The aging of wrestling fans

[blueminister]

The indie boom cultivated a new kind of fan -- which was reflective of larger cultural trends and in no way an exclusive phenomenon to wrestling -- but it didn't bring in more fans. I'm not sure any form of pro wrestling has brought in new fans or substantially increased wrestling's audience for a long time (with New Japan regaining its footing being a sort of exception that proves the rule.)

[Matt D]

The comic parallels are interesting and I think a lot of it is about canon and the barriers, but I'm not sure how. I know when I got into comics, I loved the idea that there was this whole universe I could learn about of all these stories that mattered and counted. I know when I got into wrestling, it was first with WWF but I got a bunch of the 1990 WCW trading cards and it was this whole new world I didn't know about and it was exciting to me and i wanted to know everything about it. I don't see that so much anymore, maybe because there's just so much available now that you can dip into a lot about a lot of things instead of everything about one thing?

I know what my 19 year old does and how he absorbs things. He'll watch two dozen youtube videos on people explaining some old aspect of Marvel comics or who Adam Warlock is and why he might show up in the next Guardians of the Galaxy movie but he wouldn't go back and read the comics. And he'll dive right into something else. A lot of what he spent his time on in the last decade was something like Minecraft or other games he plays with people where they can play the same game year in and year out, or a bunch of different anime where he either goes through one series and then moves right to a different one that's completely unconnected, or he rewatches/rereads the same things over and over again because they're familiar and comfortable and he doesn't need new content.

Kids today have infinite content. They don't have to be beggars. They are choosers and more than that, so much of what they have are not the actual content itself but more personal remixed versions where they can interface with someone playing/watching/discussing it instead of doing it themselves.

[joeg]

34 minutes ago, blueminister said:

Some variation of this has been said, maybe by yourself, in a couple of other threads and I can't help but think that it's a counterfactual. Wrestling has done more to reach out to women and minorities in the last five years than at any time I've been aware of pro wrestling. That this hasn't lead to any sort of new wave of politically-satisfactory commercial success and that the audience has continued to shrink is just something people need to deal with. The hackneyed narrative that they're leaving money on the table not marketing to [marginalized group] needs to be put to bed, as wrestling's problems are much bigger.

The thing I love about this board is that if you say something you're expected to back it up with evidence... I've laid out my evidence in other threads. To summarize- there hasn't been a minority pushed as a legit top guy on US TV since The Rock and Booker T. That's true. And it has been a long time since there was a handsome, young, whitemeat babyface in a top spot to appeal to a female audience. Also true. Because of this every company that has had a major TV deal in the last 20 years has left money on the table. Provide your counter argument.  

[joeg]

8 minutes ago, Matt D said:

Kids today have infinite content. 

Bingo.... They aren't just fighting for TV ratings against the other wrestling company the way it was when I was growing up. You are fighting for attention with everything else on TV. Everything else available on every single streaming service. AND everything available on the internet. They got to do better than a Bad Bunny cameo. 

[blueminister]

25 minutes ago, joeg said:

The thing I love about this board is that if you say something you're expected to back it up with evidence... I've laid out my evidence in other threads. To summarize- there hasn't been a minority pushed as a legit top guy on US TV since The Rock and Booker T. That's true. And it has been a long time since there was a handsome, young, whitemeat babyface in a top spot to appeal to a female audience. Also true. Because of this every company that has had a major TV deal in the last 20 years has left money on the table. Provide your counter argument.  

I'm no longer a regular watcher, but from what I gather no one is genuinely pushed as the "top guy" as the term was understood. And "top guy" is an arbitrary metric, anyway -- I would say WCW in the 90s was making a sincere (if inconsistent) effort to expand their audience by promoting the cruiserweight division even though no cruiserweights were promoted as the "top guy". If you're waiting on someone to get a Cena-level push before you can check the box, you're going to be waiting an awfully long time.

[joeg]

9 minutes ago, blueminister said:

I'm no longer a regular watcher, but from what I gather no one is genuinely pushed as the "top guy" as the term was understood. And "top guy" is an arbitrary metric, anyway -- I would say WCW in the 90s was making a sincere (if inconsistent) effort to expand their audience by promoting the cruiserweight division even though no cruiserweights were promoted as the "top guy". If you're waiting on someone to get a Cena-level push before you can check the box, you're going to be waiting an awfully long time.

So your argument has changed from I'm wrong to they aren't actually doing anything to appeal to any audience at all? That I would agree with. 

[blueminister]

2 minutes ago, joeg said:

So your argument has changed from I'm wrong to they aren't actually doing anything to appeal to any audience at all? That I would agree with. 

No, I think your reasoning is arbitrary and seems designed to move the goalposts impossibly high. I have an especially hard time following your "pushing the right kind of male as the top wrestler = appealing to women / unprecedented expansion of the women's division = not appealing to women" logic, at least from what seems to be a progressive political perspective. And nothing less than a JYD push for Lashley would seem to qualify as a meaningful effort by the WWE to appeal to black audiences.

[Big Pete]

I see this more as a conversation about message boards and how youth culture interacts online as opposed to appealing to that teen-young adult demographic. Message boards are a completely archaic format that's only going to appeal to a niche audience who are either rusted on or they're just incredibly passionate. Otherwise young people are going to flock to new platforms where they can make their mark and hang out with their friends or people they can relate to.

I still think there are young fans out there who enjoy talking Pro Wrestling, but they're on Twitter, Reddit, Discord etc.

One positive has been the rise of video essays. There's a lot of content creators on youtube who are producing really well put together pieces on past shows that a younger audience can appreciate. As times goes on and generations become more tech savvy, I believe a lot of history will be preserved and there will be more discussions around these older figures and promotions.

 

[Loss]

I think Allan (who posts as cheapshot here) does a great service when he posts historical GIFs. I swear, there are always at least some people who are surprised that wrestling before the 90s featured moves other than headlocks! But it serves as a great teaser, and even if only a few want to dig in more, that's still a few who do!

[joeg]

@blueministerLOL I don't know if you are trolling or what. Coming to a place called prowrestlingONLY and trying to make things political with the most apolitical person on the board. Its got nothing to do with progressive politics. It got everything to do with old school wrestling/boxing promotion philosophy i.e. Vince Sr, Bill Watts, Bob Arum. Its having Bruno and Pedro as the champions in New York. Its having JYD as your top babyface in New Orleans. Its bringing in Mil Mascaras to pop attendance for a spot show in Houston. Its Golden Boy scheduling a Canelo fight every Cinco De Mayo. Its Top Rank having Mickey Conlan fight at Madison Square Garden every St. Paddy's Day. Get the fuck out of here with that political bullshit. 

I look around and see a very monolithic fanbase that continues to dwindle in size while becoming more and more passionate. The fanbase 25 years ago was incredibly diverse, exponentially greater in quantity, and far less obsessive. My worry is that in another 25 years the DVDR/PWO types will be the only fans left, and 25 years after that there will be no fans as we will have all died off. They aren't drawing young people. They aren't drawing minorities. They aren't drawing women. This is a trend over the last 15 to 20 years. Is it because nobody in the Royal Rumble was under 35? Is it because nobody with a legit shot of winning the Rumble or the Elimination Chamber was a minority? Is it because none of them are a young good looking whitemeat babyface? When AEW only has skinny nerdy white guys in their 30s top and the the other wrestling show is mostly guys over 40, well then yeah no duh the industry's fan base is going to be exactly that. Its not progressivism its common sense. Its why Bill Watts tried so fucking hard to find the next JYD. Its why Vince Sr. changed Terry Boulder's name to Hulk Hogan to appeal to an Irish fanbase as they were running Boston Garden more often. This isn't rocket science. The biggest matches this year are probably Edge vs Roman Reigns and Omega vs Moxley in a deathmatch. That means nobody is even trying to expand their fanbase past the absolute diehards and appeal to a wider audience. To steal a cliche from politics since you made this political, its all about turning out the base instead of casting a wide net. Its been that way for a long time and that is the definition of leaving money on the table and its hurt the product in the US for a long time. 

[El-P]

FWIW, Meltz has mentioned time and time again that before COVID hit, pro-wrestling was drawing more than it had in a longtime, only WWE was less popular. 

[overbooked]

Could you argue that wrestling has always skewed towards older fans, and that the mid-80s and late-90s booms were the exceptions rather than the rule when it comes to younger fans?

I also wonder if actually there's a greater incentive for companies to cultivate older fans. They often have more disposable income. If they want to go to a show there's a good chance they will buy tickets and merch for their families too, and they are (perhaps) more appealing to advertisers? They are also a steadier income stream than younger fans latching on to a "fad", where you might get a boom, but will then almost certainly see a dip later on.

 

[Clayton Jones]

7 hours ago, Big Pete said:

I see this more as a conversation about message boards and how youth culture interacts online as opposed to appealing to that teen-young adult demographic. Message boards are a completely archaic format that's only going to appeal to a niche audience who are either rusted on or they're just incredibly passionate. Otherwise young people are going to flock to new platforms where they can make their mark and hang out with their friends or people they can relate to.

I still think there are young fans out there who enjoy talking Pro Wrestling, but they're on Twitter, Reddit, Discord etc.

One positive has been the rise of video essays. There's a lot of content creators on youtube who are producing really well put together pieces on past shows that a younger audience can appreciate. As times goes on and generations become more tech savvy, I believe a lot of history will be preserved and there will be more discussions around these older figures and promotions.

 

I agree with all of this. I think these topics are all very interesting ones. I don't think "wrestling is losing young fans" is an interesting topic or even true. Indie crowds were thriving, young, and more diverse than ever before the pandemic, at least based anecdotally on what I watch. If you are engaged on reddit and Instagram (I am) and I'm assuming Twitter (I'm not) you'll find being an older voice you're often drowned out by younger fans who were hooked as kids by the Lesnar/Cena/Rollins match and such.

And I miss message board conversation as the primary mode of fan interaction online. It lends itself much more to the archivists, the amateur historians, the fans who just want to dig and dig. But I think the era where that fan was the primary tastemaker or curator for hardcore fans has come and gone. That element is still here but it's a bit more like seeking out a wizard on a hill to pass down knowledge these days.

[Loss]

I don't think "wrestling is losing young fans" is an interesting topic or even true.

It's not really a matter of opinion, though. Television ratings in 18-49 tell the story. The average WWE viewer is now in their 50s.

[RingoPlaysDrums]

I do think it's an interesting topic but surely it is up for debate if we're using television ratings as the only metric. We know that younger people don't tend to watch television in the same way that older generations do. I'm 31 and haven't watched WWE on TV for years (for a number of different reasons) but I still follow the product. I know others around my age who are the same. How many younger people than me there are following wrestling/WWE I don't know but I wouldn't expect to find them from TV ratings figures. What other evidence is there that the average WWE fan is in their 50s? 

[Loss]

There isn't any other evidence, but I'm not sure other evidence matters either. Wrestling is entirely a television business now. They sell content to distributors. The #2 company in the U.S. doesn't even run house shows, unfortunately.

[RingoPlaysDrums]

I see - so in that case what we'd really be discussing is that the average age of WWE's television audience has gone up. Which shouldn't really be news to anyone as it is presumably the case for just about every TV show. I'd be interested to hear more about who is accessing WWE content on YouTube, Hulu, the Network, social media etc. though. 

[Loss]

It's the average age of the television audience, but that also means it's the average age of the audience. The only wrestling audience that exists now is the television audience, so if television viewers are aging, the wrestling fan is aging. That's my point. Their social media engagement is not meaningless, but it also doesn't do anything to drive big profits, so it doesn't matter a ton unless it's translating to people tuning in as a result of what they see on social media.

[blueminister]

12 hours ago, joeg said:

@blueministerLOL I don't know if you are trolling or what. Coming to a place called prowrestlingONLY and trying to make things political with the most apolitical person on the board. Its got nothing to do with progressive politics. It got everything to do with old school wrestling/boxing promotion philosophy i.e. Vince Sr, Bill Watts, Bob Arum. Its having Bruno and Pedro as the champions in New York. Its having JYD as your top babyface in New Orleans. Its bringing in Mil Mascaras to pop attendance for a spot show in Houston. Its Golden Boy scheduling a Canelo fight every Cinco De Mayo. Its Top Rank having Mickey Conlan fight at Madison Square Garden every St. Paddy's Day. Get the fuck out of here with that political bullshit. 

I look around and see a very monolithic fanbase that continues to dwindle in size while becoming more and more passionate. The fanbase 25 years ago was incredibly diverse, exponentially greater in quantity, and far less obsessive. My worry is that in another 25 years the DVDR/PWO types will be the only fans left, and 25 years after that there will be no fans as we will have all died off. They aren't drawing young people. They aren't drawing minorities. They aren't drawing women. This is a trend over the last 15 to 20 years. Is it because nobody in the Royal Rumble was under 35? Is it because nobody with a legit shot of winning the Rumble or the Elimination Chamber was a minority? Is it because none of them are a young good looking whitemeat babyface? When AEW only has skinny nerdy white guys in their 30s top and the the other wrestling show is mostly guys over 40, well then yeah no duh the industry's fan base is going to be exactly that. Its not progressivism its common sense. Its why Bill Watts tried so fucking hard to find the next JYD. Its why Vince Sr. changed Terry Boulder's name to Hulk Hogan to appeal to an Irish fanbase as they were running Boston Garden more often. This isn't rocket science. The biggest matches this year are probably Edge vs Roman Reigns and Omega vs Moxley in a deathmatch. That means nobody is even trying to expand their fanbase past the absolute diehards and appeal to a wider audience. To steal a cliche from politics since you made this political, its all about turning out the base instead of casting a wide net. Its been that way for a long time and that is the definition of leaving money on the table and its hurt the product in the US for a long time. 

This post is all over the place, but: Pedro was never the "top guy". Mascaras was never the "top guy" (except in magazines and probably lucha promotions I never followed.) Only a handful of wrestlers in history have received a push comparable to JYD. What you're demanding is mega-pushes but what you're citing is strategic promotional and booking practices, pandering if you want to be cynical about it. This is very much beside the point of whether or not WWE has made efforts to diversify their roster and appeal to a more diversified potential fanbase, which they unquestionably have. WWE's problem is that -- for the time being -- they can rely on old super-consumer geeks as a crutch to keep from acknowledging painful questions about their production and creative practices. I.E., they can appeal to whatever untapped demo they like, but you'd have to be some sort of masochistic obsessive to watch their garbage TV.

People of Mexican, Phillipino, Samoan and Japanese descent/nationality have won the Royal Rumble in the last ten years. That's almost half. And now women get their own Royal Rumble, something that was unthinkable just a few years ago! It's all very equitable and no one cares.

[DMJ]

I know I'm poking the hornet' nest here, but I'd also add that The New Day, taken as a whole act, are definitely within the top 3-4 pushed babyface acts of the past decade. I'd love to see the stats, but I'm guessing that, beneath Cena and maybe Reigns and Wyatt, they've probably been among the top merch movers in the company for that same time period. If you're looking for the modern day JYD, I think they fit the bill. Tag wrestling just doesn't headline WWE shows, but minute for minute, they've gotten as much airtime as anyone.

Also, as others have pointed out, saying no minority has been pushed as a "top guy" seems to overlook Rey Mysterio (and, though his run was much briefer, Eddie Guerrero), who may have been second fiddle to Cena or The Undertaker or DX for much of his run and may have been underappreciated by Vince himself, but we're still talking about Rey friggin' Mysterio. Dude's a mega star in the world of pro-wrestling, though I guess you could always argue that he should've been promoted even more.

The WWE also tried to put the machine behind Alberto Del Rio multiple times. It didn't pan out. Bobby Lashley is also a "What If" guy who got a pretty big push in 07' but, as usual with Vince, once things went sour, the company - up until seemingly 3 weeks ago - was not interested in giving him another major run. Finally, Sasha Banks. Has she gotten the level of promotion and push as Charlotte Flair? No, but she's definitely one notch below (especially if you consider that Becky's run as The Man was under a year).

I'm not trying to defend the WWE in terms of diversity, though I know it sounds like I am. I loathe the company's history of marginalization as much as anyone. I think its telling how they never really promoted the Bellas - arguably the most pushed female performers on the roster for a time - as being of Latin/Hispanic descent. The same is true of Bayley today. I'm not saying that any of them should've or should be waving Mexican flags during their entrance, but especially in the case of the Bellas, I do think their heritage was downplayed for racially-motivated reasons. I think they downplayed Batista's Filipino heritage in a similar fashion.

I'm just trying to point out that claiming the WWE hasn't promoted any non-white performer as a "top guy" in the past 15 years is just not accurate if you include The New Day, Rey Mysterio, and Sasha Banks and then also include the failed push of Del Rio and other non-white stars like Reigns, Batista, Bayley, and the Bellas who are definitely minorities but are not often included in the conversation because the WWE has almost gone out of their way (needlessly, in my mind) to make them more "palatable" to white audiences by downplaying their race. Still, the point stands, over the past 15 years, the company has consistently seemed more interested in trying to push a Jack Swagger or Ryback than a Big E or Kofi or, in the women's division, a Lacey Evans over an Ember Moon.

[Sean Reedy]

Brandon Thurston on Twitter - Among males 13-24, WWE had more unique viewers (8.3M) in the U.S. on YouTube and Facebook than SportsCenter (6.3M) or ESPN (6.3M), from Feb-Dec 2020, according to Tubular Labs. Among U.S. males 25-44, SportsCenter (20.7M) and ESPN  (18.2M) lead WWE (13.7M).

https://twitter.com/BrandonThurston/status/1366066006268014594

[funkdoc]

There is a pro wrestling that’s pulling in young fans now, but it’s not actually pro wrestling: it’s vtubers.

For the unfamiliar, vtubers (short for “Virtual Youtubers”) are people who do live streams and videos in the guise of a fictional character, using motion-tracking software so the character will mimic their movements and facial expressions. The concept originated from Japan, so most vtubers use anime character designs and tend to be anime/manga nerds themselves.

One vtuber agency in particular, Hololive, has grown enormously over the past year+ because they saw the potential they had with the English-speaking audience and ran with it.  They have around 10 members who’ve surpassed 1 million Youtube subscribers to this point, with one of their English vtubers already at over 2 million in less than 6 months.

I call vtubers the pro wrestling for this generation because it’s also an art form that leans on gimmicks and kayfabe mixed with the performer’s real self.  Interestingly the biggest stars in this world are overwhelmingly women - the concept provides some protection from doxing, which is a far greater threat to women than men online, and gives them the freedom to talk about more personal things than they normally would on a live stream.  This leads to quite the debate over whether one should mention the real people behind the characters at all - there’s a “protect the business” impulse among fans that also combines with the desire not to see lives ruined over private information being exposed.

One major difference with wrestling is that you don’t have to watch live shows.  There’s a whole community devoted to translating the most entertaining clips from the Japanese vtubers’ streams, and that’s how most people experience them.  Figure this kinda ties into the discussion above re: being choosers of content, as you don’t need to invest a lot of time at once here.

There’s plenty more i could say but you probably get the main idea by now!

[joeg]

5 hours ago, blueminister said:

Pedro was never the "top guy".

Ok... so a 3 year title reign that did better attendance numbers at MSG than ANYONE EVER not just in wrestling. But better than anybody else in boxing, basketball, music, etc until MSG was remodelled in 89.... that's not a top guy? Get the fuck out of here.   

 

TV demos say it all. The average age of somebody tuning into watch wrestling now is 45 plus. They are almost all men. They are mostly white. Anecdotal evidence like when the camera gets a shot of the crowd at a live event confirms this. It is what it is. You can't say any different. That wasn't the case 25 years ago when wrestling had 4 to 10 times the viewership. Numbers are numbers and facts are facts. I love debating the hows and the whys of the way things are with people who had a different viewpoint or opinion than I do. I often find it informative and enlightening. However I can't argue with a guy who disputes simple facts. Facts like Pedro was a top draw in New York City in the early 70s or Mil Mascaras increased the gate in Texas market. Numbers are numbers. Case closed. 

Edit: I was wrong. Ali vs Frasier 1 drew more than Pedro. Elton John drew more then Pedro. Bill Joel drew more than Pedro. The Rolling Stones drew more than Pedro. Other than that nobody drew more at MSG from 68 to 89. 

[Loss]

1 hour ago, Sean Reedy said:

Brandon Thurston on Twitter - Among males 13-24, WWE had more unique viewers (8.3M) in the U.S. on YouTube and Facebook than SportsCenter (6.3M) or ESPN (6.3M), from Feb-Dec 2020, according to Tubular Labs. Among U.S. males 25-44, SportsCenter (20.7M) and ESPN  (18.2M) lead WWE (13.7M).

https://twitter.com/BrandonThurston/status/1366066006268014594

It's an impressive number that suggests WWE is at least on the radar of more people than we see reflected in television ratings, to be sure. However, it's unclear to me how this is valuable to the company at the moment as anything other than a stat that they can brag about. I guess they could use it to make the case about their reach to a TV exec who might be looking solely at week-to-week ratings, and of course it will matter a lot if Facebook and YouTube ever start paying $1B for original content. We don't seem to have crossed that line yet.

[Dr. Dunk]

On 2/26/2021 at 11:36 AM, Loss said:

I'm not quite sure what I want to say about this topic, but I think it's interesting and wanted to at least start the discussion.

Message boards already seem a bit archaic, but obviously the posters at our board have been aging for a while now. Now we're also seeing that in wrestling at large.

I thought this could be a catch-all thread for people to discuss why they think this is happening, thoughts on what to do about it, and also over time just post more examples of this trend taking hold in different forms.

Wrestling doesn't seem to have much appeal to teens and people in their early 20s at the moment and there are a lot of reasons for that, most likely.

Not even thinking about wrestling as a whole, but just this subgenre of hardcore fandom, I do sometimes wish we had more "young" voices involved that were discovering a lot of things the rest of us grew up on the first time, but those voices seem hard to find. 

Anyway, have at it.

A few use Discord instead of the traditional message board these days.