Prelim PPV buys for Summer Slam

[andrew8798]

298k total...186k domestic

2012 prelim numbers were 350k total...264k domestic

[Raskovnik]

Well, at least I was one of those buys for this year.

[Krazee]

i feel proud that i contributed to those numbers

[thelonewolf527]

I absolutely love reading the comments on the 411Mania posting of this news piece where everyone's like "Well there's streams now, the product's not like the past, it's expensive" and blah blah blah blah blah blah. Hypocrites will all of a sudden stop with there "things need to change" argument once their guy is the focus and doesn't do the business they expected.

[Pushed to the Moon]

Bad for business.

[1 Free Moon-Down with Burger]

Sept 20, 2013 16:10:33 GMT -5 thelonewolf527 said:

I absolutely love reading the comments on the 411Mania posting of this news piece where everyone's like "Well there's streams now, the product's not like the past, it's expensive" and blah blah blah blah blah blah. Hypocrites will all of a sudden stop with there "things need to change" argument once their guy is the focus and doesn't do the business they expected.

Happens all the time.

[Chip]

Pretty solid for a PPV that nobody expected to have a WWE title change and one that didn't have Cena.

[andrew8798]

Except Cena was on Summer Slam

[MGH]

Great PPV. Glad I watched it.

[Deleted]

To be fair last year has Brocks 2nd match in years. He's been back a while now so probably isn't affecting ratings

[SEAN CARLESS]

Sept 20, 2013 16:10:33 GMT -5 thelonewolf527 said:

I absolutely love reading the comments on the 411Mania posting of this news piece where everyone's like "Well there's streams now, the product's not like the past, it's expensive" and blah blah blah blah blah blah. Hypocrites will all of a sudden stop with there "things need to change" argument once their guy is the focus and doesn't do the business they expected.

This number has way more to do with Lesnar/HHH drawing the buyrate last year, than Bryan or Cena "failing" this year. Lesnar was a boon to ppv in 2012. His stock has faded since however thanks to poor and egocentric, self-serving booking.

["Trickster Dogg" James Jesse]

Sept 20, 2013 16:10:33 GMT -5 thelonewolf527 said:

I absolutely love reading the comments on the 411Mania posting of this news piece where everyone's like "Well there's streams now, the product's not like the past, it's expensive" and blah blah blah blah blah blah. Hypocrites will all of a sudden stop with there "things need to change" argument once their guy is the focus and doesn't do the business they expected.

Or maybe that decontextualized numbers indicate nothing whatsoever about the purchase rationale of viewers given the relationship to the televised product. For example, Sheamus was on the Summerslam 2012 card in a World Heavyweight Title match. But Sheamus, because of injury, was not on this year's Summerslam card. That would be as legitimate of a response to say why the numbers are lower as having Daniel Bryan in the main event, because we have no way of proving or disproving the claim because pay-per-view buyrates are an extensive, absolute measure (you can turn off the show, WWE still has your money regardless) whereas ratings are an intensive, relative measure (assuming you're a part of a Nielsen household, you can turn off the show and WWE will be able to track changes of audience saturation over the time period of the show, UNLIKE pay-per-view buyrates).

So in itself, a lower buyrate does not automatically mean that Daniel Bryan is somehow less of a 'draw'. A comparison of, say, 6 months of Daniel Bryan pay-per-view main events cross-listed with buyrate numbers from the previous year would at least have a stronger correlation than the specious claims that you and the 411Mania are making (because the structures of your arguments are exactly the same, despite working toward opposite ends). At the very least, seeing the fluctuations of buyrate numbers between Bryan-led pay-per-views (correlated with the ratings) to then be contrasted with the previous year's buyrate numbers (taking account of variables like talent featured, matches promoted, overall booking strategies, rating results by segment breakdown, etc.) would give WWE at least some idea of whether or not Bryan in fact can be a main event drawing talent or not. But without such information and interpretation, we really cannot say anything meaningful or conclusive about what these buyrate numbers really 'mean' one way or the other.

Nevertheless, you're more than welcome to keep sticking it to the hypocrites without any empirical evidence based in reality to do so. That will certainly show those posters at 411Mania the hubris of their rhetoric.

[thelonewolf527]

Sept 20, 2013 16:41:53 GMT -5 "Trickster Dogg" James Jesse said:

Sept 20, 2013 16:10:33 GMT -5 thelonewolf527 said:

I absolutely love reading the comments on the 411Mania posting of this news piece where everyone's like "Well there's streams now, the product's not like the past, it's expensive" and blah blah blah blah blah blah. Hypocrites will all of a sudden stop with there "things need to change" argument once their guy is the focus and doesn't do the business they expected.

Or maybe that decontextualized numbers indicate nothing whatsoever about the purchase rationale of viewers given the relationship to the televised product. For example, Sheamus was on the Summerslam 2012 card in a World Heavyweight Title match. But Sheamus, because of injury, was not on this year's Summerslam card. That would be as legitimate of a response to say why the numbers are lower as having Daniel Bryan in the main event, because we have no way of proving or disproving the claim because pay-per-view buyrates are an extensive, absolute measure (you can turn off the show, WWE still has your money regardless) whereas ratings are an intensive, relative measure (assuming you're a part of a Nielsen household, you can turn off the show and WWE will be able to track changes of audience saturation over the time period of the show, UNLIKE pay-per-view buyrates).

So in itself, a lower buyrate does not automatically mean that Daniel Bryan is somehow less of a 'draw'. A comparison of, say, 6 months of Daniel Bryan pay-per-view main events cross-listed with buyrate numbers from the previous year would at least have a stronger correlation than the specious claims that you and the 411Mania are making (because the structures of your arguments are exactly the same, despite working toward opposite ends). At the very least, seeing the fluctuations of buyrate numbers between Bryan-led pay-per-views (correlated with the ratings) to then be contrasted with the previous year's buyrate numbers (taking account of variables like talent featured, matches promoted, overall booking strategies, rating results by segment breakdown, etc.) would give WWE at least some idea of whether or not Bryan in fact can be a main event drawing talent or not. But without such information and interpretation, we really cannot say anything meaningful or conclusive about what these buyrate numbers really 'mean' one way or the other.

Nevertheless, you're more than welcome to keep sticking it to the hypocrites without any empirical evidence based in reality to do so. That will certainly show those posters at 411Mania the hubris of their rhetoric.

Except that last year everyone was talking about how awful the Triple H/Lesnar match was going to be and how no one was going to care about it. Now all of a sudden people are saying "Well last year had Triple H and Lesnar on it" so there's hypocrisy. It always happens when guys like Punk and Bryan don't do big numbers, there's ALWAYS a reason, yet when it's other people, there's NEVER a reason.

[SEAN CARLESS]

Sept 20, 2013 16:49:51 GMT -5 thelonewolf527 said:

Sept 20, 2013 16:41:53 GMT -5 "Trickster Dogg" James Jesse said:

Or maybe that decontextualized numbers indicate nothing whatsoever about the purchase rationale of viewers given the relationship to the televised product. For example, Sheamus was on the Summerslam 2012 card in a World Heavyweight Title match. But Sheamus, because of injury, was not on this year's Summerslam card. That would be as legitimate of a response to say why the numbers are lower as having Daniel Bryan in the main event, because we have no way of proving or disproving the claim because pay-per-view buyrates are an extensive, absolute measure (you can turn off the show, WWE still has your money regardless) whereas ratings are an intensive, relative measure (assuming you're a part of a Nielsen household, you can turn off the show and WWE will be able to track changes of audience saturation over the time period of the show, UNLIKE pay-per-view buyrates).

So in itself, a lower buyrate does not automatically mean that Daniel Bryan is somehow less of a 'draw'. A comparison of, say, 6 months of Daniel Bryan pay-per-view main events cross-listed with buyrate numbers from the previous year would at least have a stronger correlation than the specious claims that you and the 411Mania are making (because the structures of your arguments are exactly the same, despite working toward opposite ends). At the very least, seeing the fluctuations of buyrate numbers between Bryan-led pay-per-views (correlated with the ratings) to then be contrasted with the previous year's buyrate numbers (taking account of variables like talent featured, matches promoted, overall booking strategies, rating results by segment breakdown, etc.) would give WWE at least some idea of whether or not Bryan in fact can be a main event drawing talent or not. But without such information and interpretation, we really cannot say anything meaningful or conclusive about what these buyrate numbers really 'mean' one way or the other.

Nevertheless, you're more than welcome to keep sticking it to the hypocrites without any empirical evidence based in reality to do so. That will certainly show those posters at 411Mania the hubris of their rhetoric.

Except that last year everyone was talking about how awful the Triple H/Lesnar match was going to be and how no one was going to care about it. Now all of a sudden people are saying "Well last year had Triple H and Lesnar on it" so there's hypocrisy. It always happens when guys like Punk and Bryan don't do big numbers, there's ALWAYS a reason, yet when it's other people, there's NEVER a reason.

Anybody who said that was an idiot. I remember people saying that HHH might go over and how stupid that would be, but HHH was still a huge star, and Lesnar still had his aura going in. Anyone who knew what they were talking about knew it would draw.

As for the Punk/Bryan thing -- you have to understand that it goes both ways. For every person who makes excuses for why they're not drawing huge, there's an equally annoying contingent who try to stir the shit and embrace the status quo simply because, for whatever reason, it bothers them that they're own personal preferences are no longer being catered to. They want to tear down the jubilation that some have for the often deserved rise of these favorites because they don't like it, agree with it, or in some extreme cases, are threatened by it. It's weird. It's like they want say a Bryan to fail out of spite.

[rnrk supports BLM]

Holy crap, that's awful. Roughly tied with 2011 (you know, the Summer of Punk that was totally going to start a new boom period) as the second worst Summerslam buyrate of all time.

And that's WITH Brock, even up against a tomato can, which makes this look even worse.

[AdamAFL was sooooo wrong]

That's a little disappointing. Hopefully Night of Champions does a little better than expected. Though NoC was a pretty weak looking card. I hope this doesn't affect the Bryan/Punk push.

[Deleted]

[I've got some bad news...]

Something to note, there was an outage to Cablevision customers pretty much before and during the whole PPV.

[Dean-o]

Sept 20, 2013 17:22:39 GMT -5 AdamAFL was sooooo wrong said:

That's a little disappointing. Hopefully Night of Champions does a little better than expected. Though NoC was a pretty weak looking card. I hope this doesn't affect the Bryan/Punk push.

I kind of think NoC will be their worst buyrate in quite some time. Battlegrounds won't do much better, and HIAC has been watered down so much, I don't think it is a draw anymore either.

[kidglov3s]

Sept 20, 2013 17:59:28 GMT -5 Dean-o said:

HIAC has been watered down so much, I don't think it is a draw anymore either.

It seems that way but somehow every year it does well even if the shows themselves tend to be mediocre.