The New TNA PPV Strategy, Part 3: Doomed to Failure?

[Big Red Machine]

The new TNA PPV Strategy, Part 3: Why it is Failing, and Why it will Continue to Fail

Six months ago, right after the big news came out, I wrote an article titled “The New TNA PPV Strategy… and why I think it is a Bad Idea.” In that article, I outlined the strategy, its positives and negatives, and I thought it wouldn’t help the company. A few days ago, I wrote an article evaluating the financial implications of the decision, and whether or not it had paid off for TNA so far. The answer was a solid “no.” In fact, it seems to be costing them an almost irresponsible amount of money. In order to make up the money that they have lost off of buys of their now-defunct monthly PPVs, TNA needs to get more people to buy their big four PPVs (as I explained last time, I highly doubt that the One Night Only shows will make up the money. See that article for my reasons), but so far this year, that has not been happening. Lockdown got about the same number of buys as last year while Slammiversary got fewer buys than last year. TNA needs to up their PPV buys, unfortunately, based on the product so far this year, I don’t see that happening.

My major argument for why cutting down to four PPVs would not help TNA was simple: TNA was misdiagnosing the problem. They thought that people weren’t buying their PPVs because having 12 PPVs a year that cost thirty dollars each (and sometimes more than that) was too expensive. This certainly might be a contributing factor, but I don’t believe that it is the real problem. The real problem is that the booking of the product has been horrific, and has not created Pay-Per-View cards that people are willing to pay thirty dollars or more to see.

The feuds were not compelling. Many of the undercard feuds were not given more than a week or two of build up on TV (and rarely more than two segments, either). Title shots for all of the belts aside from the TNA World Heavyweight Title were given out willy-nilly without being earned first, and as a result, fans did not see the titles as important or the challengers as legitimate. Rather than the climax of a story about wrestlers facing off for a title, built around either why one or both of them would have a chance of succeeding, or about making the fans want to see one of the win, title matches just felt like two guys having a wrestling match… and oh yeah, there was a title on the line.

Complicating matters more were two big negative factors going against TNA. The first was that most of the divisions were small, and thus felt stale. The Knockouts, tag team, and X-Divisions all felt like we had seen each and every match-up dozens of times already, and we had no reason to expect anything new out of the various permutations of competitors.

The second, and most damaging, was that TNA PPVs have tended to… how shall I put this gently?… stink. There were rarely more than one or two great matches, and many of the matches usually had screwy finishes that didn’t resolve anything. The show did not feel like it was worth the money TNA was charging for it. To make matters worse, TNA has also often given away PPV rematches, or matches between the same wrestlers with even bigger stipulations, for free on TV in the week or two after the PPV. So not only were the PPVs not worth the money, but even if you didn’t order the PPV, you could still see the same matches (or bigger, more important versions of the same matches) and resolutions to the stories for free on TV anyway!

It is now six months later, and in those six months, TNA has put on two of their “big four” PPVs (I’m not counting Genesis because it only had one month of build, just like the “old” system), and these problems have not been fixed. The tag team division is currently the largest it has been in about two years…a whopping FOUR teams. One of those teams, the tag team champions, has only teamed together a grand total of four times (plus one six man and one eight man tag team match). They won the belts in their first match working together as a two-man unit (meaning they did not have to win any matches to earn the title shot), and their first (and, so far, only) title defense was against a team of guys whose only experience teaming together involved being squashed in a 3-on-1 handicap match (so they didn’t win any matches to earn a title shot, either), and who have a total of FOUR WINS between them in the past year!

Most damning of all is the fact that since their last defense three weeks ago, neither the champions nor their titles have been seen or mentioned once! In fact, if you had just started watching Impact with the July 11th broadcast, you would not even know that there were any tag team titles.

The booking of the X-Division has similarly not improved. For the first three months of the year, there were only three guys in the whole division who got any TV time at all. Then, in March, TNA created a new system of rules guaranteeing that only one win would earn someone a title shot and requiring all matches to be three way matches. This both cheapened title shots and made three way matches (and thus, every X-Division match) feel stale. On a more positive note, the triple threat requirement has forced TNA to expand what was, at the time, a two-person division (York and King, with Sabin and Ion both on the shelf); but that just begs the question: How the hell did they let the division that had been the cornerstone of the promotion since day one dwindle to just two active competitors?!
The fresh faces have been good for the division, but the booking has not, and the new rules are also to blame for that. With just one win earning a title shot and every match being forced to be a three way, the booking of the entire division has fallen into a horribly repetitive format since the rules changes. One week there is a three way qualifier, the next week there is another three way qualifier, and the third week there is a title match between the champ and the winners of the two qualifiers. Rinse, wash, repeat.
The only break from this was the short but great feud between Kenny King and Chris Sabin, and the requirement for a three way match actually hurt that feud because it randomly shoved Suicide into the match at Slammiversary where all of the focus should have been on Sabin and Kenny. What made that feud so great was that Sabin is someone who the fans cared about and Kenny became one by heeling it up on Sabin. They were allowed to cut promos and have actual personalities. I don’t think anyone but Sabin has been allowed to even cut a promo since then, and it makes everyone in the division aside from the champ feel like glorified extras. They aren’t characters that the fans care about. They are just there.

Not only have the wrestlers of the X-Division (aside from Sabin) been made to look unimportant, but the formulaic booking has made the X-Division Title feel unimportant as well. It has only been relevant because it grants a TNA World Heavyweight Title shot at Destination X. Now that Destination X has passed, I fear that the belt will fade back into the dull formulaic obscurity it languished in during the spring.

The one real positive change in the past six months in TNA has been the Knockouts Division. Six months ago it, like the X-Division and tag team divisions, felt mired in a stale quicksand of the same matches and feuds over and over again, and the lack of TV time that the only new thing in the Division, Brooke Tessmacher, had received, was not helping. By Lockdown, things weren’t looking much better, but then, over the next two months, TNA made two big moves that did a great job of shaking the division up.
The first was turning Taryn Terrell, who had been a referee, into an active wrestler. Not only did she add a new face to the mix, but she has been having surprisingly good matches. The second big change was turning Mickie James heel. Mickie quickly became the top heel in a division that, aside from a few flat months with Tara as the top heel last winter, had had at least four different women playing variations on the same character as the top heel for about five straight years. It was time for a change, and Mickie provided it, playing a heel attempting to con people into believing that she was a babyface through outstandingly insincere promos.
The Knockouts Division has, on the whole, been booked well over the past few months, but with Tessmacher continuing to be MIA and recent releases of Tara and Madison Rayne, the division is back down to just five women on TV. Of those five, Gail, Velvet, and ODB have already done everything. Without some fresh blood, the division could be looking stale again by the end of the year.

In addition to failing to raise the value and importance of two of their three undercard titles (and at this point I do feel obligated to point out that there was a fourth undercard title that was so meaningless and so rarely defended that TNA decided to retire it with no fanfare whatsoever), TNA has unfortunately, continued the bad habits that give fans very strong reservations about buying their Pay-Per-Views. They have given out rematches for free on TV right afterwards (Robbie E. vs. Robbie T.) and even with bigger stipulations than the PPV match (Kurt vs. AJ). Most importantly, though, their PPVs have not been good. If they didn’t feel the last PPV was worth their money, people will not buy the next one.

The only real way to overcome this problem is by having very good build to the next PPV, and then making sure the show is good enough that fans feel it was worth their money. I know that the wrestler can put on a great PPV, but unfortunately, based on their track record so far this year, I don’t think TNA is capable of building up a PPV that fans will pay to see.

Only having four PPVs a year allows TNA some advantages over the monthly PPV system. One of these is that they can put bigger matches on Impact sometimes to pop a rating (rather than need to save it for a monthly PPV) and get more eyes on the rest of the show. The second advantage is that rather than just four or five weeks to build to a PPV, they now have thirteen or fourteen. This lets them tell their stories at the pace that they want to and ensures that they can get each story where it needs to be for the PPV without having to cram a million things on each show (which will also let everything get more time devoted to it). This requires a lot of planning, though, and based on what they have been doing so far this year, I’m not sure that TNA is really capable of that.

Take, for example, the Gail Kim vs. Taryn Terrell feud. The thing everyone wants to see is Taryn finally kicking Gail’s butt, so that is what TNA should have put on their next PPV. Instead, TNA gave this away for free on TV, then had them just brawl a lot (with Taryn coming out on top often enough, too) that by the time Slammiversary came around, they had to have a completely random Last Woman Standing match. The all of brawling caused the fans to lose that burning desire to see Taryn get her hands on Gail, so the PPV match was being sold on the strength of the gimmick and workers alone. While that match did wind up massively exceeding everyone’s expectations, it didn’t get many buys because the expectations for the match were so low.
Consider the following scenario:
During the first week you just hype up that Brooke will make a decision next week about punishing Taryn for getting physically involved in a match and you go back to a male ref for the women’s match. Then, next week, you have the official tell Taryn she can keep being a referee, but if she ever puts her hands on a competitor again, she will be in trouble. Then, for the next six week or so, you have Gail taking more and more liberties. She takes a long time to break holds, and uses eye pokes a lot, and have her get in Taryn’s face whenever Taryn tells her to stop. Then you have her get in Taryn’s face more often. Then you have her start to pie-face Taryn like she did in this segment, and have Taryn not respond to it. Then, the sixth week (which should be about a month before Slammiversary) you do what they did in this segment: have Gail pie-face Taryn and have Taryn respond with a slap (which you have now been building up to for two months). The next week you have Gail complaining to Brooke, but have Brooke say that Gail shouldn’t have put her hands on the referee. The week after that, you have the same thing happen, but this time it directly leads to Gail getting pinned. Then you have Gail tell Taryn that if she wants to get involved in the outcome of the matches so badly, she should face her at Slammiversary.
With this scenario you are not selling the match, but rather you are selling the moment. After months and months of abuse, Taryn will finally get to go at it with Gail. The match doesn’t need to be great as long as the moment is satisfying because that is what you have been building up to.

This is the type of slow burn that is necessary for your angles if you are going to go three months between PPVs. Unfortunately, TNA still seems stuck in the monthly PPV mindset. TNA decided to do a tournament of their Gut Check winners for a berth in the BFG Series, with the finals being at Slammiversary. They had almost three months between Lockdown and Slammiversary to build up the guys they wanted in the finals in order to make us care about them when the finals actually happened, but they didn’t do that at all. The first time either guy was even mentioned on TV was then it was time for their first-round match in this two round tournament. As a result no one cared about their match at Slammiversary.
TNA has actually managed to slow-burn one angle successfully this year: The AJ Styles angle… except that in the almost two months since Slammiversary, that angle has completely stalled. Even when they start something right, they can’t finish it.

Even more distressing, though, is what their new model seems to be. They pick one episode of Impact a month and they hype it up as being a major event. They did it in April with the Corpus Christie show (had a big tag title match, the Bully vs. Jeff Full Metal Mayhem match for the title), they did it in July with Destination X (Sabin’s World Title shot, the big confrontation between the Main Event Mafia and Aces & Eights), and now they seem to have chosen the August 15th Impact to be “Hardcore Justice” where Sabin and Bully will have their rematch. The problem with this should be obvious: If you are going to hype up one Impact each month that doesn’t have PPV, why not just do a monthly PPVs? It is the same concept, but you get more time for everything on the card (three hours with no commercials vs. two hours), you get an extra week of Impact to build things up, and most importantly, YOU MAKE MONEY WITH IT!
Using this “big monthly Impact” model also defeats the purpose of the change to quarterly PPVs by only giving you five or six weeks to build to one of your PPVs rather than thirteen or fourteen. That TNA would do something that is so counter-productive and regressive is a big problem. It does, however, seem to show us why TNA has completely failed to capitalize on the potential of having three months to build to each PPV: They are stuck in the monthly PPV mindset, and if they are only building up to each PPV for a month beforehand, what was the point of changing away from monthly PPVs. If TNA does not get out of this old mindset and start capitalizing on the advantages of their new PPV strategy, the company will go under.

[cero2k]

Even more distressing, though, is what their new model seems to be. They pick one episode of Impact a month and they hype it up as being a major event. They did it in April with the Corpus Christie show (had a big tag title match, the Bully vs. Jeff Full Metal Mayhem match for the title), they did it in July with Destination X (Sabin’s World Title shot, the big confrontation between the Main Event Mafia and Aces & Eights), and now they seem to have chosen the August 15th Impact to be “Hardcore Justice” where Sabin and Bully will have their rematch. The problem with this should be obvious: If you are going to hype up one Impact each month that doesn’t have PPV, why not just do a monthly PPVs? It is the same concept, but you get more time for everything on the card (three hours with no commercials vs. two hours), you get an extra week of Impact to build things up, and most importantly, YOU MAKE MONEY WITH IT!

Using this “big monthly Impact” model also defeats the purpose of the change to quarterly PPVs by only giving you five or six weeks to build to one of your PPVs rather than thirteen or fourteen. That TNA would do something that is so counter-productive and regressive is a big problem. It does, however, seem to show us why TNA has completely failed to capitalize on the potential of having three months to build to each PPV: They are stuck in the monthly PPV mindset, and if they are only building up to each PPV for a month beforehand, what was the point of changing away from monthly PPVs. If TNA does not get out of this old mindset and start capitalizing on the advantages of their new PPV strategy, the company will go under.

I think this was them realizing that their move wasn't the best, but they can't simply go back out of nowhere and will likely return to the 12 PPV program once the year is done. At first it was just a big impact, which had some build to it, but it still felt like an impact, all storylines still continued but it had the big show feel to pull the fans to see what happens that a normal PPV does, but with Destination X and Hardore Justice, it's obvious they realize they need those PPVs, since the monthly income they expected from the One Night Only PPVs didn't really pay off and fans easily tune out.

[badnewzxl]

Even more distressing, though, is what their new model seems to be. They pick one episode of Impact a month and they hype it up as being a major event. They did it in April with the Corpus Christie show (had a big tag title match, the Bully vs. Jeff Full Metal Mayhem match for the title), they did it in July with Destination X (Sabin’s World Title shot, the big confrontation between the Main Event Mafia and Aces & Eights), and now they seem to have chosen the August 15th Impact to be “Hardcore Justice” where Sabin and Bully will have their rematch. The problem with this should be obvious: If you are going to hype up one Impact each month that doesn’t have PPV, why not just do a monthly PPVs? It is the same concept, but you get more time for everything on the card (three hours with no commercials vs. two hours), you get an extra week of Impact to build things up, and most importantly, YOU MAKE MONEY WITH IT!

Using this “big monthly Impact” model also defeats the purpose of the change to quarterly PPVs by only giving you five or six weeks to build to one of your PPVs rather than thirteen or fourteen. That TNA would do something that is so counter-productive and regressive is a big problem. It does, however, seem to show us why TNA has completely failed to capitalize on the potential of having three months to build to each PPV: They are stuck in the monthly PPV mindset, and if they are only building up to each PPV for a month beforehand, what was the point of changing away from monthly PPVs. If TNA does not get out of this old mindset and start capitalizing on the advantages of their new PPV strategy, the company will go under.

I think this was them realizing that their move wasn't the best, but they can't simply go back out of nowhere and will likely return to the 12 PPV program once the year is done. At first it was just a big impact, which had some build to it, but it still felt like an impact, all storylines still continued but it had the big show feel to pull the fans to see what happens that a normal PPV does, but with Destination X and Hardore Justice, it's obvious they realize they need those PPVs, since the monthly income they expected from the One Night Only PPVs didn't really pay off and fans easily tune out.

I really just think of these big Impacts the same way I think of Saturday Night Main Events and Clash of Champions; shows you should make big enough to keep momentum going between ppvs, esp when there's a great distance between said PPVs. They've gotta remember to deliver for each of these and not let them slip into being just another episode of the show. Once they get some continuity going with the storylines, we'll actually see how well they can do it; right now they've only had two such "special" Impact eps. I'm eager to see how Destination X and Hardcore Justice contribute to Bound for Glory, and I think Open Fight Nights will become important shows as it'll be the perfect show to build momentum for feuds. They're giving me a good reason to watch at least two of their eps a month; I think that's what they're going for.....

[Big Red Machine]

Even more distressing, though, is what their new model seems to be. They pick one episode of Impact a month and they hype it up as being a major event. They did it in April with the Corpus Christie show (had a big tag title match, the Bully vs. Jeff Full Metal Mayhem match for the title), they did it in July with Destination X (Sabin’s World Title shot, the big confrontation between the Main Event Mafia and Aces & Eights), and now they seem to have chosen the August 15th Impact to be “Hardcore Justice” where Sabin and Bully will have their rematch. The problem with this should be obvious: If you are going to hype up one Impact each month that doesn’t have PPV, why not just do a monthly PPVs? It is the same concept, but you get more time for everything on the card (three hours with no commercials vs. two hours), you get an extra week of Impact to build things up, and most importantly, YOU MAKE MONEY WITH IT!

Using this “big monthly Impact” model also defeats the purpose of the change to quarterly PPVs by only giving you five or six weeks to build to one of your PPVs rather than thirteen or fourteen. That TNA would do something that is so counter-productive and regressive is a big problem. It does, however, seem to show us why TNA has completely failed to capitalize on the potential of having three months to build to each PPV: They are stuck in the monthly PPV mindset, and if they are only building up to each PPV for a month beforehand, what was the point of changing away from monthly PPVs. If TNA does not get out of this old mindset and start capitalizing on the advantages of their new PPV strategy, the company will go under.

I think this was them realizing that their move wasn't the best, but they can't simply go back out of nowhere and will likely return to the 12 PPV program once the year is done. At first it was just a big impact, which had some build to it, but it still felt like an impact, all storylines still continued but it had the big show feel to pull the fans to see what happens that a normal PPV does, but with Destination X and Hardore Justice, it's obvious they realize they need those PPVs, since the monthly income they expected from the One Night Only PPVs didn't really pay off and fans easily tune out.

I really just think of these big Impacts the same way I think of Saturday Night Main Events and Clash of Champions; shows you should make big enough to keep momentum going between ppvs, esp when there's a great distance between said PPVs. They've gotta remember to deliver for each of these and not let them slip into being just another episode of the show. Once they get some continuity going with the storylines, we'll actually see how well they can do it; right now they've only had two such "special" Impact eps. I'm eager to see how Destination X and Hardcore Justice contribute to Bound for Glory, and I think Open Fight Nights will become important shows as it'll be the perfect show to build momentum for feuds. They're giving me a good reason to watch at least two of their eps a month; I think that's what they're going for.....

They have actually done three such Impacts. The April 14th Impact wasn't named, but was essentially a replacement for Sacrifice. If they had to cut back, I think cutting back to six or 7 PPVs would have been much better so they could have big shows like these Impacts but still make money off of them.

As for Open Fight Night... it KILLS feuds by forcing the heel to fight.

[badnewzxl]

but then the heel can get more heat by cheating, walking out on the match, etc. Having them fight doesn't kill the feud necessarily; not everyone needs to be the cowardly heel....

[Big Red Machine]

but then the heel can get more heat by cheating, walking out on the match, etc. Having them fight doesn't kill the feud necessarily; not everyone needs to be the cowardly heel....

The heel can't walk out on an OFN match. When Roode tried it, Hogan threatened to suspend him.

Anyway, all of those things could be done without having to waste time with a promo specifically calling someone out.

[badnewzxl]

but then the heel can get more heat by cheating, walking out on the match, etc. Having them fight doesn't kill the feud necessarily; not everyone needs to be the cowardly heel....

The heel can't walk out on an OFN match. When Roode tried it, Hogan threatened to suspend him.

Anyway, all of those things could be done without having to waste time with a promo specifically calling someone out.

That was one instance; do you not remember when Taryn called out Gail Kim (I think it was just a week after she was fired as KO's ref and hired as a competitor) and Gail & Tara just jumped her instead? It's happened before. And even if they don't walk away, they can still cheat, or they could do what Pope did a few years back in his small beef with Joe and essentially let the opponent win just to escape a beating. There are several ways one could do this and they would work. Building momentum in a feud by keeping the guys away from each other is BORING; you shouldn't run more than one angle like this at a time, esp if your company calls itself Total Non-Stop Action

[Big Red Machine]

but then the heel can get more heat by cheating, walking out on the match, etc. Having them fight doesn't kill the feud necessarily; not everyone needs to be the cowardly heel....

The heel can't walk out on an OFN match. When Roode tried it, Hogan threatened to suspend him.

Anyway, all of those things could be done without having to waste time with a promo specifically calling someone out.

That was one instance; do you not remember when Taryn called out Gail Kim (I think it was just a week after she was fired as KO's ref and hired as a competitor) and Gail & Tara just jumped her instead? It's happened before. And even if they don't walk away, they can still cheat, or they could do what Pope did a few years back in his small beef with Joe and essentially let the opponent win just to escape a beating. There are several ways one could do this and they would work. Building momentum in a feud by keeping the guys away from each other is BORING; you shouldn't run more than one angle like this at a time, esp if your company calls itself Total Non-Stop Action

It's not just "one instance." That was the GM laying down the rules. The Gail Kim thing was stupid because it broke a clearly established rule. As Tenay is so fond of telling us "if you get called out, you have to fight."

I'm not saying that every angle requires keeping guys away from each other. I'm saying that having every damn feud have a match on the same show is a bad idea. You can do all of the things you listed above without the stupid OFN gimmick. All OFN does is make the show feel repetitive.