The aging of wrestling fans

[Coffey]

5 hours ago, Log said:

Of course, both of those booms were fronted by some larger-than-life characters.  That's obviously part of it.  But I think an under-mentioned part of it was pro wrestling hitting a tone that matched the prevailing attitude (no pun) of the pop culture of that era.  I think that maybe we put too much of an emphasis on who can lead wrestling into a new boom instead of what wrestling can morph into to do it.

Honestly, I think they really missed the boat when Zack Ryder caught on fire thanks to his YouTube stuff. I'm old & out of touch with what is current but it seems to me, WWE hasn't really done much of anything to try to hit the non-TV crowd. I mean, yeah, they have social media accounts & WWE Network & whatnot but they don't do like a BTE style show or anything like that. People like Paige or Xavier Woods have more of a finger on the pulse with things like Twitch & I think that's a big area where WWE shows their age. They're making megamoney with TV contracts but like as has been mentioned, TV is a dying medium. So is advertising in its current form: people aren't going to sit through commercial breaks during 20 minute sit-coms anymore. 

Technology is unforgiving. The speed at which it moves is insane. I bought an $800 video card & literally six days later a newer, better one came out. Keeping up with tech takes being in touch with it, being familiar with it & growing with it, which becomes harder to do the older you get & the more comfortable & set in your ways you become. Hardware, software & knowledge/familiarity. WWE might be ran by people with power & money to throw around but the Vince McMahons, Kevin Dunns & Bruce Prichards of the world will still get passed by, regardless of if they can throw money at younger people or do a podcast. And it's showing.

You can literally go on YouTube & watch, in example, a nobody film himself barbecuing in his backyard, with a 4K high def setting, no commercials, streaming live. So like, shit you see on TV isn't special anymore. People are making movies with cellphones. 

[bobholly138]

Going by the crowds I see at the 20 or so indie shows I goto each year.

 

The crowds are 1/3rd 30 to 50 years old

1/3rd kids under 15

1/3rd teens/young adults 17 to 25

And the last group is there cause there is nothing else to do in the tiny rural southern towns the shows are held in.

[rovert]

For whatever it is worth if you watch back pre-pandemic AEW Dynamite episodes in Spring 2020 AEW was on the cusp of *SOMETHING*. Obviously, we will never know and hopefully, they might get back to that again. But in terms of a buzz and youthful energy, there hadn't been anything like that since the Attitude Era. 

[Mad Dog]

On 2/27/2021 at 11:06 AM, Migs said:

I was wondering about this too. I think there's a shift in the consumption of things like wrestling and comics where older fans are 1) more likely to stick with it and 2) are interested in ("demand" on social media) things the younger fans aren't always interested in, and the companies have responded to it. To an extent, this makes sense - these older fans have plenty of disposable income and more lucrative than marketing to kids. But it's also a real shift in the target audience and how you're trying to engage with them.

Comics did it to themselves. The per issue price has been insane for over a decade and you can't read anything from the Big Two without an event just ruining whatever is going on in the book yearly. No one wants to pay $4-5 for something you are going to finish reading in 5 minutes and changes nothing. DC under Didio was especially obsessed with shitting on the characters like Wally West that younger fans had grown up with or the universes just shrinking in general over time. It also doesn't help that they reboot series or the universe every couple of years.

Kids can't afford or easily obtain comics and you have to get hooked at a young age to put up with some of the issues comics as a medium have. Look at manga, manga is coming over here and wrecking the comic industry because the price is better and it's far more accessible due to series being self contained and having a beginning, middle and eventual end. You want to read Naruto? 72 volumes, pick up Vol 1 and go.

[joeg]

On 3/2/2021 at 11:40 PM, rovert said:

For whatever it is worth if you watch back pre-pandemic AEW Dynamite episodes in Spring 2020 AEW was on the cusp of *SOMETHING*. Obviously, we will never know and hopefully, they might get back to that again. But in terms of a buzz and youthful energy, there hadn't been anything like that since the Attitude Era. 

I dunno. Dark Order was such a part of the show it turned me off and probably a lot of other people too. They didn't seem to really know where they were going with Page and Omega. Then it got dropped with COVID. The Elite vs Inner Circle feud had a lot of potential with a potential War Games but that got dropped too. And even more telling were the attendance numbers. They were horrible from like summer of 2019 to right when things got shut down. Which is probably why they were hot shotting the War Games match, so they wouldn't have 2500 people in an 10000 seat arena when they ran New Jersey.  The show did have a lot of young, talented fresh faces on it which was refreshing, but it wasn't really going anywhere with them. That's still sort of the case a year later 

[MoS]

1 hour ago, joeg said:

They didn't seem to really know where they were going with Page and Omega. Then it got dropped with COVID. The Elite vs Inner Circle feud had a lot of potential with a potential War Games but that got dropped too. 

They dropped War Games because of the pandemic. Tony Khan said it did not seem appropriate with what the world was going through. 

Agreed about Omega and Page. I have noticed this with a lot of angles involving Omega and the Bucks - they overcomplicate things and never seem to know where they are eventually headed. AEW needs to get better at closing out storylines and transitioning to new ones. But that's a discussion for another thread

[DMJ]

I know this is a separate conversation, but I think the pandemic might actually end up helping some indies and AEW in the long run.

Obviously, its a silver lining/grey cloud thing, but I'll make a comparison to the band Weezer. Weezer had a huge hit debut album, but their follow-up was not as commercially successful and, at the time, not really critically acclaimed either. They basically disappeared from public eye for a couple years, but in that time, their fanbase grew and grew. Older brothers passed it on to younger brothers. Their "difficult" second album grew to be held in the same regard as their debut, if not even more appreciated. When Weezer came back in 2001, they were actually poised to be a much bigger band than they were when they debuted or would've been immediately after their second album flopped.

Right now, I've talked with multiple friends who - like myself - had not been to a wrestling show in a couple years before the pandemic. What do we want to do when this is all over? Go to a wrestling show. A local show. An AEW show. Maybe even a WWE show if the price point wasn't too bad. But that's where things get kinda crazy. The WWE is a big production and those productions require stadiums, arenas, etc. and often come at a high cost. But AIW in Cleveland? They ran a show not too long ago in the parking lot of a punk dive bar (the beloved Now That's Class in Lakewood). They can run that again this summer, pretty much no problem, if they want to. I've also seen AIW in large high school-esque gymnasiums where you might have 100 fans in a space that could easily fit 4 or 5 times with high ceilings and wide open areas (in fact, there were rows of chairs close to the ring as usual, but also bleachers along the sides with great vision lines that you could really kick back on and have lots and lots of room for your drinks and snacks). I'd be totally comfortable attending a show like that again. I used to be a once-every-2-years attendee, but now, I'm excited about maybe attending more often.

Other indies have already started posting "feelers" to their audience about how likely fans would be to attend a show this summer. Sadly, there have already been some who have responded "I won't attend if masks are required" who I'm guessing would also be upset if deodorant and a 1st grade reading level were required, but I digress.

I just think its possible that, 6-12 months from now, when the numbers are *hopefully* much lower, the indie scene - like the indie music scene - will have the opportunity to capitalize on fans desperately wanting live entertainment in a way that the big companies or movie theaters might not see come back. 
 

[joeg]

12 hours ago, MoS said:

They dropped War Games because of the pandemic. Tony Khan said it did not seem appropriate with what the world was going through. 

Agreed about Omega and Page. I have noticed this with a lot of angles involving Omega and the Bucks - they overcomplicate things and never seem to know where they are eventually headed. AEW needs to get better at closing out storylines and transitioning to new ones. But that's a discussion for another thread

I know I was posting at 3 am but I thought that was the point I made. I guess I didn't. They hot shotted the War Games because attendance had been down for months. Then COVID happened and they abandoned the Cody vs Jericho and Cody vs MJF feuds all together and never really picked it back up. They did the big match at Double or Nothing but by that point Elite vs Inner Circle had just sort of been dropped and Cody had moved onto Shawn Spears. (Which by the way it still drives me nuts that the whole company broke kayfabe over that chairshot). So it didn't make a lot of sense for the Elite guys (who were going their own seperate ways at that point) to go over the Inner Circle when there was no steam behind the match. 

 

The more I think about it, as described in this thread and others, wrestling's problem in attracting new fans or young fans isn't just failing to create and market young stars. Its that there hasn't been a coherent wrestling show on a major American television network in years. And there hasn't been a major feud booked properly from start to finish on major television in years either. Those are the things that bring in casual viewership and increase fanbase. There have been some truly great matches over the last decade. However, no new/young fans are going to see them if the most accessible weekly TV shows are incoherent reality trash TV, there are no new stars being created/promoted, and there are no feuds being booked properly. 

[Big Pete]

I thought Jericho and MJF played out fine. AEW built both matches up, they had a match on PPV and Cody did the favours. It appeared they were going to let MJF ride that momentum while Cody had his hands full with the Inner Circle and Lance Archer.

I do take your point on the Blood and Guts match. They put the cart before the horses there, announcing they'll be doing a WarGames match at Revolution without justifying it. If things had really escalated between the Inner Circle and the Elite to the point where they had to have this career-defining match it would have been one thing. Instead their feud at best had been simmering and they just used the gimmick to heat it up.

It's WWE style booking where you have to have a Hell in a Cell match because it just happens to be the gimmick on the PPV.

To their credit, Revolution was the best AEW show up to that point and they were building momentum. However I think the signs weren't great either and Cody's neck tattoo seemed like an ominous warning. Here was somebody who had actively used the television time to make himself a bigger star and he goes out and gets himself a ridiculous tattoo.

[Migs]

17 minutes ago, Big Pete said:

To their credit, Revolution was the best AEW show up to that point and they were building momentum. However I think the signs weren't great either and Cody's neck tattoo seemed like an ominous warning. Here was somebody who had actively used the television time to make himself a bigger star and he goes out and gets himself a ridiculous tattoo.

In a year of truly terrible things, Cody's neck tattoo may have been the worst.

[joeg]

1 hour ago, Big Pete said:

 

It's WWE style booking where you have to have a Hell in a Cell match because it just happens to be the gimmick on the PPV.

 Here was somebody who had actively used the television time to make himself a bigger star and he goes out and gets himself a ridiculous tattoo.

Yep. they keep doing so many good things then shooting themselves in the foot.

 

[overbooked]

9 hours ago, joeg said:

The more I think about it, as described in this thread and others, wrestling's problem in attracting new fans or young fans isn't just failing to create and market young stars. Its that there hasn't been a coherent wrestling show on a major American television network in years. And there hasn't been a major feud booked properly from start to finish on major television in years either. Those are the things that bring in casual viewership and increase fanbase. There have been some truly great matches over the last decade. However, no new/young fans are going to see them if the most accessible weekly TV shows are incoherent reality trash TV, there are no new stars being created/promoted, and there are no feuds being booked properly. 

All of this! Going back and watching old wrestling I've been surprised how much underwhelming in-ring work I can tolerate if the angles and feuds are good. And how good matches become great matches when there are clear stakes, consequences and a crowd (or viewer) emotionally invested in the outcome.

But I think this is a shift in perspective that comes with age. To generalise wildly, I think there is often a "collector" impulse in younger hardcore fans - to watch the most promotions and  rate the most matches. However, as I've got older I've needed wrestling more as both a form of escapism and as a mirror of the trials and tribulations of everyday life - and that comes through compelling storytelling with relatable characters. The actual "wrestling" is still important, but only part of the picture, and ideally is in service to the story, rather than vice versa.

[Dav'oh]

I mentioned Vitas Gerulaitis in another thread, but the galling realisation hit me that men's tennis, men's fucking tennis from the 1970s, had bigger characters than PRO FUCKING WRESTLING does in 2021. Ille Nastase, "Broadway" Vitas, Superbrat, The Iceborg Bjorn Borg, Jimmy Connors, Roscoe Tanner and the gang showed more colour and character than most anyone I've seen in a wrestling ring in a while. This is a terrible indictment on current wrestling. Fuck, give me Ivan the Terrible Lendl, Boom Boom Becker, Martina and the Ice Princess Chrissy Evert from the 80s too. I don't even like tennis.

I'd just like to iterate that: Tennis 40 years ago had more memorable, natural characters than Pro-Wrestling can manufacture today. Jesus (Castillo) (Jr) wept.

[Timbo Slice]

Personally, I recently got off Twitter just because I was tired of what it was doing to my anxiety, and am okay slowing down on my favorite old wrestling message board at my older age.

Wrestling, like basically all entertainment, has become more compartmentalized and niche over the past couple decades, and their struggles to stay relevant are definitely part of their own doing, but also because they have become another entertainment type that's in a long list of easily accessible entertainment types. An odd dichotomy given WWE was one of the first entities to embrace streaming as a major business decision (and were widely praised for it, even!), but the market share and ability for wrestling to catch on writ large just isn't there anymore. The more it gets exposure, the less impact it has on pop culture, simply because people get to easily pick their pop culture aspects nowadays.

[funkdoc]

Oh hey, re: my earlier "vtubers are the new pro wrestling" point:

 

[SomethingSavage]

Pro wrestling getting into the streaming business earlier than some ultimately doesn't matter if what they're streaming isn't enticing.

We are in an age of consumption and content. Viewers seek out shows to binge and burn through. Pro wrestling in 2021 isn't "binge-worthy" because it doesn't adhere to actual continuity. Canon is hit & miss. But most of all, there is no real suspense anymore.

Eric Bischoff (I know, I know) said it best when he noted how wrestling thrives when it hinges on ANTICIPATION. Big money matches hinge on that sense of buildup and anticipation. Hell, fantasy booking - a niche within a niche - hinges on ANTICIPATION.

Pro wrestling doesn't work without that excitement. Without suspense. Without anticipation. I don't see much of that in modern wrestling.

It doesn't help that the characters are all so desperate and thirsty to be taken seriously. It doesn't help that they all want to seem "reality based" and dry as fuck. I don't need a bunch of wannabe MMA guys in my pro wrestling when only one or two will do, please & thanks.

Wrestling needs characters with conviction - not a bunch of nerds playing parts. It needs defined rivalries. It needs milestones and marked tent-poles.

As it stands, every show is just another show. For the sake of having a show.

It's just this giant hamster wheel. It's a timesuck. Everything, every match, every segment, every half-assed attempt at an angle... They all exist to fill time. To kill time.

Why? To get through this show. To get on to the next show.

There are no cliffhangers. No suspense. No anticipation.

There's no reason to watch another show after you've seen one. You're good. Because the next episode is just copy & paste. It's more of the same. It's rematches of rematches you just watched. It's Xerox copies of the characters and the finishes you just saw. It's bad acting and poor delivery.

For every reason you hear people praise their favorite "binge-worthy" shows from other streaming platforms, pro wrestling feels like a relic from another time. And not in some fond, nostalgic sense. It's struggling to keep it's head above water and stay relevant anyway it can, but that would almost require a total overhaul of how it's presented at this point.

And maybe the tide will change. Maybe the trends will shift. Maybe this "fad" of peak television will come to an end. But not anytime soon. And even if it does, I highly doubt the old model of repetitive, monotonous, meaningless filler television like pro wrestling will be the one to draw people back in like that.

To summarize, pro wrestling needs a major editing overhaul. The matches need to feel like they mean something. The characters have to resonate and appeal to SOMEBODY outside their pre-existing, already established fan base.

I don't see or feel like anybody out there is on the verge of doing that. I know some of y'all will tout guys like the Bucks, Page, Cody, or whatever. But nah. Outside their bubble, they don't connect and nobody gives a fuck.

And I'm not saying they couldn't. I'm just saying - with the strategy they've chosen to employ so far - they never will. They're opting to play within the same sandbox as WWE and everybody else, instead of trying to find a new hook to grab interest.

And it's not a complicated thing like reinventing the template from scratch. It's as simple as building their own world with cohesive stories, characters people can care about (meaning they'd have to value things like motivations and traits over shock value and turns), etc.

Wrestling is simple and works best when it's kept simple. People's viewing habits are fairly simple, too. When something is appealing and enthralling, they'll watch.

Pro wrestling is neither right now. I don't know if it's ever felt more irrelevant. Nothing matters. Results don't matter, because we've been educated that rematches will quickly undo everything we are watching anyway.

The fan base is growing older because we are the only ones who knew it when it was worth watching more than once. Fans today would never know that. Because you can sit and watch one match and get the jist of the full experience. It's pointless to continue watching, unless you're just looking to kill some time. There's no investment to be made.

I always go back to watching an episode of Raw in 2018 with my nephew. He was a HUGE wrestling fan. But I could tell, week to week, he was starting to lose interest. I kept watching along with him though, because it's just something we bonded over and could enjoy together.

One week, he suddenly got up and walked away during a commercial break. He didn't care about seeing anymore of the show. When I asked what he thought about one of his favorite guys losing the match we'd just watched, he simply shrugged and said he didn't really care.

I pressed him to find out exactly what he meant. And his answer was both innocent and telling in its absolute truth: "They're just gonna do the same thing again next week."

And what do ya know. They did. We didn't watch anymore episodes together after that.

Actually, to be fair, we tried watching an episode of NXT and Smackdown (out of sheer boredom) the week that Hurricane Laura struck us last year. It was fun seeing how much his tastes had changed, but otherwise everything felt like it had somehow gotten worse and even less interesting.

People have too many options to stick with shit that has no hook, no sense of progressive storytelling, and ultimately no purpose.

[Memphis Mark]

I am 59 , so I was a teenage and a young adult during the territory days. Wrestling had a base of fans in small rural  markets. The Memphis territory would run spots in small towns in the Mid-South . These were usually shows were the building was provided  at no cost . The building owner would  get the concession money , while the promotion got the ticket revenue. These shows would draw 500 to 1000 people. Medium sized  markets that were culturally deprived  routinely sold out . You know places  like Dothan , Alabama,  Knoxville , TN ,  Huntington , West Virginia  and  Gaffney , South Carolina  .

My family came from rural West Tennessee . They were all farmers.  Almost everyone  watched wrestling and  they would go to Memphis or Jackson , Tennessee for big shows  . The combination of local  broadcast TV and spot shows  build a stable  core audience.

In the 80's , the WWF national expansion discarded the small and medium sized markets. It  all about cable TV ratings and PPV buys.Over time  the existing fan base passed on  and there  were no more spot shows or local TV shows  to keep the  next generation connected to pro wrestling. I think the WWE comes to Memphis twice a year.  

Also talent developed because they were working 7 to 8 a week. I know Covid has bought things to a grinding halt. However even before Covid  ,  AEW and Impact were not  touring . They just produced a TV show and PPVs .  AEW is signing all of that young talent and just using them on  their you tube shows. When things get back to normal , AEW should run spots in small towns with there young talent. The talent gets better and the company will slowly build a larger fan base.  

 I always believe that promotions  like ROH , TNA , MLW and the latest version of the NWA should resume running spot shows , running sold shows and focusing on medium sized markets without pro sports . This builds fan support at the grass root levels. Children will attend these shows and some will become fans for life.

Running Chicago and  Las Vegas and selling out is great, but don't forget about Springfield  and Bakersfield. I was encouraged  by NXT running some smaller markets and  touring before  Covid. Also , ROH would run 4 to 6 times a month , which was a start . However , ROH only runs big markets .

I heard a interview  with Steve Keirn . When , Keirn  ran FCW , he made the talent to to small towns in Florida and poster the town they were running in the near future  . The talent would have to go their markets and actually hustle to build fan interest. Steve ran small gyms and rec centers in small towns. Small towns were there is not much to do.

I know I have ran long on this topic . My  point is that ROH , MLW , Impact , the NWA and even almighty AEW should try to run house in smaller  in an effort to rebuild the business . You have to reach young kids , because the core fan base is old , like me.  In today's  world business  world , everyone wants to hit a home run every time at bat. However will can still win with singles and doubles.

 

[Log]

You hit the nail on the head, @SomethingSavage.  Earlier this year, AEW had me actually looking forward to tuning in every week. That’s mostly gone now after they didn’t really deliver on some of the stuff I was looking forward to. But then they have something like that women’s match last week, and I look forward to watching again. Just wish they’d be more consistent. 
 

i also feel like there’s almost no reason to watch wrestling live. There’s so much filler on everyone’s shows. It’s easier to watch the next day and skip the stuff you don’t like. 

[ohtani's jacket]

If wrestling wants to become popular again it should study what Kevin Feige achieved with the Marvel Cinematic Universe. When Marvel was bankrupt and on the bones of its arse, who would have thought that one day it would end up dominating box office receipts? Superheroes were a known commodity before the MCE. Comics were a known commodity before the MCE. Wrestling is a known commodity now. If wrestling were able to find a novel way to relaunch itself through gaming, movies, or some other platform, then perhaps it would catch on. If it wants to stay the course then I think it would benefit from an off-season. Half the anticipation in television these days is the wait for another season. 

[NintendoLogic]

The comics industry is still on its ass in terms of actual comic book sales. If anything, it's worse off now in that regard than it was in the 90s. Marvel and DC have managed to thrive by becoming IP farms for movie studios. That's basically what WWE is doing now. They're more profitable than ever because they're in the business of selling content to networks rather than tickets and PPVs to wrestling fans.

[concrete1992]

I love PWO, but I will admit that a bunch of folks that are clearly not in the demo for which we are fantasy booking reaching is interesting. I say that as someone who has aged out of youngsters since GWE and now am closer to 30 than is ideal.

I think talking about how wrestling is a TV product because of the WWE without also saying what NintendoLogic is alluding to isn't fair. WWE is flipping sliding TV ratings, an aging audience, and an underperforming OTT service into billions of dollars. For all this talk about how to reach a younger audience and using WWE as the main lens to view this, they don't care. Networks don't seem to care all that much either.

I think it is also tough to have this conversation during the middle of a pandemic where the companies that at a smaller scale have lost the most. It is extremely niche and not necessarily growing the wrestling audience by leaps and bounds but these smaller companies were starting to bring in larger audiences than previously and companies, where diversity was part of their core mission, were popping up. GCW, a dire promotion before the pandemic, had become the hottest indie promotion in America in what seems like forever. Without crowds and the ability to migrate elsewhere I think their live shows are net-negative for the health of the scene but we will see.

[Superstar Sleeze]

On 2/28/2021 at 10:56 AM, Loss said:

 

 

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.

Didnt read whole thread so maybe this was raised? With people waiting longer and longer to have children, is it possible that these are just parents watching with their kids? We arent accurately capturing the kid market? Pre-Pandemic I went to a lot of shows in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Connecticut and there were always a ton of kids at the shows. I dont think they have lost their hold on the 5-12 year old crowd. They might not be retaining them, but kids are still coming to the shows from what I saw.

[Al]

Response to Memphis Mark. Impact actually was doing a bit of that pre-pandemic. I attended a show in Scranton that was co-promoted between Impact and a small Indy, and the night before they ran Hazleton, PA. One issue I've seen though from the indies is that the mid-week show is gone. Promotions run Friday/Saturday/Sunday shows and I don't think indy workers are getting enough matches.

[Loss]

4 hours ago, Superstar Sleeze said:

Didnt read whole thread so maybe this was raised? With people waiting longer and longer to have children, is it possible that these are just parents watching with their kids? We arent accurately capturing the kid market? Pre-Pandemic I went to a lot of shows in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Connecticut and there were always a ton of kids at the shows. I dont think they have lost their hold on the 5-12 year old crowd. They might not be retaining them, but kids are still coming to the shows from what I saw.

If parents watch with their children, this is reflected in ratings.

[Superstar Sleeze]

How do they know? Is there a survey? I dont really know how ratings work honestly.