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Why has AEW succeeded where other wrestling companies failed?
- Thread starter John Doe
- Start date
LOL. Imagine believing these words. Is your Twitter handle @liquidWWE4ever?
Ok for real though, the actual reason for their success
Didn't like him when he was just "one of the boys" but the way he's gotten over has been nothing short of amazing - Hangman is one of my favourites right now, 100% gives me a babyface pop whenever I see him, All Out legit made me sad too, I haven't felt this way about wrestling, or a wrestler in years and it's amazing.
I didn't get the ex WWE guys criticism. AEW is building others up as well. A guy I had never heard of before AEW just went over Jericho twice and is the only person to have beaten him in the past year other than the current AEW champion. Orange Cassidy has been one of the most entertaining characters on the show.
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AEW is succeeding because the people behind it understand that there's zero money in wrestling. That's why AEW is a t-shirt company that uses wrestling to promote their products.
AEW got a lot of hype, a money man and a major network deal right off the bat.
TNA took a while to reach its peak. I felt the product suffered once Dixie and the tv deal came along which is a shame since they had an incredible roster. Quite arguably one of the best.
TNA took a while to reach its peak. I felt the product suffered once Dixie and the tv deal came along which is a shame since they had an incredible roster. Quite arguably one of the best.
The "mainstream" wrestling fan is a dying breed the further away we get from the 90s, and Vince in his infinite hubris has decided to triple down instead of recognizing and adapting. Meanwhile, indies have benefited greatly from the Twitter age. Get a wrestling nerd with deep pockets, a handful of indie darlings, and a network willing to gamble for the sake of continuous live content, and you get a show that appeals to indie fans while giving more casual fans who only watch wrestling on TV an alternative.
Neither I, who barely keeps up with wrestling, nor my brother who is/was significantly more into wrestling liked AEW for many of the usual flaws that get pointed out. But the appeal is there.
Neither I, who barely keeps up with wrestling, nor my brother who is/was significantly more into wrestling liked AEW for many of the usual flaws that get pointed out. But the appeal is there.
I started TNA right from the beginning with the weekly ppvs and I believe it was the foxsportone hour show that led to spike tv and one thing always was a reason they never almost never could pull the trigger when it should have been pulled. R-Truth beating Shamrock for the title at the start was one of the few times they did, but not having Raven beat Jarret when he was hot, not having Monty Brown win the title when he was hot, the utter wasting of Samoa Joe after the Angle match, just the fact that you knew TNA would never make things right when they should just doomed it over time.
I guess I'm living in the past, living be clear as I am a fan of all wrestling. I just want to see some consistency at a certain amount and of course you have streaming and everything else these days which rather skews the numbers. I don't know if ratings are the end I'll be all but clearly they're not but as long as they continue to deliver a good product I don't see how the TV really is a true measurement versus the house show business and obvious pay-per-view draw.
They are routinely in the top 10 or higher nearly every week.
Their demo numbers are high, even against stiff competition.
Before covid they were getting 6,000 plus fans for dynamite tapings.
They typically get over 100,000 buys per ppv.
They sell a tonne of merch and have just released their first figure range which seems to be essentially sold out everywhere.
There really isn't any other metric that you need to worry about.
I really want to talk about this because my main question is HOW THE ACTUAL FUCK DID THIS HAPPEN CONSIDERING WWE BOUGHT OUT DAMN NEAR EVERY INDY WRESTLER AVAILABLE AT THE TIME?!?!
Like there was a reason that NXT had the feel of a Super Indy. Think of the names they had/have under their employ. WWE as a roster is so damn stacked you could put the entire main event scene across all the brands and half of the mid card into a pocket dimension never to be seen again, and you could reload with competent believeable main eventers in 30 days. Now look at it. They were gifted, fucking gifted the "next big thing" in Keith Lee and what is he doing? There is a bet to see how long before he starts dancing (metaphorically and literally).
Also on actual topic, I heard something interesting on the Observer a while back that may be related.
So apparently AEW got 45 mil a year from TNT to get the numbers they are getting and got resigned 6 months in. If they got double that it would be 90 mil. Great numbers Anybody with sense would say.
Fox apparently paid 220 Mil for Smackdown to get the shit ratings they are getting. I don't know the numbers but I would say WWE is getting more than 45 mil a year for NXT from USA Network.
Just saying if you wanted wrestling on your network, why would you not go with the "cheaper and better performing option?" USA and Raw have a loyalty connection so I doubt Raw is in any danger. NXT tho...
Considering that AEW never had house shows and that even WWE is looking like it will cut down on touring and house shows (and their no separate PPV income), the landscape is going to look very different post pandemic.
They have Dean Ambrose
Look at the top AEW videos. Every single one is about Moxley
I think Rusev is a huge get for them but Moxley is on another level
Wow i just checked and orange cassidy is also a top draw on youtube
Look at the top AEW videos. Every single one is about Moxley
I think Rusev is a huge get for them but Moxley is on another level
Wow i just checked and orange cassidy is also a top draw on youtube
Come on now. I'm sure their T-shirt sales are larger than what they are getting from TNT for the show. At $20 a pop, they just need to sell over 2 million pieces of merchandise each year.
I didn't get the ex WWE guys criticism. AEW is building others up as well. A guy I had never heard of before AEW just went over Jericho twice and is the only person to have beaten him in the past year other than the current AEW champion. Orange Cassidy has been one of the most entertaining characters on the show.
OC needs to not be overexposed before the crowds come back
AEW has fostered amazing talents: Ricky Stark, Darby Allin, OC, Sonny Kiss, Archer, Guevara, Page, Omega, Young Bucks, Jungle Boy, Kingston, Fenix, Pac, Ortiz, Santana...like all these guys feel instantly like stars.
Theyve done great work with Lee, Moxley, Cody, Jericho, and now Miro in terms of fleshing out the WWE names
They now have Sydal, FTR, and Im hoping we see AOP too.
The actual main event scene feels limited though because its clear no one touches Moxley in draw power. A heel Omega feels right though, especially if it means they can leverage this to make Page the top babyface. This stuff has been marinating for a long time and its time to pull the trigger. Sucks so much that there are no crowds.
Only big criticisms I have is that the women's division blows. It has never interested me. WWE's monopoly on women's wrestling is insane
WWE has more talent. But none of them are booked or protected half as well as Shida. The joys of no bullshit finishes, Shida doesn't lose to someone to set up a match which she then wins,
Is there an article on this? I thought the rise came a bit before Omega, maybe with Styles leading the Bullet Club?
One thing that I think is critically important with AEW which gets really overlooked.
They 100% do not do rematches. I mean, they will do a rematch, but they don't prolong a feud after the payoff. The WWE model since the early 2000s at least has been build feud -payoff match - then 3 more months of the two same people fighting with the same result but with match stipulations.
It's suuuuper boring.
AEW built Mox/Jericho perfectly for months and then Mox goes over at Revolution and there was some blowback post Revolution from the IC/Mox that made story sense for the characters and will likely result in *something* down the line. but they didn't just make us watch the same match with a new stipulation which is such a breath of fresh air.
Part of the WWE problem is that they do monthly PPVs. So you have to build up something of a feud to get to a PPV and not let a story breathe and get some heat behind. Having only 4 major PPVs a year you slowly build up towards makes it easier for most of the matches to have a meaning outside of "this guy and this other guy really want to fight each other".
It's poking fun at something that has truth to it, though the barb is about the post-Styles run because Styles went to WWE and that's also when "The Elite" content started popping up online. It's not surprising that what wound up being the most popular shit in NJPW was the white dudes making YouTube videos, and those dudes smartly leveraged that, plus finding the massive money mark data noted, into launching a new American TV product. I'm inserting my own view on their quality, of course, in saying it was Omega and a bunch of meh.
AEW's been a success. I think arguing otherwise is silly. Whether it's a good product or not, that's all subjective discussion, tastes, etc. That's all different. AEW's TV show is getting viewers and is weathering an unprecedented time for filming a live TV product pretty damn well, so I think that's undeniably a success.
Oh, 100%. WWE adding PPVs basically means that you either have to continue recycling the same feud or half-ass build a feud.
OR (and even dumber) is you start building a legit feud in the Fall and then have the hero or whoever it is go over at Royal Rumble to earn a title shot at Mania.. but then the champ has to defend the belt like 4 times between RR and Mania. WWE's business model (the network) doesn't allow for it, but they really need to reduce the PPV count *or* not require every belt to be defended on every PPV. Like at least let the top belts only be defended 4-6x per year on PPVs.
With WWE's roster they could do fresh match ups every month. It's just lazy booking. As proven by how good Joe vs Lesnar was.
Smarks, as in Tony Khan, the Young Bucks, Kenny Omega, Cody/Hangman, all know what other smarks like to see. They grew up as fans of the product and they know what works and figure it out if it doesn't.
It's a show and product that rewards long-time fans, every show is a love letter to the art form (even if it's not always perfect) but it's still totally accessible to people who are new to the art form or the company.
Compelling characters, good quality matches, and meaningful results that all mostly make logical sense.
Most of all, it doesn't insult your intelligence.
The WWE isn't even trying to be a wrestling promotion. It's its own weird thing. They purposefully try not to create stars that get too big now. What kind of fucking sense is that supposed to make?
It's a show and product that rewards long-time fans, every show is a love letter to the art form (even if it's not always perfect) but it's still totally accessible to people who are new to the art form or the company.
Compelling characters, good quality matches, and meaningful results that all mostly make logical sense.
Most of all, it doesn't insult your intelligence.
The WWE isn't even trying to be a wrestling promotion. It's its own weird thing. They purposefully try not to create stars that get too big now. What kind of fucking sense is that supposed to make?
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Eh, that's literally what Brock did. Dude made the title mean something. And everyone whined about it because the champ needs to be on every show or some such bollocks. You can't be special if you're always there. Less is more.
I haven't been watching WWE but have been keeping up with spoilers, and it seems like they've done Randy Orton v Keith Lee every single week since he debuted. That's fucking stupid - that's not how to book a feud.
Lots of Chris Jericho stuff being posted now and for good reason. With out a doubt he was the anchor for AEW for most of it's first year. He created a lot of "must-see-TV" and did an insanely good job as a heel for all of their babyfaces to bounce off of. He may be a shit head on Twitter, but he is an actual wrestling genius and very giving when it comes to putting talent over.
Like others, at the beginning of all of this I was extremely skeptical of Jericho being such a central focus, and I was proven wrong on that.
Like others, at the beginning of all of this I was extremely skeptical of Jericho being such a central focus, and I was proven wrong on that.
He had the belt and would feud with NO ONE for like several months at a time. That is absolutely a problem. He does not need to wrestle every month but he needs to be present and involved. The AEW World Championship is not defended often but the title holder is heavily involved every month.
AEW has the Brock problem in their women's division and it's why it has floundered. Riho would be gone for like a month, leaving the division completely with out it's champion present. Even Shida has not been a regular presence until more recently.
It helps that Jericho genuinely seems to want to work with everyone. He's been the small guy the veterans refuse to work with, so when he gets a guy like Jungle BoyJack Perry or Darby he seems delighted that he can make them come across as genuine threats to him,
I mean, except for Mick Foley and Jericho who else from the Attitude Era would even consider wrestling OC, let alone making him look their superior? People spent decades saying Flair sold too much for lower ranked guys, but top guys should make everyone look like killers.
is it really though? I don't think I see aew garnering new fans, it's still a by the books wrestling show, just done better than wwe right now. I don't see them getting new fans at all just the hardcore loyal smarks.
They're growing their audience but people's expectations and comparing it to old raw or spike TV ratings from 15 years ago is completely out of wack.
Viewership for all of television isn't what it was 10 years ago let alone 15 years ago.
By that I mean the growth isn't gonna be super crazy here. They're not gonna pop insane numbers these days because nothing does.
But comparatively for its position and timeslot, AEW is doing perfectly fine in the important younger demos and that tells me that young people are watching, which is exactly the fans you want. AEW is cool. Kids like it.
WWE isn't cool, and they're being propped up by the kids-teens who watched that product since the 80s.
I don't watch but I hear tna actually has a really good women's division.
It also helps that TNT is extremely behind the product and doing a lot of work to get eyes on things.
Fuck I miss the crowds. They make AEW that much better! Unlike WWE where the fans are sitting on their hands for 3 hours.
I feel like AEW answered the question 'What would happen if WWE didn't treat it's fans with utter contempt and just did sensible, fan-friendly booking and allowed organic talent to push themselves and not get in the way?'
AEW isn't for me, personally, but I'm glad North America finally has a promotion on TV that is doing well and makes it's fans happy that doesn't feel like it's going to be 'one step forward, two steps back' like TNA did at it's peak popularity.
AEW isn't for me, personally, but I'm glad North America finally has a promotion on TV that is doing well and makes it's fans happy that doesn't feel like it's going to be 'one step forward, two steps back' like TNA did at it's peak popularity.
It feels like they actually respect their fans' time. They're definitely not perfect and have had bad segments, but I enjoy them so much more than anything I've seen from the WWE in years.
"Who says they are successful, they are doing TNA ratings" is the laziest most wrestling twitter bullshit argument ever. WWE counterprogrammed AEW Dynamite, yet they were so successful Turner wanted to extend their contract with AEW making them a profitable company in FOUR FUCKING MONTHS.
As for why they succeeded, Anth0ny nailed it
As for why they succeeded, Anth0ny nailed it
Because back in the day, you either paid to be on TV or got very little money to be on TV. At the absolute peak of the Attitude Era when ratings were at all-time highs, they were getting $12.5 million a year for Raw. You then made your money using TV to sell PPV and tickets to live events. Now, we live in an era where TV money makes up most of your revenue. WWE now gets 200 million dollars a year for Smackdown and over 250 million a year for Raw. AEW gets $45 million a year from TNT for Dynamite.
The funny thing is that back in the 90s-2000s, ratings didn't actually matter, because the real money was made on touring and PPV, but now in 2020, when people think that ratings don't matter because "everyone just does streaming" and "who has cable", ratings are actually more important than they have ever been, because TV money is what keeps the industry alive. WWE gets more in TV money just in the United States a year than they would if they had 4 million subscribers to their network (which they don't).
And to be on topic, the reason that AEW has succeeded where TNA failed was that despite TNA having more television viewers, none of them would ever spend a cent on the product. There most bought PPV ever was Genesis 2006, the first Kurt Angle vs Samoa Joe match, and it did 60,000 buys. Meanwhile, in the era of "who pays for PPV anymore", AEW has beaten that number with every single show PPV they have done. TNA would give tickets away for their TV tapings at the impact zone, AEW was doing pretty good business selling seats to shows before COVID happened. And TNA existed in an era where you didn't make that much money from TV, you used it to sell PPV
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They have booked the ex-WWE guys well in terms of putting over and giving the rub to the non-WWE guys very well.
Look at Jericho, other than Hager, Cody, and Moxley, Jericho has been booked with Kenny, Page, Sammy, Santana, Ortiz, Darby, MJF, Scorpio Sky, Jungle Boy, Pineapple Pete, Orange Cassidy, Sonny Kiss and Janela.
With Moxley, other than Jericho, Hager, Pac, and Brodie, he was booked with Kenny, Janela, Darby, Sammy, Santana, Vance, Anthony, Cage, MJF, and now Archer.
You also got Jake with Archer, Vickie with Nyla, Taz with Cage and Ricky, Brodie with all the Dark Order and now Miro with Kip and Penelope. Even Resetera's favorite wrestler Jake Hager just put Sonny Kiss over in the Battle Royale. And we can't forget Cody's TNT title run. They're all elevating AEW's talent in one way or another.
Look at Jericho, other than Hager, Cody, and Moxley, Jericho has been booked with Kenny, Page, Sammy, Santana, Ortiz, Darby, MJF, Scorpio Sky, Jungle Boy, Pineapple Pete, Orange Cassidy, Sonny Kiss and Janela.
With Moxley, other than Jericho, Hager, Pac, and Brodie, he was booked with Kenny, Janela, Darby, Sammy, Santana, Vance, Anthony, Cage, MJF, and now Archer.
You also got Jake with Archer, Vickie with Nyla, Taz with Cage and Ricky, Brodie with all the Dark Order and now Miro with Kip and Penelope. Even Resetera's favorite wrestler Jake Hager just put Sonny Kiss over in the Battle Royale. And we can't forget Cody's TNT title run. They're all elevating AEW's talent in one way or another.