The aging of wrestling fans

[joeg]

2 minutes ago, Loss said:

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.

ESPN is also facing the same problem in terms of an aging fanbase. I'd argue that young people don't consume their online sports content from ESPN. Barstool, Bleacher Report, The Ringer, SLAM, Maxpreps, The Athletic, Sirius XM, etc. all do a better job producing online content that would appeal to a younger audience than ESPN. 

[JRH]

Isnt Reddit essentially a message board? I mean, they do have threads and topics just like other message boards.

[blueminister]

1 hour ago, joeg said:

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. 

My impression is that until the Backlund run the top guy was Sammartino and Pedro was a top guy that they successfully capitalized on with the Puerto Rican audience. Mil Mascaras was an attraction like Andre. I don't pretend to be a WWWF history wonk so I could be wrong, and it's immaterial anyway because you're dealing with completely different promotional economies in the territorial era.

You don't want to argue because you simply fail to process information that disagrees with your inane thesis that WWE has done nothing in terms of minority outreach, a talking point smarks wrote to sound clever and socially conscious ten years ago that has long since passed its sell-by date. Mustafa Ali, the New Day, Bobby Lashley, the Women's Revolution, Jinder Mahal, Royal Rumble victories by multiple non-whites. Alberto Del Rio given several shots on top. Heck, Roman Reigns. This is off the top of my head, and I'm sure somebody who actually watches WWE could come up with more. In stark economic terms, it's at least arguable that they've done way too much to try and appeal to minorities and women.

[joeg]

13 minutes ago, blueminister said:

Mustafa Ali, the New Day, Bobby Lashley, the Women's Revolution, Jinder Mahal, Royal Rumble victories by multiple non-whites. Alberto Del Rio given several shots on top. Heck, Roman Reigns. 

If the way WWE has pushed Mustafa Ali, the New Day, Bobby Lashley, Jinder Mahal, Del Rio, and Roman Reigns are the examples given of trying to appeal to as a wider an audience over the last decade no wonder wrestling as a whole is where it is. Half of those guys absolutely suck and were never capable of drawing a dime. The other half WWE hamstringed with lazy booking and bad promotion. I think you made my point for me better than I could have.

 

[blueminister]

7 minutes ago, joeg said:

If the way WWE has pushed Mustafa Ali, the New Day, Bobby Lashley, Jinder Mahal, Del Rio, and Roman Reigns are the examples given of trying to appeal to as a wider an audience over the last decade no wonder wrestling as a whole is where it is. Half of those guys absolutely suck and were never capable of drawing a dime. The other half WWE hamstringed with lazy booking and bad promotion. I think you made my point for me better than I could have.

 

Your point wasn't "WWE is bad at booking," it was "[t]he wrestling business has done very little in the last 20 years to appeal to young people, women or people of color." Take the L already.

[MoS]

4 minutes ago, blueminister said:

Your point wasn't "WWE is bad at booking," it was "[t]he wrestling business has done very little in the last 20 years to appeal to young people, women or people of color." Take the L already.

You have been weirdly aggressive and really annoying. First off, you are wrong about what Pedro meant. When he won the title for the first time, Bruno was burnt out and did not want to wrestle much, if at all. For the first year or so of Pedro's title reign, he only wrestled in his tiny hometown of Pittsburgh, and that was just cuz he was also a co-promoter there. Pedro was absolutely THE guy. His reign ended only cuz he did not draw as well outside of NYC as Bruno had, therefore Vince Sr. basically had to beg Bruno to come back and take the belt again. 

It is also weird that you claim that Pedro was not THE guy, and then say that WWE has been catering to POC audience by pushing....Mustafa Ali. Bobby Lashley, who was doing absolutely nothing until he lucked into MVP being a lifesaver. Like, Mustafa Ali is your go-to example to try and claim that WWE has tried to cater to PoCs?

Also, FWIW, Joeg is not trying to target only WWE in his criticism, which is something you have claimed multiple times, in really aggressive ways as "annoying 10-year dated smark talking points" or whatever. He has frequently criticised AEW of the same thing, mentioning that all the tippy top guys there are skinny white guys in their 30s. You may not agree with it, but don't go ascribing bad faith motivations when there are none. 

[joeg]

No. Because you are wrong. The numbers are the numbers. That is a fact. The audience is what it is. Thats a fact. My opinion of how they got there is that wrestling as a whole (WWE, TNA, AEW) hasn't even tried to appeal beyond their core audience. My evidence is that the last African Americans to be top guys were the Rock and Booker T in the late 90s. The last good looking young babyface on top was HBK maybe? Wrestling haven't had a top guy under 30 since Orton and Cena were first pushed. There hasn't been a person of Hispanic heritage successfully pushed on top since Rey Jr in 2006, and even that was a half hearted effort. The last guy who might appeal to a younger, wider audience was Daniel Bryan and he got the rub like 8 years ago. I've laid it all out here and in other threads about similar topics. Its nearly 20 years industry wide of not giving a fuck. First you throw some political attack. Then you argue that the audience hasn't gotten older. That it isn't gotten whiter or more male. All of which it has. That can't be disputed.  Then as your evidence you say Pedro wasn't the top guy. Or that Mascaras wasn't a draw in Texas. Then you use acts that never got over for various reason as WWE's attempts to appeal to a wider audience.... get the fuck outta here with that weak shit. 

[Migs]

7 hours ago, Loss said:

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.

I think you're slightly overstating the importance of the TV audience here to wrestling as a broader whole (it's obviously what matters to WWE). There's still an audience that goes to shows that is not WWE fans, who enjoy wrestling but don't show up in TV ratings numbers, and they matter to the extent they support promotions in a meaningful way (for an indy, buying tickets; for AEW, maybe it's chipping in for a PPV party).

I know a lot of people who are wrestling fans but aren't the the TV audience, and they go to indy shows, they watch a little New Japan, they might watch Dynamite. If they watch WWE it's probably checking out a big show and not the weekly TV. Go to a GCW show and it's a crowd that's not over 50, not too predominantly make, and has a mix of race and LGBTQ+. 

Now, it might be that WWE *doesn't* cater to this crowd because it's not the TV audience, and maybe that keeps the size of this group a bit smaller. I certainly can't point to scientific numbers to tell you how substantial this group might be. But they're there, and sometimes I think their existence gets dismissed because people are just looking at WWE ratings and haven't been to an indy show in a major city.

[blueminister]

31 minutes ago, MoS said:

You have been weirdly aggressive and really annoying. First off, you are wrong about what Pedro meant. When he won the title for the first time, Bruno was burnt out and did not want to wrestle much, if at all. For the first year or so of Pedro's title reign, he only wrestled in his tiny hometown of Pittsburgh, and that was just cuz he was also a co-promoter there. Pedro was absolutely THE guy. His reign ended only cuz he did not draw as well outside of NYC as Bruno had, therefore Vince Sr. basically had to beg Bruno to come back and take the belt again. 

It is also weird that you claim that Pedro was not THE guy, and then say that WWE has been catering to POC audience by pushing....Mustafa Ali. Bobby Lashley, who was doing absolutely nothing until he lucked into MVP being a lifesaver. Like, Mustafa Ali is your go-to example to try and claim that WWE has tried to cater to PoCs?

Also, FWIW, Joeg is not trying to target only WWE in his criticism, which is something you have claimed multiple times, in really aggressive ways as "annoying 10-year dated smark talking points" or whatever. He has frequently criticised AEW of the same thing, mentioning that all the tippy top guys there are skinny white guys in their 30s. You may not agree with it, but don't go ascribing bad faith motivations when there are none. 

tbh I'm not interested in getting hung up on the Pedro point or arguments on what it means to be a "top guy" because even if I'm wrong about Pedro's relative place on the pecking order, it doesn't amount to much in terms of his or my argument. I already said that I don't pretend to be a WWWF history wonk and territory/modern promotional economies are apples and oranges; I don't think it's realistic in the modern context to expect a run analogous to Pedro's for multiple reasons.

Your issues with two of the many examples I cited basically amount to variations of "if they didn't meet some arbitrary level of success that exists only in my head, it doesn't count" theme. I find this unconvincing bordering on silly. Vince McMahon has made a career out of pushing people that the audience hasn't responded to for one reason on another, it doesn't mean that the pushes never happened. Also, it must have been difficult for MVP to save Bobby Lashley (by which I infer you mean elevate in terms of place on the card by his involvement) given that wrestling does nothing to appeal to PoCs.

I don't care enough about AEW to speak on it and it's only been in existence for 1 1/2 of the 20 years joeg cited, so there you go. I am aware Cody Rhodes is currently hyping a headlining tag match against two African-Americans, one a celebrity with massive crossover potential. 

[joeg]

23 minutes ago, Migs said:

I know a lot of people who are wrestling fans but aren't the the TV audience

Bingo. I know A LOT of lapsed fans and a lot of people who like the live experience but find what's on TV now a chore. For one reason or another they all stopped watching in the last 20 years. They came back during Daniel Bryan's run. Then gave up on it again. They gave AEW a chance and gave up on it again. They will go to an indie show now and again or maybe a WWE house show if the ticket price is low enough. But as long as wrestling continues to be what it is, I'm going to keep hearing things like "well my kids just aren't into it the way we were as kids" or "I haven't been into it since the Rock, Stone Cold, and Booker T left" or "I'll check out the Rumble and Wrestlemania but that's about it"

[blueminister]

31 minutes ago, joeg said:

No. Because you are wrong. The numbers are the numbers. That is a fact. The audience is what it is. Thats a fact. My opinion of how they got there is that wrestling as a whole (WWE, TNA, AEW) hasn't even tried to appeal beyond their core audience. My evidence is that the last African Americans to be top guys were the Rock and Booker T in the late 90s. The last good looking young babyface on top was HBK maybe? Wrestling haven't had a top guy under 30 since Orton and Cena were first pushed. There hasn't been a person of Hispanic heritage successfully pushed on top since Rey Jr in 2006, and even that was a half hearted effort. The last guy who might appeal to a younger, wider audience was Daniel Bryan and he got the rub like 8 years ago. I've laid it all out here and in other threads about similar topics. Its nearly 20 years industry wide of not giving a fuck. First you throw some political attack. Then you argue that the audience hasn't gotten older. That it isn't gotten whiter or more male. All of which it has. That can't be disputed.  Then as your evidence you say Pedro wasn't the top guy. Or that Mascaras wasn't a draw in Texas. Then you use acts that never got over for various reason as WWE's attempts to appeal to a wider audience.... get the fuck outta here with that weak shit. 

You keep affecting this "numbers wonk" posture when you're making arguments about content, and it's tiring. No one is disputing the WWE is bad at pushing new stars, but it's an equal opportunity proposition. They've tried pushing plenty of hispanic/black/women wrestlers, given them TV time, let them headline shows, etc. If they didn't get over? Well, join the club, the brand's the draw, pal. If they do get over? (New Day) You just pretend that it didn't happen because they don't fit your outdated and shifting definitions of "top guy."

 

The "HBK is the last good-looking male wrestler pushed on top" thing I'm not even touching.

[joeg]

10 minutes ago, blueminister said:

I am aware Cody Rhodes is currently hyping a headlining tag match against two African-Americans, one a celebrity with massive crossover potential. 

If they do run Cody vs Shaq in a singles on PPV or Big Show vs Shaq on a PPV and don't mess things up (its AEW anything good or bad is possible) That would be the sort of event I could see drawing some eyeballs from outside the core audience. But its the freakshow audience that tunes in to see Logan Paul box Floyd Mayweather. They aren't real wrestling fans, they are just there for one event, its keeping them for the next one that will be a challenge.  

[ButchReedMark]

7 hours ago, blueminister said:

Pedro was never the "top guy".

Yes he was. That's a crazy statement.

[joeg]

@blueminister You show up here once every year or two, say something ridiculous, start a fight, then disappear. Now please disappear.  

[blueminister]

9 minutes ago, joeg said:

@blueminister You show up here once every year or two, say something ridiculous, start a fight, then disappear. Now please disappear.  

Better to post sense sporadically than nonsense consistently. If I were you I'd change the subject too.

[joeg]

12 minutes ago, blueminister said:

Better to post sense sporadically than nonsense consistently. If I were you I'd change the subject too.

Dude... you invalidated anything you were going say when you opened up by making it political in a place where political discussion is discouraged. Then you went all in with duce seven off suit by claiming that Pedro wasn't the top guy. And you keep going. Just stop. Stop. If this debate were in a bar, it would have ended hours ago with me walking away and you continuing to follow me around until the bartender cut you off and the bouncer tossed you out. Please stop. 

 

[blueminister]

15 minutes ago, joeg said:

Dude... you invalidated anything you were going say when you opened up by making it political in a place where political discussion is discouraged. Then you went all in with duce seven off suit by claiming that Pedro wasn't the top guy. And you keep going. Just stop. Stop. 

I was wrong about Pedro, but you're not fooling anyone trying to derail with ad hominems. Feel free to theatrically declare that you're no longer engaging with me instead of just answering my points.

[joeg]

I don't even remember your points. I don't think you ever made any sort of valid points. 

[MoS]

1 hour ago, blueminister said:

Also, it must have been difficult for MVP to save Bobby Lashley (by which I infer you mean elevate in terms of place on the card by his involvement) given that wrestling does nothing to appeal to PoCs.

What the everloving fuck are you saying? Do you even have a point anymore? 

[blueminister]

1 minute ago, joeg said:

I don't even remember your points. I don't think you ever made any sort of valid points. 

Not surprising. I could have probably just saved time trying to be polite by posting a picture of Roman Reigns but I'm sure you have some sort of reason why Samoans aren't "real" POC.

[blueminister]

7 minutes ago, MoS said:

What the everloving fuck are you saying? Do you even have a point anymore? 

How can MVP be a "lifesaver" to Lashley if the deck is stacked against POCs? I didn't think it was an obscure point or anything. Thanks for the civility lesson, by the way.

[joeg]

Roman Reigns is Samoan. You are correct. For years here there was debate over whether his push being hamstrung was intentional or just out of sheer incompetence.  Same goes for the New Day who are black. Was their push hamstrung intentionally or just out of sheer incompetence? I don't know, and I'm not saying its because of race. I'm just saying that the reason the fanbase is what it is and the ratings are what they are is that its been nearly 20 years since any American wrestling company successfully promoted, booked and marketed anybody who would appeal to anyone outside of the diehard fanbase. And I seriously question whether they even tried. I could go through every point you made over the last 24 hours, google them,  and prove many of them factually inaccurate. However I'm tired and am now going to bed. I have work tomorrow and will not be continuing this bullshit in the morning. 

 

[MoS]

12 minutes ago, joeg said:

Roman Reigns is Samoan. You are correct. For years here there was debate over whether his push being hamstrung was intentional or just out of sheer incompetence.  Same goes for the New Day who are black. Was their push hamstrung intentionally or just out of sheer incompetence? I don't know, and I'm not saying its because of race. I'm just saying that the reason the fanbase is what it is and the ratings are what they are is that its been nearly 20 years since any American wrestling company successfully promoted, booked and marketed anybody who would appeal to anyone outside of the diehard fanbase. And I seriously question whether they even tried. I could go through every point you made over the last 24 hours, google them,  and prove many of them factually inaccurate. However I'm tired and am now going to bed. I have work tomorrow and will not be continuing this bullshit in the morning. 

 

Sorry, my man, but you are arguing and debating in good faith too fucking hard against someone who only seems to have entered the conversation to get 'gotcha' points and pretend he owned us internet smarks

[blueminister]

56 minutes ago, MoS said:

Sorry, my man, but you are arguing and debating in good faith too fucking hard against someone who only seems to have entered the conversation to get 'gotcha' points and pretend he owned us internet smarks

You tone-policed and then started swearing at me. He accused me of making the argument political when I pointed out the proposition that, say, pushing an expanded Women's Division made more sense to reaching a female audience than promoting the right kind of male wrestler (which he imagines to be something like HBK) and then repeated the accusation when I didn't rise to the bait, all the time pretending that he didn't want to make the argument political. He repeatedly made ad hominem attacks and refused to engage with the body of my posts. He declared that a mistake of fact about WWWF roster rankings 50 years ago invalidated anything I had to say about today's market. He doesn't engage when I or any one else demonstrate the many ways that WWE has tried to reach out to minorities, you don't engage when I point out that Cody Rhodes is doing a major angle with Shaq (or affect baffled incomprehension when I point out a flaw in your logic.)

You don't have anything to teach me about class or good-faith debate.

edit: This isn't a "woe is me" thing, I mainly lurk Tsuruta threads and don't have any intention of posting regularly or maintaining any sort of status here, but when you consider why people prefer other platforms for their wrestling discussion you should probably consider stuff like this.

[MoS]

Oh yeah, the reason people prefer Twitter to PWO is cuz no one at PWO properly responds to blueminister's ridiculous and stunningly stupid arguments. Yeah, you got me there