Vince talks impact of injuries on ratings & attendance

[héad.casé]

"The unfortunate aspect of sometimes in our business, is that we... our performers are not cartoons. They get hurt. This year, leading up to where we are now, we've had an inornate number of injuries. And when you have injuries... you know, there's a whole bunch of them. Roman Reigns being the principle among them. And even John Cena, not an injury type thing but we thought we were going to have John be more of a part of our programming than we do. John, God bless him, is making more movies. And even John, I would think, would say, 'Geez, I thought I was going to spend more time with what I love to do,' which is WWE. So, he's been coming in and out, he's not really a part of out storyline. You lose John, you lose Roman Reigns."

"In addition to that, we've had injuries... Sasha Banks, Becky Lynch, who is one of our top female performers, was injured. Kevin Owens, Sami Zayn, Bray Wyatt, Charlotte Flair, Alexa Bliss, Braun Strowman, Dean Ambrose, Ember Moon, Samoa Joe, Akam from a new tag team, Jason Jordan, Fandango, Big Show, Seth Rollins. It's like we... you had all these injuries, which is really unusual for us, and they're characters. It's no different if you're writing a soap opera and all of a sudden your main character wasn't there. You're in the middle of production, what do you do? You very nimbly change the storyline, but it's not as good as the original one. Sometimes it is better because we're pretty good at it, but those are things that we're faced with, and one of the reasons why television ratings have dropped."

"And one of the reasons, obviously, from a live event standpoint, that's dropped too. Because if you don't have your favorites on television, obviously you can't see the at a live event either. We're wide open and Ronda's done an extraordinary job. There will be other individuals coming from different areas that will join us on a longterm basis, that will help us as well"


Source: 4th Quarter 2018 earnings call

[Hit Girl]

Yeah, injuries.

That's the reason for the decline.


Sure.

[Deleted]

I mean they weren't doing great ratings even when all of those people were around...

[Doctor No]

Feb 8, 2019 16:07:40 GMT -5 Hit Girl said:

Yeah, injuries.

That's the reason for the decline.


Sure.

Nice way to blame the wrestlers, without blaming the wrestlers. They really need a union.

[Perd]

WE ARE THE NATION OF OBFUSCATION

[Lupin the Third]

Interesting, Vince. Allow me to retort:

*Clears throat*

.....BULLSHIT.

[Deleted]

But..I thought it was Baron Corbin being a bad GM.

[cjh]

Feb 8, 2019 16:16:53 GMT -5 Doctor No said:

Feb 8, 2019 16:07:40 GMT -5 Hit Girl said:

Yeah, injuries.

That's the reason for the decline.


Sure.

Nice way to blame the wrestlers, without blaming the wrestlers. They really need a union.

He's not blaming them for anything.  He's saying he believes fans tune out if the wrestlers they like are gone.

[Baldobomb-22-OH-MAN!!!]

I'll be fair to Vince here. It's definitely not the only reason that ratings are down, or.even the chief reason, but it REALLY doesn't help.

[Deleted]

I kind of love that he felt compelled to bring up Akam in listing top stars they're missing out on.

[Pushed to the Moon]

He's right about the injuries being the problem. They're still recovering from Austin retiring injured in 2003!

[rnrk supports BLM]

I really can believe Vince genuinely thinks ratings/attendance problems in WWE today are due to Roman Reigns being gone.

[Final Countdown Jones]

Ember Moon is total boo but I'm not pretending to a f***ing moment that she's drawing anyone to TV when they just straight-up don't do anything with her. God, Vince literally just compiled the list of everyone who hit an injury on the main roster and is trying to act like each of them has some kind of profound effect on the ratings. Anything to pretend it's not the writing I guess.

[111111]

Bray Wyatt has been cleared for months and not doing anything.

[mrbananagrabber]

“Sasha Banks, Becky Lynch (who is one of our top female performers”)

Sasha: screw the injuries Vince, THAT hurt.

[Deleted]

Feb 8, 2019 16:44:52 GMT -5 Final Countdown Jones said:

Ember Moon is total boo but I'm not pretending to a f***ing moment that she's drawing anyone to TV when they just straight-up don't do anything with her. God, Vince literally just compiled the list of everyone who hit an injury on the main roster and is trying to act like each of them has some kind of profound effect on the ratings. Anything to pretend it's not the writing I guess.

And for that matter Sasha who has missed... no actual time at all because she just took the one Raw off and still showed up / technically wrestled on this week's despite being injured.

[carp (SPC, Itoh Respect Army)]

Oh hey, awesome, sounds like a really good reason to restructure the way you handle your talent, so they're not putting so much wear and tear on their bodies! Like, you can just have it a part of people's contracts that they cycle through time off and time on, stop encouraging overwork by tying pay to merch sales, and strategically spread out house show duties to keep any given person from working too much in one week!

Wait, you're... not going to do any of that? Um. Okay then.

[Kevin Hamilton]

Perhaps an off-season....

[H-Virus]

I hate to suggest the boring solution, but maybe give your talent more time off to rest and let their banged up bodies heal properly...?

[Dub H]

Or maybe the writing is awful.

Do the good Writers get injured often?

I also laugh that Vince goes "We are supposed to have John! How could we prepare to not have John Cena?!"