The Wrestling Thread II: WrestleMania 33 - 7 HOURS

Corazon de Leon

That's terrible news. RIP.

twitter.com/grcadewrestling/status/845180701066506240

ITV (Helen Warner being the executive to sign off on it) were very happy with the combined viewership from New Years Eve and on-demand. The show will remain on ITV and will now be produced by Jeff Jarrett, in front of a proper wrestling crowd and will run for 10 weeks. Tentative time slot of 5pm on Saturday.

So there will now be 3 wrestling organisations on free TV (WOS, IMPACT and 5Star). I bet WWE can barely believe it.

KKLEIN wrote:So there will now be 3 wrestling organisations on free TV (WOS, IMPACT and 5Star). I bet WWE can barely believe it.

I would be surprised if 5 Star returned to Spike, given it's now got Impact. It struck me the first 5 Star show was a tester to see if the audience was out there to watch wresting on Spike.

Isn't the 5Star thing an actual TV channel that's getting Explosion?

I hope Mauro get's better soon, Phillips is a little bland.

BAKA wrote:Isn't the 5Star thing an actual TV channel that's getting Explosion?

It is yes, but it's also the name of the wrestling promotion that aired on Spike a few months ago. They changed the name though because of that very fact. On TV they referred to it as Dominant Wrestling.

Watching NXT and seeing how they're building how 'devastating' Ember Moon's Eclipse finisher is, it feels very much like Asuka is losing the belt at TakeOver. This week it felt like Asuka had turned heel too

I just realised all of my favs are likely losing come WrestleMania weekend. Asuka, Taker, Styles and Banks. :cry:

On the bright side Asuka losing the belt would mean she'll be joining the main shows. Actually that's terrible news as WWE network is the only thing I have for watching wrestling and the match quality on Raw (if she goes there) doesn't excite me.

Just noticed earlier they've put up a bunch of old NXTs, seems to be from 2012 onwards.

It's weird really that the WWE UK championship seems to have been the bigger failure between that and WOS. I think WOS has real potential as 90s kids who grew up with WWE before the attitude era want to bring their kids into it without paying Sky subs.

The UK tournament was never going to be that big with it restricted to a niche streaming service vs World of Sport that was on national free-to-air TV. Looks like the wrestlers from that are being restricted to NXT too which further limits their exposure.

Sky's vice-like grip over the WWE rights is severely limiting it in the UK, no idea why they can't put any of the highlight shows or 205 Live or something on one of the many channels they have on Freeview.

Mafro wrote:The UK tournament was never going to be that big with it restricted to a niche streaming service vs World of Sport that was on national free-to-air TV. Looks like the wrestlers from that are being restricted to NXT too which further limits their exposure.

Sky's vice-like grip over the WWE rights is severely limiting it in the UK, no idea why they can't put any of the highlight shows or 205 Live or something on one of the many channels they have on Freeview.

It's not just that sky have it, it's that they insist on putting it on sky sports, limiting the audience further! I don't know if that's sky's or WWE's decision but it's a silly one. They show Raw highlights on Sky One so it's not like they think it's hardcore sports enthusiasts that watch it. Also it's not a sport.

Slimgrady wrote:
Mafro wrote:The UK tournament was never going to be that big with it restricted to a niche streaming service vs World of Sport that was on national free-to-air TV. Looks like the wrestlers from that are being restricted to NXT too which further limits their exposure.

Sky's vice-like grip over the WWE rights is severely limiting it in the UK, no idea why they can't put any of the highlight shows or 205 Live or something on one of the many channels they have on Freeview.

It's not just that sky have it, it's that they insist on putting it on sky sports, limiting the audience further! I don't know if that's sky's or WWE's decision but it's a silly one. They show Raw highlights on Sky One so it's not like they think it's hardcore sports enthusiasts that watch it. Also it's not a sport.

Yeah i find it odd that Sky don't have a weekly SD highlights show on Sky One but my assumption on that is that they don't understand how wwe works that they think the RAW highlights are enough for people to catch up on.

The ratings are genuinely now so bad for WWE on Sky Sports the fact neither Sky or WWE have proactively done something about it boggles my mind. To be honest they've done strawberry float all, instead letting it pad out Sky Sports 3 and 5 with the same handful of From The Vault clips on endless repeat. WWE is on Sky Sports Mix during the week via Main Event (lame duck show since WWE/Sky cocked-up the rights agreement) and Experience but neither does very well at all (always well under 10,000 viewers...if they're lucky). Main Event should be bumped over to Pick TV at the very least. That WWE still has no presence on Freeview is stupid. About 1.5 to 2 million are now watching RAW and SmackDown highlights on YouTube, though that is obviously a worldwide figure.

How can you positively spin RAW Live losing 75% of its audience in the space of a few years I don't know. But then you look at the viewership for Sky Sports in general now outside of the Premier League and it's abysmal. Everything from top to bottom has declined. NFL last season was a total disaster. Congratulations, 20,000 people watched your programme...whoop-de-fucking-do. But a lot of sports organisations have their fingers in their ears. They'd rather take the nice big cheque (and what Sky paid for WWE last time out was enormous) and ignore that less than 1% of the population is actually watching it.

IMPACT WRESTLING is now on the best channel(s) its ever been on in its entire history, a nonentity like 5 Star can find itself on primetime at 8pm, and World of Sport is being watched by 2 million people on the 2nd biggest channel in the UK. And WWE in their complacency has let it happen. And I'm glad, WWE needs a kick up the arse. It's not coming from the US market, especially if they end up purchasing Ring of Honor. Ignoring Japan and Mexico, World of Sport is the biggest wrestling brand left. And if they get given 5pm on a Saturday, there's no excuse. That rough time slot has heritage when it comes to wrestling on both sides of the Atlantic. ITV do appear to be listening though; they're moving WOS out of their TV studio and sticking it in front of a wrestling crowd. To have wrestling on ITV1, on the most popular day of the week for the channel...that's pretty amazing. I hope Jeff Jarrett and those in charge don't bugger it up. They've got 10 weeks to play with, at least.

Didn't realise things on Sky Sports were that bad. They should at least put This Week in WWE on Pick TV.

And how ICW and Progress have never managed to get a TV deal in the UK after all these years but that 5 Star promotion did I'll never know. Feels like they've kinda shot themselves in the foot signing a deal with WWE since that severely limited their exposure in the UK even more now, especially with WoS now being a permanent thing and the opportunity to appear on that.

Niche show on a niche channel doesn't get a lot of viewers. I find that truly shocking.

WWE RAW Live - Sky Sports ratings

23rd January 2012 - 162,000
21st January 2013 - 124,000
20th January 2014 - 161,000
19th January 2015 - 98,000
25th January 2016 - 112,000
23rd January 2017 - 58,000
27th February 2017 - 38,000

There's just no way to spin that. RAW doesn't even do 162,000 viewers if you combine all the Live, 2 hour, 1 hour and 30 minute replays. The WWE Network has obviously had an impact, YouTube has probably hurt because you get a good 40-50 minutes every week (1 hour 30 if like me you cheat the geo-block), the decline in popularity of Sky Sports which has impacted everyone, and then there's the obvious: 3 hours of RAW just isn't fun any more. It's not even thoroughly awful. It's simply boring. 4 hours on a Sunday, 3 hours on a Monday, 3 hours on Tuesday, an hour on Wednesday...I mean come on, what kind of mentalist can possibly keep up with that, let alone at 3am.

That drop

When was it Raw went to three hours?

Incredibly RAW has been 3 hours now for coming up to 5 years (July 2012). The WWE Network became available in the U.K. in 2015.

Actually quite excited for Wrestlemania, probably because I have low expectations anyway, there are some fresh or fresh-enough matches and I'll be watching it first thing Monday morning instead of Sunday night. After last year going nearly five hours I swore I'd never do that again unless I was at some kind of viewing party.

Expecting good things from Jericho/Owens and Taker/Reigns, which will be the two hottest matches of the night without a doubt. Bray/Orton could be a sleeper (as in sleeper hit, not regular-Orton-match sleeper) too, and Trips/Rollins.

I don't understand the sky and WWE contract. With ratings now being so low what's stopping them moving raw and SD to sky one on at least a trial basis. My assumption for WWE always being on sky sports is that it was supposed to be an attraction to get people to pay for sky sports but with so few watching it now it's clear that they wouldn't lose many sky sports subscribers by moving it to more accessible channel. In the past WWE has done big numbers, so sky knows that it's a show that can get ratings. If they keep it on sky sports then I can only see sky either binning it or offering a lot less at the next negotiation.

The WOS and TNA ratings show that there's a market on more accessible channels and that was with a less marketable brand. I'm very confident that WWE on these channels would do very good ratings.

Also on WOS I hope they can get JR back for the commentary but not sure if the timing would be right with his wife passing away. They could do with a recognisable voice. Even Tazz wouldn't be a bad call.

The Wrestling Thread II: WrestleMania 33 - 7 HOURS

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