buys

Brock = No Buys?

1st July 2013 by Scott Keith
From the new WON:
"Extreme Rules this year was listed by WWE as doing 131,000 domestic buys and 104,000 overseas buys, for 235,000 total. The domestic number is down 17.6% and the overseas number is down 7.1% from last year’s 159,000 and 112,000 numbers, totaling 271,000.  […]  As far as profit margin goes, a Lesnar show needs to do about 70,000 added buys to where the profit would be the same. So this was down from last year, but last year was a Lesnar show. The 2011 Extreme Rules show did 216,000 total buys and 108,000 domestic. So, more than any show to date, Lesnar didn’t increase business anywhere close to enough to justify the expense."
The golden goose appears to be running out of eggs, but really they've made him into just another guy so it's hard to be too surprised about that.  Having him headline a B show, in a match that no one wanted to see, was also a huge mistake.  
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WrestleMania – Under 1,000,000 Buys?

17th March 2013 by Scott Keith
What would you say the chances are this WrestleMania fails to eclipse 1,000,000 buys for the first time in a few years? 

The build has been bad and the line-up fails to inspire me to open my wallet.  The Shield vs. Ryback & Friends is old already, Punk and Taker may both be hurt, Brock's being wasted for the glorification of HHH's massive ego, and the Del Rio-Swagger feud is IC Title level stuff.  No celebrities either.

As far as Rock vs. Cena: Twice In A Lifetime goes, maybe it's just too soon, but I don't care to see it again right now.  That said, I same thing about Taker-HHH last year and they stole the show, so who knows?  Rock didn't exactly add a ton to the Royal Rumble buyrate, either.

Regardless, I'm still watching WrestleMania, primarily because of the Lloyd Christmas chance that the Shield will help Cena win the title because he can't beat Rock on his own and the movie star taking the title and top spot is "unjust".  I can't take another babyface Cena title run.  Do you think at least 999,999 other people will find a reason to order WrestleMania this year?
I would give it a zero percent chance of doing under a million buys.  If the show was to drop 250,000 buys from last year, Vince McMahon would get thrown off Titan Towers by the investors.  Plus Rock totally did add a ton to Royal Rumble, just not enough to justify his salary.  Wrestlemania will be a different story.  Ratings are way up, buyrates are up, and there's no real trends to indicate that WM will be anything but a huge success.  I'm pretty sure this one is either going to tie or break the record.  
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Royal Rumble 2013 buys

13th March 2013 by Scott Keith
Hey Scott,
Two emails from me in one day! Lucky you.

Just saw that the first estimates of the Rumble buys are in, and, well…huh.
http://pwtorch.com/artman2/publish/WWE_News_3/article_68911.shtml

Basically it's around 440,000 buys on the low end, or 498,000 on the higher end. Considering that the previous few Rumbles have hovered around 445,000 buys SANS Rock, I can't see how they aren't let down with this. Obviously something on the lower end of that scale is a absolute disaster, but even if they do end up at around a hair under 500,000 I'd assume that's lower than expectations too. I mean, at best, The Rock brought in an extra 50,000 buys for a singles match in which he was guaranteed to win the WWE Title? They had to have been expecting a bigger bump than that.

So assuming the final number ends up being somewhere in that range, what do you think? Should they be overjoyed to have gotten any kind of bump in this day and age? Or is it a disappointment? And if it's the latter, why do you think the show did such a low number: poor build, declining drawing power of The Rock, Punk being a poor opponent, overall decline in the company's popularity? SNITSKY? Whose fault is it?
Later,
-Worst in the World
Yeah, Meltzer was talking about that last night, and it's definitely a crushing disappointment for them.  Don't forget too that 500K is the worldwide number, and they make less money off international buys, so the really important number is domestic.  And there, Rock only boosted things something like 30K.  Normally they'd be like "Yippey!  Highest Rumble and highest non-Wrestlemania buyrate in 5 years!" but Rock is getting a FUCK-TON of money to do these matches, and an extra 30,000 buys isn't getting them anywhere near breaking even on the deal.  Basically they would have been better off leaving Rock off the show and promoting the hell out of the Rumble match itself.  It might have only increased buys a few extra, but they'd make a lot more profit on it. 
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Brock = Buys

27th September 2012 by Scott Keith

From this morning's Observer radio show, Brock Lesnar just made himself look a whole lot better in WWE's eyes because Summerslam did 265,000 domestic buys, which is up close to 50% over last year's show.  International did terrible so it kind of evens out overall, but obviously people are still interesting in watching him sports entertain.  Now if only he had a contract where he could appear on more than a few shows a year and actually build on that sort of momentum.  Regardless, Wrestlemania should be epic now, since Brock will probably be sticking around as a result of this.  

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CM Punk does not equal buys

27th September 2011 by Scott Keith

Oh, forgot to add to the RAW rant:  The buyrate for Summerslam is in, and people are gonna be out on the street as a result.  300K worldwide, which is down from 350 the year before.  That’s about 175 domestic, or in other words PPV is dying fast for the company and they either need to do something wacky like remember how to sell the product, or else they need a huge new revenue stream to replace it.  I would not want to be around Vince right now, I’ll say that much. 

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CM Punk does not equal buys

27th September 2011 by Scott Keith

Oh, forgot to add to the RAW rant:  The buyrate for Summerslam is in, and people are gonna be out on the street as a result.  300K worldwide, which is down from 350 the year before.  That’s about 175 domestic, or in other words PPV is dying fast for the company and they either need to do something wacky like remember how to sell the product, or else they need a huge new revenue stream to replace it.  I would not want to be around Vince right now, I’ll say that much. 

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