Chainsaw
T
A very BAD man.
It is what it is
Posts: 90,480
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Post by Chainsaw on Aug 8, 2019 17:00:00 GMT -5
ROH: Yes, sales are sluggish, but hey, most of those 92 tickets are still FRONT ROW! We are still looking at a bright Future Of Honor!
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Post by This Player Hating Mothman on Aug 8, 2019 17:15:50 GMT -5
Seriously though ROH right now is in that same sort of place as your typical 'failing promotion on the decline' story. They lose a bunch of big stars in one go, don't know how to rebuild or who to rebuild around, and they fall from their huge peak to new lows. Except the decline happened in like five months.
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Post by cabbageboy on Aug 8, 2019 17:26:14 GMT -5
I hate to say this but wrestling wars have casualties and when you have two nationally televised sides the others fall by the wayside. If you could take some of the best talent from ROH, Impact, and MLW and put them on AEW TV then you'd have a serious rival promotion.
ROH is basically the AWA in 1989 at this point after Gagne alienated Memphis and World Class.
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Post by mcmahonfan85 on Aug 8, 2019 17:34:37 GMT -5
the shows are over two months away, and the tickets have been on sale to the general public for less than two weeks
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Post by eJm on Aug 8, 2019 17:40:25 GMT -5
the shows are over two months away, and the tickets have been on sale to the general public for less than two weeks I will say, though, that the biggest rushes for ticket sales are usually when they start going on sale and right as they end. So you could be right and they could pick up by October but, again, you should be expecting more than 98 for York Hall of all places.
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Post by cabbageboy on Aug 8, 2019 21:41:37 GMT -5
I took a look at the ROH site. The sales aren't much better for the domestic shows either. Better than this perhaps, but not by much.
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Post by HMARK Center on Aug 8, 2019 22:23:28 GMT -5
I keep saying this in every ROH thread: when you have a roster that includes Marty Scurll, Jeff Cobb, Rush, Dalton Castle, Jonathan Gresham, PCO, Brody King, Jay Lethal, Bandido, Mark Haskins, Flip Gordon, a returning Alex Shelley, and other pretty solid standouts, there is no reason whatsoever why it should feel like your product has fallen off the face of the Earth. I don't mean that in terms of show quality, as ROH is fully capable of putting on good cards; I mean that you just flat-out don't even hear about ROH's product, it's not at the forefront of anybody's mind.
I mean, yes, losing most of the Elite all at once hurt them, it'd have hurt anybody, and ROH certainly was having issues before that with a number of their bigger names being signed to NXT at a rapid pace, but their current roster has more than enough talent on it that, with some decent angles and a couple of hot feuds, they absolutely should be generating enough attention for themselves to be selling tickets to 1,000 seat venues at a brisk enough pace.
Instead, it's like they've gone ghost, and it feels like there are multiple reasons why. I don't think it can be discounted how disappointed many people were with ROH's side of the MSG card; while I didn't dislike it that much while there live, it clearly didn't come across well on broadcast, and that was the promotion's big chance to put its best foot forward for 2019 to a wider audience. The bad PR involving Bully Ray and others has clearly done some damage, as well, for obvious reasons. But the simple truth right now is that people are simply not interested in whatever is being booked right now; nobody's attention is being grabbed, despite the roster having more than enough talent to make some noise.
I'd never recommend train crash booking or going full metal Russo, that'd just make things even worse, but ROH needs to book something, whether a rivalry or a dynamic feud or whatever, that gets people talking on some level. It doesn't have to be anything ridiculous or anything intelligence insulting or overly edgy, it just has to be a loud proclamation "HERE is why you should buy tickets!"
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Post by Mayonnaise on Aug 8, 2019 22:31:25 GMT -5
I do think there is a bit to be said that ROH hurting their ticket sales by showing every show possible live on HonorClub. Yeah, there is nothing like going live but when it comes down to say $100 to go live (ticket, parking, and at least a soda) vs. $30 (say beverage, pizza, and HonorClub), it makes these shows unimportant.
There are only so many first time ever matches available, only so many gimmick matches for a feud, and only so much you can get out of one feud.
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Post by Oh Cry Me a Screwball on Aug 8, 2019 22:47:05 GMT -5
On that note, I've looked at tickets for Vegas next month for Death Before Dishonor and the following TV taping, and yikes. A couple years ago, I had to go secondary market to sit at the back row in this building for 16th Anniversary. Last year, they elected to run the Orleans to increase seating capacity (they ended up running 2000 in a 10,000 seater, but probably made more money not having to turn anyone away). Now, they're struggling to fill one of the smallest venues in their rotation.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 8, 2019 23:43:46 GMT -5
I keep saying this in every ROH thread: when you have a roster that includes Marty Scurll, Jeff Cobb, Rush, Dalton Castle, Jonathan Gresham, PCO, Brody King, Jay Lethal, Bandido, Mark Haskins, Flip Gordon, a returning Alex Shelley, and other pretty solid standouts, there is no reason whatsoever why it should feel like your product has fallen off the face of the Earth. I don't mean that in terms of show quality, as ROH is fully capable of putting on good cards; I mean that you just flat-out don't even hear about ROH's product, it's not at the forefront of anybody's mind. I mean, yes, losing most of the Elite all at once hurt them, it'd have hurt anybody, and ROH certainly was having issues before that with a number of their bigger names being signed to NXT at a rapid pace, but their current roster has more than enough talent on it that, with some decent angles and a couple of hot feuds, they absolutely should be generating enough attention for themselves to be selling tickets to 1,000 seat venues at a brisk enough pace. Instead, it's like they've gone ghost, and it feels like there are multiple reasons why. I don't think it can be discounted how disappointed many people were with ROH's side of the MSG card; while I didn't dislike it that much while there live, it clearly didn't come across well on broadcast, and that was the promotion's big chance to put its best foot forward for 2019 to a wider audience. The bad PR involving Bully Ray and others has clearly done some damage, as well, for obvious reasons. But the simple truth right now is that people are simply not interested in whatever is being booked right now; nobody's attention is being grabbed, despite the roster having more than enough talent to make some noise. I'd never recommend train crash booking or going full metal Russo, that'd just make things even worse, but ROH needs to book something, whether a rivalry or a dynamic feud or whatever, that gets people talking on some level. It doesn't have to be anything ridiculous or anything intelligence insulting or overly edgy, it just has to be a loud proclamation "HERE is why you should buy tickets!"The issue is that ROH never will do that. The early days of ROH had guys like Raven and Necro Butcher who came along and shocked people with their blatant disregard to the Code of Honor, but once Delirious became head booker and then Sinclair called the shots, things began to follow a rather stagnant formula. It's not like they took a WWE PG approach to things; ROH had plenty of violent, bloody battles in the past decade, but you just didn't feel the gravity of the situation. Rather than these matches being the endgame to a long standing war, they felt like a stopgap to another pointless no contest that would prolong the story another few months. The alignment with New Japan after TNA pissed them off with stuff like O-Kato didn't help Ring of Honor since the mantra, in spite of what defenders will say about how impactful it may be when ROH finally won matches, was that New Japan made ROH their bitch between 85 and 95% of the time for the first few years. If it feels like I'm too harsh on Delirious, I actually am, but it's for a damn good reason, because it allowed for Bully Ray to take over and introduce his brand of incompetence that's just going to make ROH even more stale and unpopular. Ultimately you don't need to be shocking and outrageous in Ring of Honor. You just need to take a guy who's hot with crowds and is over with fans and DO SOMETHING WITH HIM! The biggest fear, as I keep saying, was and still is that if you put the belt on him, he'll bolt to WWE or AEW or New Japan and ROH is gonna look stupid, but guess what? It still gives the promotion a rub as people will talk about Ring of Honor and will want to watch ROH programming and pay to see HonorClub events. Keeping your belt on Jay "Knee Braces for Sale" Lethal and Matt "Garbage ProWrestlingTees Shirts" Taven does not help you out since neither guy was hot when they held the belt upon winning, and holding the belt didn't warm them up, either. RUSH is a guy they should hot shot to a match against Taven and just go for it, as it'll have people buzzing about the promotion for a while and get the crowds to see what happens next. However, I doubt Bully Ray is interested in putting the belt on RUSH anytime soon, if ever.
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Post by Super Duper Dragunov on Aug 9, 2019 0:14:09 GMT -5
Midcarder Matt Taven ain't putting any butts in seats. You know what would have sold a shitload of tickets for a UK tour? Putting the f***ing title on Marty Scurll at MSG like everybody wanted!🤬🤦♂️ Marty Scurll not being champion is one of the biggest " " Why he isn't the face of the company. Granted it is likely once his contract comes up he going to AEW with his friends but if ROH really wanted to attempt to convenience him to stay making him the face of the company would do that and likely would help ROH ticket sales. ROH may not be what it was and gone way down hill. They need someone that fans care about on top. Taven is not that guy, Scrull is that guy. It also never helps when they also had Nick Aldis with the NWA title coming on there show talking how it's the most important title around. Doesn't make the ROH World title look good. That's what also gets me about them not putting the belt on Scurll. It's not like he was going to be leaving in a couple months. They could have put the strap on him and given him a nice reign, and then drop it to their next star they want to give the rub to on Marty's way out. This would've been a great way to put over Rush or Bandido honestly.
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Post by "Evil Brood" Jackson Vanik on Aug 9, 2019 0:23:31 GMT -5
It's frustrating because they put on fun shows. I had a blast at Manhattan Mayhem. But for all the reasons everyone mentioned, the product just feels stagnant and the company has lost almost all of its good will. The taping at Hammerstein this year had a ton less people than it did last year. I honestly feel like they need to just hot shot something and see if it works. Take a risk. Put the title on Bandido or Rush. Do something different. Not everyone needs a long six month title reign. I think some unpredictable booking could do them a world of good.
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Post by Can you afford to pay me, Gah on Aug 9, 2019 10:02:32 GMT -5
It's frustrating because they put on fun shows. I had a blast at Manhattan Mayhem. But for all the reasons everyone mentioned, the product just feels stagnant and the company has lost almost all of its good will. The taping at Hammerstein this year had a ton less people than it did last year. I honestly feel like they need to just hot shot something and see if it works. Take a risk. Put the title on Bandido or Rush. Do something different. Not everyone needs a long six month title reign. I think some unpredictable booking could do them a world of good. For sure about title reign length. It only make sense if the champion is showing to be drawing well, Which Taven is shown isn't doing the job and that when it warns a title change quickly.
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Post by The Summer of Muskrat XVII on Aug 9, 2019 10:09:13 GMT -5
the shows are over two months away, and the tickets have been on sale to the general public for less than two weeks I will say, though, that the biggest rushes for ticket sales are usually when they start going on sale and right as they end. So you could be right and they could pick up by October but, again, you should be expecting more than 98 for York Hall of all places. Yeah, this isn’t the old days where wrestling was always a heavy walk up crowd. I believe on average bigger promotions sell something like 70-75% of tickets in the first week, about 10-15% in the last week and the rest in the 2-3 months between those weeks. Unless something major happens between now and then, like a big signing, title change or drastic drop in ticket price they’re probably looking at a horrible house. Those are completely approximated numbers but the first couple days are generally a pretty strong indicator of how the house is gonna be.
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Post by Hypnosis on Aug 9, 2019 10:10:56 GMT -5
It's frustrating because they put on fun shows. I had a blast at Manhattan Mayhem. But for all the reasons everyone mentioned, the product just feels stagnant and the company has lost almost all of its good will. The taping at Hammerstein this year had a ton less people than it did last year. I honestly feel like they need to just hot shot something and see if it works. Take a risk. Put the title on Bandido or Rush. Do something different. Not everyone needs a long six month title reign. I think some unpredictable booking could do them a world of good. For sure about title reign length. It only make sense if the champion is showing to be drawing well, Which Taven is shown isn't doing the job and that when it warns a title change quickly. Taven still being champion is like if Samoa Joe had never defeated Xavier for the title.
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Post by TWERKIN' MAGGLE on Aug 9, 2019 10:14:23 GMT -5
Honestly with their audience being mostly connected to the internet wrestling world, sweeping the Bully Ray and Mandy Leon stuff under the rug was the absolute worst decision they could have made.
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Post by kingoftheindies on Aug 9, 2019 10:14:44 GMT -5
Does Sinclair even care if they're failing? What happens now? Nothing? Nope occasionally you'll hear rumors about how Sinclair is ready to invest heavily in ROH (a couple years ago there were rumors of rebranding the Tennis Network as a new sports station with ROH as one of the big shows) but then as soon as that comes out a report comes out about Sinclair then looking at ROH programming and hating what they see. I said it in another thread that I find it Ironic that Anthem I'd doing everything that ROH fans wished and heard Sinclair would do for the company
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Post by This Player Hating Mothman on Aug 9, 2019 10:54:39 GMT -5
I keep saying this in every ROH thread: when you have a roster that includes Marty Scurll, Jeff Cobb, Rush, Dalton Castle, Jonathan Gresham, PCO, Brody King, Jay Lethal, Bandido, Mark Haskins, Flip Gordon, a returning Alex Shelley, and other pretty solid standouts, there is no reason whatsoever why it should feel like your product has fallen off the face of the Earth. I don't mean that in terms of show quality, as ROH is fully capable of putting on good cards; I mean that you just flat-out don't even hear about ROH's product, it's not at the forefront of anybody's mind. I mean, yes, losing most of the Elite all at once hurt them, it'd have hurt anybody, and ROH certainly was having issues before that with a number of their bigger names being signed to NXT at a rapid pace, but their current roster has more than enough talent on it that, with some decent angles and a couple of hot feuds, they absolutely should be generating enough attention for themselves to be selling tickets to 1,000 seat venues at a brisk enough pace. Instead, it's like they've gone ghost, and it feels like there are multiple reasons why. I don't think it can be discounted how disappointed many people were with ROH's side of the MSG card; while I didn't dislike it that much while there live, it clearly didn't come across well on broadcast, and that was the promotion's big chance to put its best foot forward for 2019 to a wider audience. The bad PR involving Bully Ray and others has clearly done some damage, as well, for obvious reasons. But the simple truth right now is that people are simply not interested in whatever is being booked right now; nobody's attention is being grabbed, despite the roster having more than enough talent to make some noise. I'd never recommend train crash booking or going full metal Russo, that'd just make things even worse, but ROH needs to book something, whether a rivalry or a dynamic feud or whatever, that gets people talking on some level. It doesn't have to be anything ridiculous or anything intelligence insulting or overly edgy, it just has to be a loud proclamation "HERE is why you should buy tickets!" Losing the Elite was big, but New Japan lost the Elite too, and those guys were their connective tissue to the western fanbase. They haven't faltered once, moved new stars into position, and even began to tighten up their presentation to not feel as Americanized on the show they did in Dallas, which was in all ways a straightforward, no-frills G1 night one, and it killed. Losing The Elite hasn't hurt western interest in New Japan nearly as much as people projected it would, and even AEW starting up hasn't taken the wind out of the sails of a white hot G1 this year. The problem is in contrast and how they dealt with losing top guys, in that ROH hunkered down even harder on their worst instincts to favour go-nowhere loyalists over the rest of their roster. I'd compare where they are now ot where they were during the Clone Wars. Cornette booked an era of ROH that was completely out of step with the indie audience, but it was still the big indie name the business hadn't yet evolved to a broader spread of options and superindies and able competitors, so it managed to hold onto what it had and keep going. Nowadays there's just way more stuff out there and so many new, interesting possibilities. From anywhere in the world you have access to the whole of wrestling today. In what's shaping up to be one of the most bizarre and backstage-insane years of pro wrestling in history, all ROH has managed to find buzz for have been a TNA-tier bad idea in the nZo railing jump, and for a fan altercation the company kept finding new and interesting ways to become the bad guy for. Even as of a year ago, ROH was riding the indie boom higher than most anybody stateside. Now, it's leaving them behind at a rapid pace and their response doesn't seem to change course at all
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Post by octopus on Aug 9, 2019 11:27:46 GMT -5
On that note, I've looked at tickets for Vegas next month for Death Before Dishonor and the following TV taping, and yikes. A couple years ago, I had to go secondary market to sit at the back row in this building for 16th Anniversary. Last year, they elected to run the Orleans to increase seating capacity (they ended up running 2000 in a 10,000 seater, but probably made more money not having to turn anyone away). Now, they're struggling to fill one of the smallest venues in their rotation. Holy f***, plus it doesn't help that Impact run the building two weeks before. (Tickets are cheaper too)
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Post by cabbageboy on Aug 9, 2019 11:31:14 GMT -5
I've joked that Taven is Justin Credible 2.0 except Justin main evented the 2nd biggest house ECW ever did at Heatwave 2000. Putting the belt on Taven just killed ROH dead at the gate. I can see not putting the belt on Scurll since he obviously has one foot out the door to AEW, but just keep it on Lethal until better options arise. Lethal wasn't setting gate records or anything but he wasn't killing the company either.
I do think the whole Bully/Allure thing with the fan has soured people on ROH as well. You don't want it to seem like fans could be pulled aside for simply giving a heel some heat. ROH wasn't doing amazing post MSG this year, but it seems like after that whole fiasco their ticket sales just died beyond belief.
The MSG show is a weird thing. I mostly watched it on AXS via the NJPW shows, so I came away thinking it was a terrific show. But I also didn't see most of the ROH only stuff on the show that everyone hated. I think that's the biggest problem ROH has. They went on a major MSG PPV and NJPW came off like a serious major wrestling company, while ROH looked like a bunch of bush league trash.
As far as The Elite goes, the only guy NJPW lost that meant anything really was Omega. The others were more or less ROH regulars, so it stands to reason ROH would suffer more. NJPW's tag division hasn't been great, but it wasn't great even with the Bucks in it. Page meant nothing in NJPW. Cody did okay for himself but I doubt NJPW fans are begging for him to come back.
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