When they paper the house ...

[saintpat]

One or more of the dirtsheets reported that Survivor Series had a "heavily-papered house," drawing like 8,500 in Indianapolis.

My question: how, exactly, does that work?

It would be hard to give away enough tickets through radio promotions (trivia questions, 12th caller, whatever) to make a difference in the total attendance. Even if you gave away several hundred that way, it wouldn't make it look like the crowd was that much bigger.

So what do they do? Guys standing out on the street handing out tickets? If you buy tickets at the box office they give you 2-for-1 when you pick them up? Or do they run a "free tickets" ad in the newspaper classified and hand them out at a storefront?

I would assume such decisions have to be made rather late in the process -- they aren't going to start giving out tickets a month ahead of time, when there's still a chance a lot more people might buy them. Even a week out, there would still presumably be some hope that a late advertising blitz could made for a late surge in buys. And if you're giving them away the day of or the day before, I'm guessing a lot of people who get free tickets may not even show up because it wasn't in their plans or whatever -- those people obviously aren't invested into using the tickets or they would have bought them.

So if anyone has ever gotten a free ticket when WWE (or WCW for that matter) decided to "paper" the show -- how did that happen?

[Allie Kitsune]

Nov 23, 2012 18:35:18 GMT -5 saintpat said:

One or more of the dirtsheets reported that Survivor Series had a "heavily-papered house," drawing like 8,500 in Indianapolis.

My question: how, exactly, does that work?

It would be hard to give away enough tickets through radio promotions (trivia questions, 12th caller, whatever) to make a difference in the total attendance. Even if you gave away several hundred that way, it wouldn't make it look like the crowd was that much bigger.

So what do they do? Guys standing out on the street handing out tickets? If you buy tickets at the box office they give you 2-for-1 when you pick them up? Or do they run a "free tickets" ad in the newspaper classified and hand them out at a storefront?

I would assume such decisions have to be made rather late in the process -- they aren't going to start giving out tickets a month ahead of time, when there's still a chance a lot more people might buy them. Even a week out, there would still presumably be some hope that a late advertising blitz could made for a late surge in buys. And if you're giving them away the day of or the day before, I'm guessing a lot of people who get free tickets may not even show up because it wasn't in their plans or whatever -- those people obviously aren't invested into using the tickets or they would have bought them.

So if anyone has ever gotten a free ticket when WWE (or WCW for that matter) decided to "paper" the show -- how did that happen?

Do things like give 2-3 tickets to Arena Staff, staff of the company that owns naming rights to the Arena, etc...

[joebob27]

Radio promotions, employee handouts as mentioned above, dumping cheap tickets on stubhub, givebacks to the arenas/tenants (if you are on a mailing list for an arena/sports team you will get offers for discounted or 2 for 1's), all the way down to physically handing out tickets to people who are wandering around outside.

[YiHammer]

A common tactic is also leaving stacks of tickets at local businesses like diners

[2 Cold Scorkum]

Do they specify which areas are papered? I've been to several shows in Indy, including Survivor Series and the side behind the hard camera takes forever to fill up and never quite gets full which leads me to believe they sell very few tickets in that section. The balcony seats behind the hard camera were also completely roped off, though they were packed on the other side.

How did the crowd come off on TV? I thought they were pretty lousy. Or maybe that's because I was in front of the most annoying drunk guy who hadn't watched wrestling in 10 years.

[tigermaskxxxvii]

Include the tickets with Chris Jericho's electricity bill.

[ToyfareMark]

Considering my tickets for Survivor Series were over 100 dollars each (thats face value), and 20 rows off the floor, I can see them having trouble selling it out. But there were plenty of empty seats near the top of the arena, it was nowhere close to being a sellout.

Indianapolis really f***** themselves with Survivor Series. Good luck getting a Wrestlemania now, Indy. Looks like I'll stick to St. Louis for big WWE shows. They always sell out, and the crowds are ALWAYS uber hot. And I don't mean it in that smarky way like Chicago and New York. Looking at it that way, St. Louis may be the best WWE town in America when you take out the smark factor.

The next PPV in St. Louis is Extreme Rules on May 19th. Unlike the 3 week build Survivor Series got, ER will get an almost 7 week build coming off of Wrestlemania. Should be alot of fun.