves almost exactly as outlined in the article by trying to compete with #1.

My entire contention is that there's nothing wrong with being #2. The goal should be the bottom line to the investors and shareholders, not a fake ranking of being #1. Its like trending on twitter. I have heard Dixie or people within tna say "wait till we get on spike, then we'll beat vince", "wait until we get 2 hours", "wait until we get on Mondays", then we'll beat Vince. Why is Vince her target? Profitability should be her goal.

If you apply the logic in the article, they aren't (and can't be) the "first brand in a new category" so they need to be the opposite of Vince. They used to do that and TNA was great, but somewhere along the line Dixie decided she wanted to conquer the "King of Tawdry" and it all went to hell.

I don't think you can apply ROH to this as they don't really have any market share (not that TNA has much). With that said, you can tell ROH certainly gets it as far as how they are going to present the product (opposite of wwe) and they know they aren't directly competing with Vince.

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Actually, I don't know what kind of market share the Sinclair stations afford them. I think its a fair guess that they're under TNA. But, they aren't presenting a TNA product nor a WWE product. Who's their competition? Ohio Valley, Dragon Gate and the guys on the west coast.

While Dixie ran a marketing company before getting involved with TNA (and ultimately having Panda buy into it,) I have zero idea about how successful she was. I think its an instructive thing to remember she set up shop in TN, when the rest of Panda is in TX. Black Sheep? Spreading her wings? Both?

Dixie went back to Mondays with a WCW product. If it were 10 years ago and the WCW hard cores were still around, it might be compelling. But that crowd left. You're not bringing them back, especially when UFC provides what they want, with no soap opera bullshit.

TNA started sucking when they tried to get guys with "Q" ratings. Sting. Angle. Hardys. Rhino & the Dudleys. Hall. Probably, the last good extended angles were "Team Canada" and Awesome Kong destroys all comers.

I don't begrudge the 6-sided ring; it was a differentiating factor. Its a shame no one really figured out a way to leverage the thing's shape to give you a better/different match.

Yes, you're right: being number and making money is a lot better than killing yourself trying to match Vince.

I *do* think TNA's Monday Night thing was their making a last gasp effort to have the old WCW fans notice them and tune in. Because, seriously, what else does Hulk bring to the table? He brings in some press. Other than that, LOL, I would've *retired* him before he went to WCW. (And Bischoff? Nothing then; nothing now. And nothing for the AWA, too.)

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Middle Aged Crazy, like Uncle Terry

It looks like Spike is in 96.1 million homes and Sinclair is in 24% of US households. Not sure how the math works on that one. I do see them adding affiliates almost every week it seems. It seems like in every other Flair interview he says if Crockett would have stayed east of the Mississippi he'd still be in business today. I don't know about that, who does, but it gets back to the point of #1 vs #2. It would be interesting to see what would have happened had Crockett been content being #2 and printing $ at the same time. Instead the move to TX, the UWF, etc...I heard Dixie's company was a telemarketing company that didn't do too well. It's a shame, they have the timeslot, they're getting $ from Spike, built in fanbase, but they haven't learned from themselves. They need to stop thinking they are in competition with Vince. Vince's books are public and we can see the hundreds of millions of dollars they generate in revenue each year. They have a history of paying dividends and are worth over a half billion dollars. Dixie just cut back the quality of the food at catering and Steiner is ranting about plastic silverware. Its things like that tell me she doesn't get it, when she talks about "competing" with Vince. Reading those transcripts from the congressional hearings you can really get inside her head which is scary. Nice lady, just naive. It seems like she can learn a lot just reading the paper or watching the news, 2 things I'm not convinced she does. Just be #2 and kick ass at that.

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Yes. Both stats ignore whether people are actually watching their respective wrestling programs, so its a toss up. You (and I) expect TNAs got the superior ratings, but there's no firm evidence.

This is the flipside of the "let wrestlers run wrestling companies" argument. Eventually you need someone who merely thinks of the "product" think of what to do about competition, positioning, etc. I don't expect you get that from Bischoff, and you sure as hell don't get that from Hogan. On the other hand, Dixie "has" to say she's in a competition with WWE.

Cutting on the catering: penny wise, pound foolish. With the adjunct that you have to do the penny wise to placate the foolish.

Flair is somewhat right, but not really. Crockett wasn't a well-run company. How can you buy airplanes, move your offices to Dallas under the auspices that they film movies there, and not know you're blowing your wad? Oh yeah: it was the accountant's fault. Well, let's assume Crockett had a clue... he might have lasted as long as Memphis did. But he would have lost virtually everyone to Vince during that time.

This just in: Scott Steiner is a bit of an idiot. Tell the idiot to bring his own damned silverware.

My argument about ROH is this: you say TNA should be content to make their niche, and rake in the money. I'm saying ROH is doing that very thing, right now.

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Middle Aged Crazy, like Uncle Terry

I think ROH proved they get it with one of their early slogans, "We don't imitate, we innovate" That works for me. It seems like they have a good fit now with the mix of Sinclair guys, 1 booker not a committee, Cornette, Juster, etc. I don't think I want them to get any bigger, or see them at Allstate or a bigger building. Make $, put it back into the product. Hopefully more revenue means being able to retain guys rather than going into production, pyro, etc.

Lots of good Dixie in here. I like her response around 26:10 when asked if she'd sell to Vince. I pray she doesn't believe that. "I think we're just as capable as raising funds as they are." Vince is an industry titan (pun intended) who has buddies like Donald Trump, Dick Ebersol, Bonnie Hammer, has defeated the federal government in court and his wife could be a senator. Dixie still can't pay Jimmy Yang's $200 and she thinks she's capable of raising over a billion $? Like you said, I know she has to say some of that stuff and I agree 100%, but I'm starting to wonder if its one of those cases where she bullshits for so long she starts to believe it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fI0Y5u7QT9A

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Dixie has made many bad decisions, but I think telling Scott Steiner to bring his own knife to a taping would top them all.

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It would solve all sorts of problems...

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Middle Aged Crazy, like Uncle Terry