Liberty bowl

[hulksmash87]

Why didn't Memphis ever run the liberty bowl? Cwf ran the orange bowl wccw ran the cotton bowl and Texas stadium. Memphis was on fire in the 80s surley they could have gotten a respectable crowd in the stadium

[petef3]

You probably need to do better than "respectable" to justify the rent and logistics of running a stadium. And even if they could draw a huge house...well, why did Giant Baba wait so long to run a Dome show? Because he thought that while he could potentially sell the place out, it'd hurt the long-term drawing power of his shows at the Budokan if they were perceived to be less "special." Jarrett was pretty content to draw consistent business on the Coliseum than to try to grasp at a potential big payday and risk having it blow up in his face.

[turkeysandwich]

I believe NWA did run the Liberty Bowl once and had something like 2,000 people in a 60,000 seat stadium. As popular as wrestling was in Memphis (and I am from Memphis) I'm not sure there was ever a card that could have filled the stadium that big and been worth the investment to pay to use the stadium, especially since it is literally next door to the Coliseum. Maybe, just maybe had Hogan stayed in the AWA a year or so longer, Hogan/Lawler might have been a big enough draw a big enough crowd to justify it, but probably not.

[honsou]

I've been listening to a really in depth podcast on the history of pro wrestling and the most interesting thing is as hot as wrestling was in the 70s and 80s you really had a soft cap on crowds at about...20,000 people give or take in the territories, obviously WWF once Wrestlemania gets rolling then becomes the exception.

[Mozenrath]

"Liberty bowl" sounds like something you could get at KFC in July.

[Heeltown, USA]

Jun 17, 2020 2:29:40 GMT -5 honsou said:

I've been listening to a really in depth podcast on the history of pro wrestling and the most interesting thing is as hot as wrestling was in the 70s and 80s you really had a soft cap on crowds at about...20,000 people give or take in the territories, obviously WWF once Wrestlemania gets rolling then becomes the exception.

I read The Death of the Territories recently and really the only people drawing 10k or more were Vince Senior and Sam Muchnik in St. Louis.
Later JCP, Watts and Mid South. Verne, Fritz, Geigel, Graham and their brethern on average would draw in the 2k-5k range on good nights. Exceptional gates might have had 8k-10k in attendance but that was definitely not the norm. Even Georgia Championship Wrestling as it was the first to get national distribution through WTBS was only able to draw in the 5k-7k, at best, when expanding.

To the OP, the examples you cited were all pretty much break even ventures. Sure Vince made some money in Shea but Fritz barely made a cent on his stadium shows, with the Von Erich Memorial Shows being afew bright spots financially in the beginning but even those fizzled out.
Whomever cited Baba’s reluctance to run the Dome has it right. Jarrett knew he could pack that Coliseum every time, giving the cards a bigger feeling and a guaranteed payday. Running bigger venues at half capacity doesn’t have the same charm to the fans, and also makes it harder to juggle your finances.