Hi all, and welcome to another offering of thoughts on the business world of wrestling. As promised, this week an analysis of reports that in 2008, the WWE may look into producing five (yes, count them, five!) brands.
Now, I should start by saying this is all subject to change, reports to date are very tentative and it may never go ahead. However the plan that has been muted so far is maintaining the existing three brands (Raw, Smackdown and ECW) as they are with the introduction of two “national” brands, one based in Japan and the other in Mexico.
This for me is the obvious next step in the WWE truly becoming a global powerhouse. They may be the world’s largest wrestling company, but that doesn’t change the fact that most of their money still comes from North America. True, they have a growing fan base overseas, but its current value is still someway short of the revenue generated in their homeland. In order to increase that worldwide bottom line, they need to give them something more than an at most twice yearly visit.
To date, WWE have gone on regular international tours in order to generate global publicity, but in the long run continuing to do this is in my opinion a bad idea. The odd trip taking the three main brands overseas is good for occasional visits. Demand for tickets in foreign shores is usually high and the novelty of the WWE Circus being in town becomes quite profitable for them. But as the company continues to grow, will talents and crew alike cope with an almost continuous worldwide schedule? Travel today is hectic enough as it is, but making the same number of shows a year globally instead of just nationally would be insane. Costs would be horrendous and the logistics of getting everyone and everything required around the world throughout the entire year would be simply mind-boggling.
There are of course issues regarding foreign tours in countries such as Germany, Italy, Japan and the Philippines. Namely with the entire show conducted in English for the benefit of the television audience, just how are a live audience, many of whom may only understand some English if any at all, supposed to interact properly with the characters on the show?
So, region specific brands seem like quite a good idea. Dramatically reduced travel and a programme conducted in their own language means that everyone benefits. Of course cultural differences, including wrestling tastes, can be accounted for too but it will of course no doubt still have the WWE “flavour” that audiences worldwide have come to expect. Having many brands operating around the world is kind of like spreading your bets. If one suddenly starts to fail it’s not quite the bad news as if you put all your eggs in one basket with a big all powerful international brand. However creating a truly global superstar may be somewhat tougher as of course people will follow their favourite local brands and not others. Does that in turn mean that resources could be spread too thinly over five separate rosters?
This has been a problem of late with just three brands and it’s shown by the cross-promotion that has become typical of WWE programming in recent months as superstars appear on two or even all three shows during a week. This has been done because there isn’t enough confidence in the brand’s stars on their own, but as a result do we become overloaded as talents (and the McMahon’s) are shoved down our throats? Imagine how much worse it could get if we were to see wrestlers over five shows a week! It’s like when a soap opera slowly increases its output as it gets more and more popular from one to two to three and eventually five nights a week. You bring in extra cast to ensure there are more storylines to fill it with, but to also get a perspective of time the stories themselves have to move a lot slower and consequently we see characters a lot more than we used to, oftentimes doing something actually rather mundane and simply repeating the same old babble, recapping what happened the night before. The same is true in WWE. Supposing you want a 3 month feud between two stars. This would probably mean 3 PPV matches, which is fine. But the key is in the number of TV appearances they make over those 3 months. If it is on just the one show a week, you would expect about 13 appearances covering the feud during that time, however if you have them on between two or three different shows a week, then a feud of the same length means anything from 25 to 35 or more appearances. It’s no wonder everything feels kind of the same! How complex would a story have to be in order to make genuine advancements 35 times in 3 months? If brands four and five were to have a weekly show on which they appeared too… well you do the math there.
If the WWE do not have enough confidence in their higher level stars to carry three brands separately, then even with new talent coming in they certainly won’t have the confidence to do it with five and that will only further exacerbate the problem above. Maybe in time there will be five genuine brands that can all sustain themselves. After all if they can control which talents compete in which brands then it’s not too dissimilar to the good old days when wrestlers were encouraged to ply their trade all over the world and understand many different styles. Maybe this new system will help increase the number of well rounded future stars. But in the mean time, what do the WWE do to combat this problem now? To be honest, your guess is as good as mine and it could really cost them in the short term.
However the cynic in me has a further question about this expansion programme. There are a lot of reasons for going to Japan and Mexico, what with the vast talent pool and relative locality to North America but Britain is I believe the most profitable single country outside of their home continent for the WWE. So why not go there? Or at least why not bring a new brand to Europe as a whole?
The key factor here is the size of the industry in general within each global territory. Sure they make lots of money from Britain and Europe, but at present there aren’t really any groups in Europe that hold regular TV shows, pay per view events or anything similar. Japan and Mexico however do have a number of promotions such as AAA, CMLL, New Japan, All Japan etc. which are well known domestically and by aficionados worldwide. So there is already extra money being spent within that industry in those territories without having to create an extra fan base.
In short the WWE must believe that it is easier to take the existing money from other established federations in those territories than create extra money in a territory they already dominate. I think I can leave you to work out what that means from there…
What would I do if I was the owner of one of these promotions? For starters, I would not just sit back and assume that WWE won’t adjust to the subtle nuances in the way that the Japanese and Mexican styles appeal to their respective audiences. The threat to their existence from 2008 onwards is very real as their loyal core audience is courted by the all powerful Vince McMahon and his new brands. Sure it will take time for them to find a formula that works, but once they do if the smaller federations have not already acted it may be too late by then.
For me, these owners are cornered and the only way out is to fight back. If Vince McMahon is risking spreading his talent roster too thinly, then consolidate your own and perhaps even consider beating Vince McMahon at his own game. After all, if he is going to where fans exist but don’t spend money with him, shouldn’t these owners be doing the same? Perhaps the WWE expansion will force others to expand also and come to America to try and take the WWE’s audience off them! Why not?
Just a thought…
Next time, a discussion of how smaller federations might be able to survive in the fast changing industry of professional wrestling. Come let me know what you think of either this or the next column at stuart_black@hotmail.com.
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