Hey Scott!!!
Long time reader. Third time that I write to you. I was reading an article you posted on the blog where Vince McMahon brought the funny! Well he kept it coming, just make sure to read this article. Sometimes I wonder how a man in such denial of the performance of his own business can be such a millionaire. Well that's how life works sometimes...
http://pwtorch.com/artman2/publish/WWE_News_3/article_63583.shtml
Take care and keep the good work up!
Funny how Vince is STILL claiming 1.3 million buys for Wrestlemania. It did 1.1 million, which is absolutely impressive but far from the biggest of all time, and further it's kind of ridiculous to just add 200,000 buys (or $10,000,000 gross revenue give or take) simply because that happened to be the number they invented the week after the show. Like, people have actual money invested in their company, they can't just do interviews where they make up numbers and hope no one calls them on it. At least I'd assume not.
The torch website with all their adds looks ridiculous. Utter nonsense. It's why I only visit them once a year. If that.
ReplyDeleteWow what a douchey interview. I cringed while reading that.
ReplyDeleteVince is a supreme douche.
ReplyDeleteYeah Vince is still trying to work out the carnie from his system I think. The WWE has been a lot better in the 2000s about initially reporting buyrates since they became a public company at least (although they are still routinely high). At least they haven't claimed to have the largest audience in pay-per-view history for a show before it was even over lately.
ReplyDeleteHave the quarterly financials that include WM's buyrate on them been released? It is illegal to misreport on them if you are a public company, so whatever the buys on those financials are the actual buys. Long gone are the days when they were privately owned and they could just make up a number and no one could really fact check it.
ReplyDeleteI thought Wrestlemania had like 1.22 million buys?
ReplyDeleteYou mean the legitimate business world is completely honest and forthcoming? Even those with shareholders? Huh.
ReplyDeleteYeah, the issue in this case is that the initially announced numbers are only estimates given before all of the buys are actually tabulated -- Vince is just touting the numbers he remembers from those initial reports (which almost always run high) and not what is actually reported -- or rather what will be reported, WrestleMania will be officially reported in their next update on August 2nd.
ReplyDeleteI don't think that's exactly illegal, because he wouldn't use that number when speaking with his stockholders, but he'll use it freely when speaking in interviews such as this one. It should be noted that even on their quarterly reports that #s are
reported as "approximate figures" as well -- they tend to round them up a bit from the actual numbers.
It's been the same deal with the WrestleMania attendance over the past few years -- Vince and the WWE have casually mentioned that WrestleMania 23 had ticket sales of "over 80,000 fans" when the truth is that there were not even 75,000 in the building and about 68,000 of those were paid tickets.
They lowered their estimate again back in June to 1,150,000.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.snl.com/interactive/lookandfeel/4121687/Key-Performance-Indicators.pdf
Supreme confidence can help you wildly succeed, but once you do you need to temper it with caution and objectivity...or you turn into an immature rambling sociopathic idiot like Vince.
ReplyDeleteDon't have a problem with what Vince said, UFC's TV ratings are crap.
ReplyDeleteI don't think that's fair to supreme douches.
ReplyDeleteI'll take UFC's profit over WWE's any day.
ReplyDeleteSpin it how you want to, Vin Man, but the bottom line is that....
1. Your ratings aren't much better.
2. You are getting BEYOND smoked in the PPV business.
Okay, glad we cleared that up. Can we move on now from Mr. Micro McMahonagement?
WWE is still pretty damn profitable, but the problem is that the total revenue has declined greatly and the profit is kept up by constantly cutting costs and playing games with the numbers. Like, house show business is down, so you book less guess and pay them less, or report their salaries in a different department, and suddenly BOOM, look at those incredibly profitable house shows!
ReplyDeleteAnd what exactly does "We're up 30% in PPV since Wrestlemania" even MEAN? Up 30% total over last year? Domestically or internationally? As Dave pointed out on the F4W board tonight, they invested millions in Brock to draw 150,000 buys for Extreme Rules and UFC did a nothing show from Brazil with zero promotion and RICH FRANKLIN on top as a last-second replacement and beat that number by about 30,000 buys with it. And that's the lowest buyrate they've ever gotten in the current era!
Dana White has generally been pretty classy about ignoring Vince and vice-versa, but man, Vince is poking the wrong bear here.
What profit? The UFC is due to pay back an $500 million loan they took out years ago. Why do you think they sold 10% of their business to
ReplyDeleteAbu Dhabi’s Flash Entertainment.
1. Your ratings aren't much better.
ReplyDeleteThat makes no sense. A taped episode of Smackdown gets a much bigger rating than a live UFC event on FX..
Hell, FX showed a movie last friday that got about 3 million viewers! Damn, maybe FX should just show crappy movie than some lame ass UFC programming.
I'm a big UFC fan but logic is king.
Vince better scared of Dana! Dana's gonna bust out one of his patented....
ReplyDelete"Listen...listen...It's gonna be a WARRRR!!!"
Be scared Vince man.
Vince is a douche for telling like it is? Put on an apron and bake yourself some cupcakes.
ReplyDeleteChange your tampon.
ReplyDeleteScott Keith says that WM did 100,000 Buys because he's an UFC Fan now.
ReplyDeleteLadies and Germs, Our new troll.
ReplyDeleteIn terms of trends, WWE is back to 1996 with some of these ratings.
ReplyDeleteGranted, that's adjusted for how many more families have TV sets, not to mention in comparison to other cable programming. The numbers would be skewed, by comparison, but the point is that they're not catching fire at all, so they shouldn't cast stones at other fighting companies about not having ratings.
Scott, brother, I'm afraid that there's some strange karma brewing, and that if they keep playing a dangerous game of "fuck with the numbers", an investor is going to get pretty pissed off...
ReplyDelete...and then kicked out of the Shareholders' meeting.
...yeah... you wont be here long...
ReplyDeletedont u have to pay for the torch?
ReplyDeleteThe thing with Vince is that he can always claim kayfabe - oh, sure, he SAID that WM did 1.3 million buys when it was only 1.1 million, but, see, in the kayfabe world of the "WWE Universe", WM *did* do 1.3 million buys. Just like Mark Henry really IS the world's strongest man.
ReplyDeleteDo you understand the business world? It is not unusual for a company to take out an aggressive loan when they're revamping and updating their business models like Zuffa did in 06 (I think that's the year) when they took their loan out. Fact is, they maintain a good credit rating and they're probably a billion dollar company between merch, ppv and tv deals around the world.
ReplyDeleteGo troll elsewhere or at least do a better job at it.
OK, we're done here.
ReplyDeleteWe're grousing about Raw 1000, but with the 20-year anniversary coming up in January, I don't think we've even seen half the jacking off they're going to do in the run-up to that.
ReplyDelete