Earlier this week, it was announced that All Elite Wrestling will launch its “House Rules” series, it’s venture into the house show or non-televised event business. While some might cite the ability for the younger talent on the roster, often those that get very minimal time on the Youtube shows that offer little exposure, to get some valuable in-ring experience, I think a non-televised project for AEW is rather moot.
As we know, the original basis of the pro wrestling business, as far as its use of television, was mostly to use its TV shows to sell the viewers on the live event experience so they’d buy tickets at the box office. At the time, it made sense, as pro wrestling, especially before the expansion of cable, often paid for its local TV time slot with the purpose of marketing its stars to the audience when the live events were in their area. Throughout the 80s, Kamala pummeled some ham sandwich that looked like he changed the oil in your car last week before “Mean” Gene Okerlund told the fans that they could see the Ugandan Giant battle Hulk Hogan at their local arena. Sports entertainment was still viewed as a regional commodity at the time so it didn’t garner anywhere near the ad revenue or commercials that it does today. So, ticket sales, especially before pay-per-view was a regular staple of the industry, were the primary revenue stream for most promotions.
Throughout the past few decades with the evolution of media distribution, more viewers have more exposure to more products. Therefore, it becomes critical, specifically from an advertisement perspective, for companies to invest in avenues that will get their products seen by consumers that will make the purchases of those products. For example, USA paid $1 billion for the five-year deal for the broadcast rights to Raw because a show with consistent and steadily ratings (even as sluggish as they’ve been in recent years) brings the network better ad revenue and more money for commercials that air on the channel. Without the ratings to demonstrate that people tune into the channel, advertisers wouldn’t have a reason to put their commercial on the network to attempt to sell their particular products to the audience.
You’re not going to sell “The Best of Classical Music Volume 4” to a pro wrestling audience, but obviously, Mountain Dew thinks the sports entertainment crowd might be a demographic that would purchase their bubbly beverage. When there are so many entertainment options, there are naturally more advertisers to go along with them since that’s how the vast majority of money is made through the media business. Advertisers are willing to spend major cash to get their commercials in front of key viewers.
Again, taking the distribution of media into account and the domino effect it has, the content business, both for broadcast rights fees and pay-per-view, is the biggest revenue stream of the modern era. Quite frankly, the house show business is an antiquated concept. Sure, there’s something special about the rarity of the matches that only happened for those that were in the building, but that’s from a prior era that doesn’t apply to today. If a company is going to pay the costs of transportation, the production crew, and the venue, it doesn’t make economic sense not to film it. Without the ability to distribute the footage for that added revenue, you could theoretically run the risk of actually losing money on the shows, and there’s absolutely no reason that should be acceptable for live events. If you know you’re going to lose money if ticket sales are the only revenue source for an event, you simply shouldn’t run it. AEW has a bigger reach than that and there’s no reason not to utilize it.
Even the reasoning that house shows will give the younger talent on the roster more experience doesn’t justify the possibility of losing money for the company. Any of the younger talent on the roster has the ability to realistically get independent bookings, especially because most shady indy promoter would jump at the chance to have an excuse to put the AEW logo on their posters. If the office wants to give indy groups an incentive to bring in some of the younger AEW roster that might not have star power based on minimal TV exposure, sending Arn Anderson or another legend on the payroll to sign autographs at intermission is a much cheaper option than trying to cover all the costs associated with a house show loop with just ticket and merchandise sales.
Finally, the biggest hurdle for successful house show tours, besides that the nature of non-televised shows that limits revenue, is the fact that the reduced schedule that is one of the bigger perks of an AEW deal, at least for the major names, becomes more crowded with live events. Sure, you can say that Chris Jericho, Jon Moxley, or a few of the other top draws for the company add the star power needed to sell tickets, but the issue is two-fold since it’s reasonable to expect that a wrestler would get paid more if they work more dates than initially scheduled for their contract. That could be one of the more difficult balancing acts of a non-televised venture, you have to give the crowd a line-up that is representative to the product that is featured on national television. A scaled-down version of a national product doesn’t showcase the brand, and as TNA proved, it doesn’t draw fans either. The optics of a sparely-attended show didn’t give the major league impression for TNA and wouldn’t present AEW as a “must see” organization. This might sound too simplistic, but it’s definitely a legitimate consideration as far as the potential for a successful tour, selling tickets, especially within the current economic climate, can be more difficult with non-televised shows. More often than not, if someone buys tickets to a show, they are going to buy tickets to the biggest show possible to be able to maximize the value that they can get for their money. Essentially, if a house show is booked for Baltimore, fans in that market might skip the non-televised show and wait for Dynamite to bring TBS cameras to the area. At this point, fans know that it’s extremely rare that anything of major importance happens at house shows because of the typical notion that “if it didn’t happen on TV then it didn’t happen” and that is more emphasized put on content in the industry.
What do you think? Share your thoughts, opinions, feedback, and anything else that was raised on Twitter @PWMania and Facebook.com/PWMania.
Until next week
-Jim LaMotta
E mail [email protected] | You can follow me on Instagram & Facebook @jimlamotta89
