AEW Forbidden Door - When the door is actually forbidden and we are just tempting fate

[MoS]

3 minutes ago, Jmare007 said:

That sounds like a great a number. What does "NJPW subs" mean though? people in the U.S with a NJ World sub? people that were watching through the NJ stream worldwide? or just new subscribers overall to that app?

No, people in Japan who ordered through NJPW world. In any case, per Meltz, the number was just 7,000, so that made a minimal difference. I suspect the low number in Japan was because of the timing - it was Monday morning in Japan when the PPV aired, like the worst possible time to have a PPV.

[Al]

I think AEW could easily do six PPVs a year. Forbidden Door seems like something that would work best every other year. Unless you rotate promotions you work with. 

[Jmare007]

21 minutes ago, MoS said:

No, people in Japan who ordered through NJPW world. In any case, per Meltz, the number was just 7,000, so that made a minimal difference. I suspect the low number in Japan was because of the timing - it was Monday morning in Japan when the PPV aired, like the worst possible time to have a PPV.

Thanks, 120k is a great number. One would guess it's also the floor for AEW considering the lack of U.S stars and all the difficulties FD had. And if that's the floor, it's a pretty healthy one.

[El-P]

55 minutes ago, Al said:

Forbidden Door seems like something that would work best every other year. Unless you rotate promotions you work with. 

There's no other promotion that you could do it with that reaches the US audience. And even then, Meltz reported that the audience of the last two PPVs were very different, not overlapping as much as you'd think. A lot of people who did not buy Double or Nothing bought Forbidden Doors because of NJPW. And a part of the audience who did not buy it gave the reasons that they don't watch NJPW and this is minor league stuff. So, it's a bit more complicated (and interesting).

FWIW I don't want AEW to run more PPVs a year. I'm fine with 4 + a special NJPW joint show. 

[MoS]

13 hours ago, El-P said:

There's no other promotion that you could do it with that reaches the US audience. And even then, Meltz reported that the audience of the last two PPVs were very different, not overlapping as much as you'd think. A lot of people who did not buy Double or Nothing bought Forbidden Doors because of NJPW. And a part of the audience who did not buy it gave the reasons that they don't watch NJPW and this is minor league stuff. So, it's a bit more complicated (and interesting).

Completely correct, and extremely interesting and intriguing. 

For those who are curious and for those who want to discuss this on a deeper level, here is Meltz's exact report, and I see no reason to doubt his reporting on business numbers: he has always been accurate in respect of business figures

 

Quote

An interesting note is that of the people who purchased Forbidden Door, 61.6 percent ordered Double or Nothing and 38.4 percent did not order Double or Nothing. Figured out another way, only 47.1 percent of the people who ordered Double or Nothing ordered this show, and 52.9 percent did not. It also tells you that it’s not the same people ordering every show, that the AEW overall PPV audience is larger than most think but also picks and chooses rather than automatically orders everything from AEW far more than most believed.

 

[Timbo Slice]

Meltz’s diction almost turned that into Steiner Math territory. 

[funkdoc]

Slightly off-topic, but a friend of mine made a good point: this suggests NJPW has a much bigger paying audience in the US than people assumed, but they have yet to figure out where all those people are located.  They've kept running house shows in places like Texas & the east coast that don't draw well - the latter kinda surprises me but i guess that area is saturated with indies like GCW and whatnot.  Is it all just in Southern California?

[Migs]

7 hours ago, funkdoc said:

Slightly off-topic, but a friend of mine made a good point: this suggests NJPW has a much bigger paying audience in the US than people assumed, but they have yet to figure out where all those people are located.  They've kept running house shows in places like Texas & the east coast that don't draw well - the latter kinda surprises me but i guess that area is saturated with indies like GCW and whatnot.  Is it all just in Southern California?

It's not just location (although I don't think Texas is a great one) - it's a promotional issue. They don't lineup main events in advance, they don't always advertise all their top stars, and just generally, they don't do enough to signal "this is a big show." Anyone who follows New Japan at all understands that there's the big shows and there's the minor shows. They can draw for the big shows in the US, but they've mostly struggled to draw for the minor ones (and when they've had okay success, it's because they've made clear that at least a good number of big stars would be on the show). When they do signal that something is a big show, they've had success (MSG, the 2017-2018 Cali shows).

[sek69]

Dave has mentioned more than once that New Japan stubbornly refuses to adapt for the US market, and then is puzzled when they have a show that doesn't draw that much. 

[El-P]

Hopefully the Rose/Shafir unit means it's over for Guerrero on TV. And I mean, if she's a positive element backstage, cool. But she brought nothing positive as a character. And Nyla Rose absolutely doesn't need anyone to cut promos for her. Glad they are trying with Shafir, I really like her, probably because of her uniqueness and shoot-style tendencies. Really good match too, Toni Storm is the one, there's no doubt about it.

I like what they are doing with the announcing team, getting Taz doing Dynamite and having only JR show up for the second half (I will miss Taz on Rampage though). Very WCW of them, likewise this double battle royal deal, which was short and fun, with enough booking element to build for future matches and the cool fakes by Silver and Hangman (never saw that before, that was nice).

[C.S.]

On 7/1/2022 at 10:28 PM, sek69 said:

Dave has mentioned more than once that New Japan stubbornly refuses to adapt for the US market, and then is puzzled when they have a show that doesn't draw that much. 

I've said it time and time again that NJPW has no idea what its doing in the U.S., NJPW Strong is a complete waste of time and money (even if it's good) for that reason, and the failure of NJPW World to expand to more devices or even offer a proper English website without a fucking browser translation patch pretty much says it all. 

[sek69]

NJPW Strong had a purpose when everyone was stuck where they were during the pandemic and it was something for the dojo crew to do.