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ROH scaling back


MikeCampbell

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So the WON is reporting that ROH is starting to scale back on the spending. Puder is already done with them for now, they'll be cutting down on the amount of wrestlers they fly in, and the amount of guys they're booking.

 

I'm honestly not surprised at all, between the trips to England, Japan, and the two shows on the West Coast, there's no way they could have hoped to break even. Nto to mention that while the PPV venture was low risk, it was also very low reward. Especially given ROH's tendency to completely rely on word of mouth.

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Guest robgomm

They seem to run more shows than ever now and still produce a DVD for every show. Maybe they need to consider their business model to see whether it still achieves what they want it to. Personally, I follow WWE first and ROH comes second. But I also want to follow wrestling from Japan, Mexico, other indies and historical stuff. So I choose carefully where my money goes and I save my money for the main ROH shows, skipping a lot of other shows. The more shows they run and produce DVDs of, the more I seem to skip.

 

I don't know how much downloading affects their business. I don't download wrestling (56kb connection - oh yes) but obviously many people do. Maybe making shows downloadable at a slightly cheaper price would bring in more money. Not sure of the detail, though.

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I'm actually thinking the opposite, they need to scale themselves back a bit. They're getting to be like SMW. Too small to be big, too big to be small.

 

Being on TV would mean probably paying for a timeslot. And either running more shows, or doing what ECW and the territories did, and tape like a month of TV shows at regular shows. But by doing that, what incentive does the average fan have to spend the $$$ on DVDs when he can see everything on TV?

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Living in the Poconos, I get the usual NYC and Philly sports channels. Philadelphia just has Comcast Philly, and that's pretty filled up with it's coverage. NYC though has SNY (Mets) and the YES Network (Yankees). Both networks have quite a bit of filler content, and perhaps ROH could jump into the middle of that.

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They really need to go back to their 2004 number of shows. I reckon they'll have been making more money back then, as loads of people bought the DVD's.

 

Joe v Punk II, for instance; I'm willing to bet that if that match happened now, it would get lost in the crowd, whereas back then, it was a match that everyone had to see. Now, there seems to be 3 'must see' matches every show.

 

And their shows haven't improved at all since then; still the useless 4 corner survivals, perhaps the match quality is better all round now, but character wise they've fallen off a whole lot.

 

Reading the results, there's pretty much nobody apart from Jacobs who is compelling.

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I'm actually thinking the opposite, they need to scale themselves back a bit. They're getting to be like SMW. Too small to be big, too big to be small.

They were getting to be more like ECW, with Gabe thinking PPV would strongly impact the business direction. Hasn't happened.

 

He appears to be more realistic about hitting a roadblock than Paul E was.

 

 

John

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Seriously, what's the deal with Daniel Puder? The guy took down Kurt Angle in a throwaway Smackdown segment practically everyone except Meltzer has forgotten about.

 

He allegedly has superstar presence/charisma, which led to Meltzer & Sapolsky hilariously admitting in the WON that everyone in ROH is a bland fuck.

Okay... so I admit thinking that was a great 1-2 punch. :)

 

 

John

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I'm actually thinking the opposite, they need to scale themselves back a bit. They're getting to be like SMW. Too small to be big, too big to be small.

They were getting to be more like ECW, with Gabe thinking PPV would strongly impact the business direction. Hasn't happened.

 

He appears to be more realistic about hitting a roadblock than Paul E was.

In fairness, PPV was a Cary Silkin idea and Sapolsky was allegedly strongly against it.
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The PPV idea, at its core was kind of ass backward. No one just browses through On-Demand menus. That's effectively browsing to see the best way to throw away 5-10-20 bucks. I could barely even find ROH on there, while actively looking for it, how were casual fans just suppose to stumble on it? Then after going through the arduous Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess Journey to actually see it, we're then supposed to plop down 10, 15 and sometimes 25 bucks based on a graphic featuring an obese asian and dude with spiky hair, that was labeled as "boxing".

 

SMH

 

ROH is at the first point in it's entire existence where it's not going to grow for the foreseeable future. How they cope now, will be crucial.

 

(First post, but lurked/been registered/re-registerd for ages)

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I know it sounds like a Meltzerism, but Puder really does have "it," at least as much as pretty much anyone in WWE. I'd cite his fight at the Playboy Mansion and a ridiculous interview he did on Observer Live some time ago as proof; he just has this great cocky charisma you can't teach, and a great look. I have no idea what his ring skills are like or if he would translate in WWE, but this isn't baseless crackpottery. I'm also pretty sure that Puder trained with Herb's boy Frank Shamrock for years, which is probably why Dave would be going on and on about the Angle thing years after everyone else has forgotten; he's probably known Puder since he was in high school.

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I can see a person catching a show on PPV and becoming a fan. The problem is that I for example would have no exposure to its availability outside of word of mouth.

I downloaded the PPV everybody was talking about. Driven? Anyway, made me realize I was right when I stopped watching ROH.

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