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WrestleMania 29 from 4/7 at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, NJ, is now officially the single biggest money event in the history of pro wrestling.
WWE sent out a press release listing the revenue for the event as $72 million. The number is a combination of the live gate, merchandise and gross worldwide PPV revenue paid by consumers. That number would be up from $67 million from last year’s show in Miami, with the big differences being approximately $3.1 million more in live gate and the $5 increase in the purchase price. No merchandise numbers were released for either year, but with live attendance up from 64,000 to 72,000, merchandise most likely increased by a few hundred thousand dollars.
The release listed no PPV numbers, but WWE told Variety that the show has topped 1 million buys and could reach 1.2 million.
To put into perspective, of that $67 million last year, WWE itself took in $36.2 million, with the rest going to cable companies, a number at the time which was far above the record $29 million set the year before, which was significantly up from previous records.
With price increases, over the past few years, Mania has gone from a show doing $20-25 million to $40 million in just a few years.
Because most of the increase in revenue this year was from the live gate, which they don’t split, of the $5 million increase, WWE would likely take in about $4.2 million of that, so they would take in about $40.4 million overall for the night. Even with the expense of both Dwayne Johnson and Brock Lesnar on the same show, the increase in revenue should have made up for it. It should be noted with union costs in New Jersey, that this was likely a significantly more expensive show to produce than last year’s show in Miami. The revenue is way up from even two years ago, when they were doing in the $29 million range, having to do more with price increases at the live show from being in New York and being in a bigger stadium.
Even though The Rock’s two appearances and Brock Lesnar’s two previous appearances did not increase revenue at the level of the expenses, that those were part of stories that built for Mania. At Mania, more than made up the difference.
WWE’s monthly business charts will not list a preliminary number for WrestleMania until late May. If the figures they are quoting hold up, given the $5 increase per buy, if this year’s show does the same percentage of HD buys as last year, the show would figure to do in the range of 1.15 million buys worldwide. If the percentage of HD buys is up, and for both UFC and WWE in recent months, that has been the case as compared with a year earlier, the number would probably be close to 1.10 million at this point.
Original numbers can vary greatly from final numbers. Generally, the numbers will increase. Last year at this point figured to be 1,220,000 and the final number ended up 1,219,000, or almost identical. There was also an example in 2008 where the first announced figure was 1,058,000 and the final figure ended up 1,041,000. In 2011, the original announced number of 1,059,000 ended up finishing at 1,124,000. The WWE last year claimed 1.3 million even with the original estimate of 1.22 million based on the idea that, with late buys, it could pass the 1.25 million threshold to allow an estimate of 1.3 million. Similarly this year, if the number is 1.10 million at this point, or slightly more, they can claim with late buys they could hit 1,151,000 buys and rounding that up is the 1.2 million “probably reach” number.
A key WWE official was claiming within the business world that the show did 750,000 buys in North America, which would be a small increase over last year, if that number ends up being accurate. It would be the second largest domestic total of the year, trailing the Georges St-Pierre vs. Nick Diaz fight three weeks earlier. It will greatly trail the Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Robert Guerrero fight this coming weekend, which will almost certainly be the biggest PPV event for the entire year.
Cable industry sources had listed lower estimates on the North American numbers. In recent years, the split has been 60/40, which at 1.1 million would be about a 660,000 and 440,000 breakdown. So it appears this show did more by percentage domestically than in the past. Some of that may be due to being in New York. For almost every PPV show, the market where the show takes place in shows a marked increase over normal numbers for buys because of all the local publicity. When that’s a market the size of New York, as compared to a Miami or a Phoenix, or an Atlanta, that can make a significant difference in domestic numbers. The GSP vs. Diaz fight, which was not in New York, nor featured fighters tied to New York, did more than 90,000 buys between the New York City metro area and upstate New York alone. One would think, this being a local show, that it would do at least in the same range, if not bigger.
It should be noted that the decline in estimated buys from last year was more than offset by the $5 extra per order price, as PPV revenue would appear to be up about $1.5 million from last year, of which, WWE will see about half.
These numbers don’t include PPVs purchased on the Internet, as that is considered web site revenue and not live event revenue. PPVs ordered on the Internet were up 33% from last year, which has more to do with familiarity of people ordering, but even so, on a worldwide basis, that’s probably in the ballpark of 18,000 total buys.
When it comes to total buys, at worst, the show will end up in fifth place in history, trailing the shows in 2007, 2012, 2011 and 2005. Most likely it will beat 2005 and 2011, and finish third all-time worldwide and fourth or fifth all-time domestic. The show has to be considered a huge success, but just the idea of WrestleMania in the New York market in 2013 guaranteed success as far as business went.
This would make the three-year Rock/Cena series end up with No. 2 through No. 4 on the all-time PPV list, making it the biggest money program in pro wrestling history. Obviously, between the ability to charge more for tickets, and worldwide PPV, there are a whole lot of things working in their favor when it comes to that statement, and you can argue it’s not the hottest program ever. My feeling is still the third year completed the story in the way it was going to be completed, and just in doing so, that hurt the heat for the third show because you couldn’t very well sell tons of hatred and they end up with Rock putting Cena over and shaking his hand.
As far as next year goes, New Orleans is a fun tourist city and the show will bring a ton of people in for the week. Will they be able to keep the ticket prices at the level of New York and produce a near-record gate? I guess we’ll see when ticket prices are announced if they are going to try. The show, and the week, will be successful for years to come. But New York was a big part of it being over the top and record breaking this year.
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Raw on 4/29 did a 3.06 rating and 4.28 million viewers. This is probably going to be normal level for the show over the next few months. It was down slightly from last week, but last week was up slightly due to Undertaker wrestling. Raw was the highest rated show on cable. The last hour went against the Oklahoma City Thunder vs. Houston Rockets NBA playoff game (3.06 rating; 3.80 million viewers). The first two hours went against the Chicago Bulls vs. Brooklyn Nets game (2.10 rating; 2.63 million viewers). Major League Baseball on ESPN did 939,000 viewers.
Raw did a 2.3 in Male teens (down 12% from last week); 2.6 in Males 18-49 (same as last week); 0.5 in Girl teens (down 58%) and 1.2 in Women 18-49 (up 20%). The audience was 69.2% male.
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Smackdown on 4/26 did a 1.96 rating and 2.75 million viewers for the show headlined by Undertaker vs. Dean Ambrose. The viewership was up from the prior week, but it was going to be up given all the people watching news coverage from the Boston area on 4/19. The number was good given it went against both the second day of the NFL draft (2.46 million viewers) on ESPN 2 and an NBA playoff game on ESPN (2.89 million viewers). Overall the show finished 5th for the night on cable.
Impact on 4/25 did a 0.98 rating and 1.23 million viewers. The audience was the second lowest so far this year, behind only the 4/11 show. But this time there was a valid excuse and really, doing this rating I’d consider a positive given all the talk about the NFL draft. The draft did 6.20 million viewers on ESPN and 1.52 million on the NFL Network. There were also another 2.13 million watching the NBA playoffs, all head-to-head.
The show did a 0.71 in Males 18-34 and 0.75 in Males 35-49. So once again it got killed with males over 35, which is the prime audience watching the draft.
Once again, it was a poor first hour, which has been consistent with daylight savings time. In the segment-by- segment, the Bully Ray in-ring promo gained 13,000 viewers. Tara vs. Taryn Terrell and Rob Terry vs. Jessie Godderz gained 51,000 viewers. Kazarian & Christopher Daniels trying to recruit Bobby Roode lost 38,000 viewers. The Chavo Guerrero Jr. & Hernandez tag team title match against Roode & Austin Aries gained 176,000 viewers, but it also came at 9 p.m. when they always have the big bump. The Matt Morgan and Hulk Hogan in-ring segment gained 201,000 viewers in a segment that usually doesn’t show big growth, so that was significant. Velvet Sky vs. Mickie James for the Knockouts title lost 88,000 viewers. And the Hogan-Bully Ray in-ring with Aces and 8s and Sting cleaning house gained 175,000 viewers and was the highest rated segment of the show, doing a 1.22.
Main Event on 4/24 did a 0.9 rating and1.39 million viewers.
Saturday Morning Slam on 4/20 did a 0.7 rating and 1.06 million viewers.
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A documentary on the history of Jim Crockett Promotions, which will be produced by Highspots.com, raised $16,000 in a kickstarter fund-raising campaign.
WWE
The company is apparently doing an about-face on their long-time thoughts on NXT. NXT right now airs on Xbox, which is a very limited audience, as well as in Canada and overseas. They pulled it from TV in Florida, which made no sense given they are running live events in the area and without TV, often drawing less than 100 fans. Multiple sources say that there is interest in putting NXT on the air in the U.S. in the fall. One source said that they are in talks about it starting on Syfy, although the station at this point is speculative. I’m surprised Syfy would want a second wrestling show, particularly when the old NXT show was doing below the station average and ended up being canceled a few years back. There is also the idea to bring matches from NXT to the touring brands and bill them as NXT matches, to give the developmental wrestlers experience at working before larger WWE crowds. For years, the idea of developmental television is that you have television on the local market to get the personalities over locally and try and help draw a little so they perform before at least a few fans when they go on the road, but you don’t want the national audience seeing green guys or guys with different gimmicks than they would be using. Plus, the idea is when you introduce new characters to the main roster you want them to be new characters. The flip side now is that television has become the main revenue source as WWE’s philosophy is to put as many hours on television as they can, get paid for it, and that’s where the money is made. They are paying for NXT tapings either way because it’s a necessary part of grooming talent, and the show airs overseas and on Hulu plus already. The open nights are Tuesdays, Thursdays or Saturdays (since I don’t think you’d want a show on Sunday night because of PPVs). NXT would be used as something similar to what ECW was used for at the end of its TV run, where you introduce the new talent, and have a sprinkling of stars from the main roster.
Cena is working on a bruised Achilles heel. They are saying the injury took place on the 4/23 house show in Nottingham when he did a tables match with Ryback. Because of the injury, the rest of the European tour was changed where Kane & Bryan vs. Langston & Ziggler and Cena vs. Ryback, combined as Cena & Kane & Bryan vs. Ryback & Langston & Ziggler. To make up for the lost match, they had Ziggler and Bryan work double-duty, doing a world title match early in the show and then coming back for the trios match. Cena has been limping. He did work on Raw, and even did his usual run to the ring, but he was running to the ring awkwardly.
They’ve been pushing the idea of The Shield taking out Undertaker hard on television. They had Kane going for revenge on both Raw and Smackdown this week. It’s pretty clear they would be building for something with Undertaker and The Shield. I don’t think it’s for Extreme Rules since the original idea was a tag title match with Kane & Bryan vs. The Shield, which was to be a title change when the match was originally scheduled for Mania. Plus, with Lesnar already on Extreme Rules, it really doesn’t make sense to put Undertaker on a show with a low ceiling. It makes more sense to bring him back for SummerSlam. I just didn’t think the power bomb on the table was strong enough as a sell to wait until Mania. Plus, even as big as they played it up on TV, it wasn’t played up nearly strong enough for a Mania angle nearly a year in the making.
Michael Bay said that what he said about Dwayne Johnson wrestling last week was meant as a joke, later writing, “Wrestling fans, it was a joke said on Entertainment Tonight–with a laugh. You can see the clip for yourselves. The most important person to see the on-air joke was Dwayne. I love seeing The Rock wrestle. I hope he wrestles 10 more years. I joked on air because Dwayne was not at our L.A. premiere due to his injury.” .
For what it’s worth, very few in the company believe Rock is done with wrestling because they still plug his twitter stuff every week on TV and pushed so strong his movie box office from the past week. I was told if they thought he was done, they would never do that. I don’t believe he’s done in the sense that I expect him to continue to have a working relationship in some form with WWE for a long time, maybe forever, as far as making appearances on television from time-to-time. But I’m not sure of him doing another match, although within the company, they believe once October rolls around, he’ll want to do that. WWE had the annual stockholders meeting on 4/26, and when the question came up regarding Rock being done as a wrestler, Vince McMahon blew it off like there’s no way that was the case. The reports are Vince McMahon believes Rock vs. Lesnar is still the Mania main event, with the idea of shooting the angle several months down the line, perhaps in October when they do the Hell in a Cell PPV in Miami.
Rogers Cable in Canada officially took over The Score on 5/1. As one of the changes made, Raw is being moved live on Monday nights instead of on a 15 minute delay (which would allow them to edit something out in the days when they frequently had offensive programming and it just became a tradition). It’s not a big deal, except for Canadians who want to vote in polls live or go on the app during the commercial break and it’s all screwed up for them.
There wasn’t much news at the stockholders meeting past them pushing that revenues and profits are going to rise astronomically once they get the network off the ground. They still didn’t announce a start date. The people working on the network were given the fall as a target date. If they don’t announce a time frame at the investors conference this week, I don’t see it being the fall. They were pushing their social media numbers and that ratings were up. Nothing significant came out of the questioning, which had things like asking if they were going to do an Undertaker feature film (No) or about Randy Savage in the Hall of Fame.
WWE has inked a deal with Yahoo! which appears to be replacement for its deal with You Tube which expired at the end of the one year contract and wasn’t renewed. They will be producing pre-shows before all Raw episodes and the PPV shows (similar to what they just started doing), as well as do two weekly television shows, air old footage and do occasional broadcasts of special live events. The new WWE Yahoo! station is expected to launch this summer.
The target date for Punk’s return was 5/27 for the Raw show in Calgary, but right now there is no definitive date. He was advertised for all Raw house shows in June, but now has been pulled from that advertising.
Lesnar will be on the 5/6 Raw from Roanoke. Heyman returns with him.
Regarding the deal mentioned last week with Punk and Mark Coleman at the 4/13 UFC show in Las Vegas, Coleman was really sorry about what happened. He contacted us and said he was only trying to work on his image and was playing around, and had nothing but respect for Punk, saying Punk was his favorite WWE performer.
Mattel’s WWE action figures are now the No. 1 action figure property in the U.S.
The “Total Divas” TV show will be produced by Bunim-Murray, who are some of the kings of reality TV (“Real World,” “Road Rules, “Keeping Up with The Kardashians”). The show was described to me as “kind of scripted,” as most of the major reality shows are. Whether this airs or not I don’t know, but for the Divas show, they did air when the Bellas and Naomi and Cameron were told they were pulled from WrestleMania. Rhodes was the one who was really hot about it. They’ve been airing commercials for the show on all their programming. It’s clearly all about the Bella Twins, as in 90%. But even more than what I was told when the show was first announced, it’s very clear who the stars are. At one point in another lifetime when Paul Heyman was trying to find a lifeline for ECW, he was in contact with them about an ECW reality show.
This is the update on Extreme Rules on 5/19 in St. Louis. HHH vs. Lesnar is the main event as a cage match. Because it’s Extreme Rules, there should be a stip added to Cena vs. Ryback for the WWE title, even if it’s just the no rules type of thing. Ziggler vs. Del Rio vs. Swagger is now a ladder match for the world title. Nothing else is official, but they are still pushing the directions of Kane & Bryan vs. The Shield for the tag titles, Sheamus vs. Henry, Orton vs. Show and Kaitlyn vs. A.J. for the Divas title.
Miz is scheduled back this coming week after filming a Christmas season Bounty Hunter movie for ABC Family where he was one of the three main characters.
Surprisingly, there is a full house show schedule this coming week. Usually after the long European tours, they give the talent the next weekend off until television.
Mysterio is targeting the summer for a return.
One thing should be noted from the issue two weeks ago with the Bruno Sammartino Madison Square Garden records. During most of Sammartino’s run as champion, children under the age of 14 were banned from attending shows at MSG, so that would probably make a significant difference when it comes to shows that at least came close to selling out. Kids not being allowed would also mean some parents wouldn’t go because they weren’t taking their kids.
On TV, they noted that Kingston was a father for the first time.
There is a difference when it comes to Smackdown tapings that would go largely unnoticed. Because of the WWE app, matches on Smackdown are done live in real time. When they tape on Tuesday, if there is a 3:00 commercial break, when they break for the commercial at the arena, they tape 3:00 and play it on the app. Before, they would tape maybe 30-45 seconds. With usually two matches per show, that means maybe five minutes of more live wrestling time at a taping, usually with the best matches on the taping.
Ryder’s new look, dropping the headband, the old haircut and the sunglasses, is an attempt to change his character. The thing is, to change his character, if that’s at all possible for him to really do, he’d have to drop the, “Woo, Woo, You Know It,” which is the most popular thing about his old character.
_________________ Drop In wrote: I'm picturing a 12 year old Bob Loblaw bitching out a Randy Savage Wrestling Buddy for botching his finisher. Also envisioning Bob Loblaw getting bitched at for lighting the living room table on fire for said finisher.
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... well except the fact he's going to be on your TV every week for some considerable time to come )"
