Pay Per Views..The future..

[RealMattKozza91]

Is it me or are PPVs in a year will all be themed...

currently...
Royal rumble match
elimination chamber
Money in the bank
Extreme rules
All titles on the line
Hell in a cell
Submission
voting for stipulations
traditional survivor series matches

only PPVs that need a theme are

Backlash, Judgment Day, Bash, No Mercy

Have i missed anything and your thoughts.....

[Jay Carroll]

Backlash's theme is "Wrestlemania redux" aka "We got you suckers to pay 55 bucks 3 weeks ago, now pay 40 for rematches".

Judgment Day's theme is arguably that it's the first real break away from the Wrestlemania storylines, the beginning of new feuds.

[parder]

Well Backlash has the Wresltemania rematch/blowoff gimmick to add another.

Wrestlemania isn't really themed around MITB, it just happens to be a match that is held annually for that event. The bigger theme for Wrestlemania is all about being the Super Bowl of wrestling. And the Hell in a Cell thing with Summerslam is only very recent, but Summerslam already has the theme of being the summer edition of the traditional Big Four.

But yeah I otherwise agree. I think it's a good way to entice people into buying the PPVs, rather than just teasing the possibility of title changes, which hasn't been good for WWE from a booking and thus business perspective when they keep doing title changes at every PPV.

[Jay Carroll]

The problem I have with every PPV having a gimmick to it is that the WWE (and TNA with Lockdown, but that's for the TNA section) has to shoehorn people into gimmick matches for the sake of gimmick matches. However, if you're going to run as many PPV's as the WWE does you're going to have to come up with creative ways of selling them.

Conversely, when the PPV's don't have a special attraction match to them, the sales aren't as good. No Way Out, for instance, has done good numbers the last 2 years, since it is the only time of year you get to see the Elimination Chamber.

[RealMattKozza91]

I forgot Armageddon, that has no theme yet but you guys are right, it will sell but numbers have proved and will prove again this year that cyber sunday will fail and be gone in 2010

[parder]

Well WWE should cut their PPVs from 14 to 12 for a start. It's about time they realised that people pay their cable bills monthly, so they're not going to want two PPVs charged for in one month. If all PPVs are tri-branded now there's really not much point in having more than one a month anyway.

I think it's fine to have gimmicks for the PPVs outside of Wrestlemania and Summerslam, and then use those two events to have dream matches that you're rarely going to see like Taker-Michaels along with the culmination of huge feuds that have built over previous PPVs. Royal Rumble and Survivor Series can also have similarly big matches, but you also have the Rumble match and the traditional survivor series matches as selling points too. Ideally the theme of each PPV should flow nicely with the status of feuds going on, but I guess that's not always possible.

The thing with Cyber Sunday is that it always comes across as overkill in between No Mercy and Survivor Series. This was exacerbated by WWE expecting you to pay just to vote in it last year. I think the voting concept would have been better for when they revived Saturday Night's Main Event, but that ship has long sailed now.

[Marvelously Mediocre]

Judgment Day's theme is irrelevancy.

The Bash's theme is.......umm.....the shit one?

[Heartbreaker]

Royal Rumble
Chamber Of Steel
Wrestlemania
Revenge
The Last Day
Extreme Rules
The Bash
Night Of Champions
Summerslam
Breaking Point
No Mercy
WWE Universe
Survivor Series
The End

I'd predict crappier names...

[greeby]

I think the future is in less PPVs. ROH have taken the first step back in finishing with PPV altogether. While I doubt WWE would go to that extreme, it's definitely time to cut back. If you're going to have world title matches on free TV, then how can you ask someone to shell money out for the same match again on PPV?

[AriadosMan]

Jun 14, 2009 11:10:04 GMT -5 greeby said:

I think the future is in less PPVs. ROH have taken the first step back in finishing with PPV altogether. While I doubt WWE would go to that extreme, it's definitely time to cut back. If you're going to have world title matches on free TV, then how can you ask someone to shell money out for the same match again on PPV?

What exactly did ROH's PPVs draw though? I'm not saying the current system of spamming PPVs is good, I'm saying that WWE would have to lose revenue on some of its PPVs to consider canceling them.

Which brings us to an interesting point...which PPVs do you think will be the first to go?

[parder]

I'm not sure ROH was making any money on them from what I've heard. The company is in a position where Cary and the rest of the team are having to reassess their priorities going forward. They'd need the TV to really take off and the technological capacity to run a live show to think about it again IMO. The only way I see that happening is if Cary is able to persuade Mark Cuban to buy the whole promotion from him. That was one of the potential long term advantages of the HDNet deal.

Anyway, back on topic, with the way they're treating the build to The Bash I wonder if it will disappear next year. Cyber Sunday is another potential one with the numbers it's been doing, but it might depend on how much money they scraped out of text voting.

[Jiren]

Jun 14, 2009 7:34:22 GMT -5 Jay Carroll said:

Backlash's theme is "Wrestlemania redux" aka "We got you suckers to pay 55 bucks 3 weeks ago, now pay 40 for rematches".

That are 90% of the time better

[skiller]

Backlash - The one that makes you question why you bothered buying Wrestlemania... as a matter of fact why did you buy this one?

Judgment Day - It's the equivalent of that morning after where you wake up naked next to your hot girlfriends dad. It's better left forgotten and never mentioned again.

The Bash - The hard dose of reality that that that last pay-per-view left a better taste that whatever you have now.