cero2k wrote: ↑Jun 20th, '18, 13:33
Big Red Machine wrote: ↑Jun 19th, '18, 14:44
I never said I didn't have a problem with monopolies; just that non-compete clauses are perfectly legitimate and in no way morally dubious.
I'm pretty sure we have seen ROH use non-competes. Do you really think it's a coincidence that it took ACH over two months to start working for Gabe after ROH let him out of his contract? And other than ACH, who has there been that hasn't left ROH at the end of their contract? Considering the way ROH behaved with O'Reilly, War Machine, and Dijak, I'm dead sure that if someone wound up getting released there would definitely be a non-compete.
With Ricochet, he was actively complaining on Twitter that he wasn't allowed to work for ROH due to LU.
WWE contracts have a "freeze" clause that lets WWE basically not count time that someone is off TV if they are injured or in a work dispute a la Neville. That's what happened with Rey, but they let him go after a while. Bryan working as the GM was done so that he could count that time against his contract. Del Rio wanted out with a good chunk of time left on his contract, so he had to go to court over it. His contract probably said he was exclusive to WWE everywhere (to my knowledge it's only ROH contracts that are regionally exclusive, applying onto the US and Ontario). Neville will be free after he comes back to work to fill out the rest of his contract, or when WWE decides to release him. And it's not like he's not still getting paid.
exactly, it's those freeze clauses and the exaggerated no compete clauses. All tactics to control the business. With ROH it's hard to say, I've never heard of them having no compete clauses, so it may just be a coincidence or booking situation, but it's the same as the PPV example, it's companies having to adapt stuff from WWE in order to keep things going, but it's still WWE pushing this things to happen.
Are they bullsh*t? I think so. But WWE aren't the only people doing it. ROH pretty much did the same thing with Adam Cole last year, with him working an extra five months to make up for the time he was injured in 2015. The no-competes in WWE aren't "exaggerated." They're the same length they've been since well before the current indy boom or the NJPW expansion started, going back to like, 2003, when WWE was at its most dominant. They're no doing it because they need to do it to keep up with WWE. Keeping up with WWE doesn't matter. They're doing it for the same reason WWE does; to exert some control and prevent someone else from getting too much of a big surprise pop. You can think it's BS, but I don't think it is in any way a monopolistic practice, and arguing that it is one is silly because non-competes have been a thing going back to well before WWE had their supposed monopoly.
cero2k wrote: ↑Jun 20th, '18, 13:33
Big Red Machine wrote: ↑Jun 19th, '18, 14:44
I'm saying the reason people haven't been paying for the smaller guys' shows is because they thought they weren't worth the money. Those same people used to do the same when WWE PPVs were even more expensive (and I'd argue that in 2014, WWE PPVs were in a higher price-range than at least ROH. They were at least double the price), so WWE lowered the price of their product and added more stuff to the point where people now find it to be acceptable value for the price. If ROH or TNA built up a PPV well and reclaimed reputations for putting on great shows, then I don't think people would hesitate to pay $40 every two months to see them, regardless of the price of WWE's product.
if they didn't think it was worth the money, that still doesn't matter, because at the end, it was all a fair playing field. Once again, now the smaller company has to compete against a BILLIONAIRE company to make a product that will make consumers not only think that it's better, but worth the money. It's still a monopolistic action by WWE. When they were all the same price, the best product would win, now the best product was to be exponentially better to overcome the cheap price of WWE.
Billionaire, shmillionaire. If you are providing a product that is worth the price you are asking, people will pay for it. That's it. WWE making theirs so cheap only means that people will have more extra money to spend on other services. Someone who was already paying for each monthly WWE PPV would have still have the same $60 or whatever it was for the HD version in their monthly wrestling budget, and can now- even if WWE is still their first priority- spend that same amount of money on each month and also get ROH, New Japan, All Japan, RevPro, and all of the WWN promotions, and maybe still have enough left over for wXw or TNA.
You're also forgetting that when WWE implemented this price, the only other promotion streaming things live for one blanket price a month were New Japan (who were using a third party to do it), and WWE's price was higher than New Japan's was. ROH and Gabe (and I think GoFightLive tried to work with CZW once or twice around this time) had all tried offering single events to be streamed live, and even with that ROH wound up with such a reputation for failure that they became laughing stock. WWE weren't being monopolistic when they started at this price, and they haven't changed their price since. You're acting like they had these malicious intentions to knock everyone else out of a game that only one other person was actually playing at that point, and WWE's price was higher than New Japan's.
cero2k wrote: ↑Jun 20th, '18, 13:33
Big Red Machine wrote: ↑Jun 19th, '18, 14:44
I will argue that a wrestling PPV and a wrestling TV show are essentially the same product whereas a computer and a web browser are not, but even so, TNA's scaling back of their PPVs was done well before the idea of a WWE streaming service was even being thought about (if you'll remember, Vince really wanted to get a channel on TV, like how the Network works- or at least used to work- in parts of Canada, through Rogers Cable). TNA scaled back on their PPVs because no one was buying them because the product was sh*t and they thought this new schedule would enable them to build to the PPVs better... and, of course, it didn't because the product was still sh*t.
You can blame the WWE Network for making ROH include the PPVs free if you choose the yearly option for Honor Club if you want, but the fact is that every other wrestling streaming service in existence at the time Honor Club was launched- WWE, NJPW World, wXw, RevPro, PROGRESS, WWN) included their biggest shows as part of the deal. ROH was the
only one that didn't. This was just them conforming to the industry standard.
Impact's quality and moves are beside the point, blaming the little guy's actions is not a defense for a monopoly. Regardless, they still run live PPVs at an old price and now more than ever when they're trying to get back on track, it's obvious that no card they can book will not make people say "meh, i can get Battleground for 9.99 instead and that will be my wrestling quota for the month"
TNA's moves and quality are absolutely relevant in this case! First of all, you're trying to tell me that WWE was trying to undercut TNA's business in a business TNA had mostly pulled out of well before WWE tried to undercut them. Arguing that WWE now offering 10$/month PPVs undercut TNA trying to sell one $40 PPV every few months is also laughable, not just because of the added disposable income but because
TNA completely failed in their execution of their strategy. Just look at the 2013 alone, before there was a WWE Network for $9.99 a month. The entire reasoning behind TNA's PPV cutback was because they wanted to give themselves more time to build up the stories for their big PPVs matches, and figured that 3 months between PPVs would be the best way to do it, creating a system similar to WWE's old Big Four. Within MONTHS TNA just reverted back to trying to do a big monthly show, except they now no longer had the PPV spot so instead of having four weeks of TV to build to a commercial-free three-hour show with all of the pay-offs, they only had three weeks of TV to build to a two-hour-minus-commercials show for all of their payoffs.
And the reason people didn't give their PPVs much of a chance was because the product stunk, just like it had for years before, which was the whole reason they wound up on this situation in the first place. The reason people didn't give TNA PPVs a chance in 2014 wasn't because the WWE Network was cheaper. It was because TNA kept filling their big PPV matches (in addition to their top TV matches) with f*ck finishes! They kept claiming they would change but they never did. They just kept doing back to the same horrendous booking philosophy that killed WCW and had hurt them every time they tried it. WHY THE F*CK WOULD YOU EVER BRING BACK VINCE RUSSO? Or even bring in Eric Bischoff as a booker. Or give the book to some goof like John Gaburik who had never done it before? Over the long history of TNA there were definitely people available. Heyman has said that he would have come in if they had given him full control but they wouldn't give it to him (this was in the 2009-2011 period). Mike Burns had a relatively successful track-record in his booking of CZW and had his ear to the indy scene. They could have tried to bring him in, but didn't. You want to be an alternative to WWE? It's late 2009 and you've just gutted your creative team by getting rid of Jeff Jarrett, Jim Cornette and Dutch Mantel... and a four-time Wrestling Observer Booker of the Year is available. Why wouldn't you just dump Russo, too, and make a play to hire Gabe instead of sticking with Russo, bringing in Ferrara, and then bringing in Hogan and Bischoff to make things worse. Imagine a highly-motivated 2009 Gabe wanting to prove that his ROH run wasn't a fluke now getting two hours of TV time each week (well-supported by the network, to boot) and a roster that includes AJ, Daniels, Angle, Joe, LAX, MCMG, Doug Williams, Abyss, The Dudley, Roode, Storm, Kazarian, Gail Kim, Awesome Kong, Victoria, CLM, Jay Lethal, The Pope, Sarita, Amazing Red w/Don West, Rhino, Velvet Sky & Angelina Love at their absolute best on the mic...and that's assuming that 1) guys like Jeff Hardy RVD, and the Bucks don't come in, 2) that Gabe somehow couldn't find something worthwhile to do with guys like Sting, Foley, Booker, Steiner, and Nash (which, in pretty much everyone case other than maybe Nash, and Booker if he wasn't motivated in the ring, I'm certain he could have), and 3) that Gabe being the booker plus TNA money and exposure wouldn't have convinced some top ROH guys to jump ship when their contracts were up... and that's also without Gabe bringing in any other indy guys he might have wanted to use.
But no. They went with Vince Russo instead. And did so EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. Even when the network told them that they don't want Russo anywhere near the product.
So in summation, TNA's problems are ALL self-made. The promotion might be better now, yes, but that doesn't mean that the scars of the past don't still run deep. When I tried to getting back into TNA this year, the thing that pissed me off the most was the Joseph Park sh*t, because that "constantly-changing because we're too dumb to remember our own f*cking angles and don't give enough of a sh*t to check first" bullsh*t epitomized many of the reasons why I stopped watching in the first place. In TNA's case, they absolutely HAVE to ensure that they are more than worth the price they are asking, because it will take a long time to convince people that they're not going to get f*cked out of their money eventually.
And if you don't think the asking price affects people's impressions of a product, just go to the ROH forums where people will shrug their shoulders and admit that the shows now are nowhere near as good as they were even back in 2015, but they're okay with it because they're getting four or six shows of that quality for $9.99 rather than paying $20 (assuming you're not buying it on sale) for each and every DVD, or $13 for each individual VOD. And now here is Dave Meltzer saying the exact same thing about
WWF In Hour House 3:
WWF's third In Your House PPV took place on 9/24 in Saginaw, MI before an estimated 6,500 fans. The show drew a mixed reaction. It appears to me based on phone calls that people judge a $14.95 show by easier standards than a "full price" show. I'm not saying that's right or wrong, but just that it is the case.
In the case of someone who says "meh, i can get Battleground for 9.99 instead
and that will be my wrestling quota for the month" the issue isn't just the price but also the time, and if someone only has three or four hours to spend on wrestling PPVs in a month, then every company- including DVD or VOD only promotions that don't have a streaming service like AAW or PWG- need to compete even more to make sure that their product is the one this person chooses to spend his or her time on because it's the time that is the limiting constraint here.
cero2k wrote: ↑Jun 20th, '18, 13:33
None of those promotions had PPVs nor they had them live aside from NJPW, and from what we know of what Dave tells us about Japanese crowds, networks are not a big thing, so their network was more about overseas reach than about lowering their value. The issue is not including big shows, it's running them live for cheap. if WWE would still run WM for $50 and put it up on the network three days later, then the standard would had stayed along with all those that you listed. This is indeed all those promotions HAVING to conform (or close enough) to a standard, a standard set by the billionaire company. It's easy for WWE to just stream live and put a show up a minute later, but for a small promotion it takes a LOT of resources that shouldn't be spent on that. This is Microsoft forcing all browser companies to make their product free since IE was now freeware.
Those promotions don't have to conform at all. If I had to guess, the two most successful non-WWE or NJPW streaming services in terms of numbers are probably PROGRESS and WWN, and PROGRESS doesn't do live at all, while WWN gives you a discount on their live stuff and then puts it up in the library two weeks later. Yes, WWE could charge extra for Mania. Most would argue that they should and are making a mistake by not doing so. But PROGRESS could charge $10 for their biggest show if they wanted to and I doubt they’d suffer any more (percentage-wise) than WWE would. Ditto for wXw and 16 Carat Gold or for RevPro and High Stakes, NJPW and Dominion, WK, and the G1 finals, or CHIKARA and KOT and their season finale. If PWG ran a streaming service they could do the same for BOLA. If you create the desire among your fans to pay extra for something and don’t ask some ridiculous amount extra, they will pay it.
As for the claim that these small promotions shouldn’t have to spend money on doing that, that has nothing to do with WWE. It has to do with PPV in general and the transition the business made to PPV being a main revenue generator. I know both ECW and WCW experimented with streaming but I don’t know if they charged for it and I don’t think it went well or else we’d hear more about it as a thing those companies innovated (even Bischoff and Heyman don’t mention it much). This push for streaming started as a way for indies to essentially do PPV without the mainstream support required to make your product worthwhile to a big PPV provider.
(And people not having to wait months to see the show on DVD also creates a buzz around the product because more people can talk about the show right afterwards. Compare that to the old official ROH forum which had to have a dedicated spoiler-free section in which you could only talk about things up to the most recent DVD release. The reason PWG are the only company that still does well with DVD sales is because of the combination of the high in-ring quality and the fact there isn’t much in the way of storylines to feel the need to immediately find out what happens in. Go back and listen to the stuff Gabe and Sal were saying in 2012 when they admitted that the reason they were so far behind on EVOLVE/DGUSA/FIP DVDs was that they were investing so much time and effort into getting streaming right because they thought that was the future of the business.)
ROH were the first ones to really do it with the GoFightLive shows. Then they decided they thought they could save money in the long run by learning how to do it themselves (plus GoFightLive had problems for some people, though I don’t ever remember having any personally) so they tried to stream their big shows themselves. That was (I believe) at the beginning of 2012 (I think the
10th Anniversary Show or WM weekend were the first ones they tried doing themselves). What WWE did by switching to the WWE Network is no different. But they’d seen the huge f*cking disaster that ROH’s became, so they offered this low price to get people to try to sign up- not just because they needed six Network subscribers to replace each lost PPV buy, but because they were asking people to give up a reliable distribution venue for a notoriously finicky one. Remember that ROH had to do things like give away free DVD copies of
Death Before Dishonor X to make it up to people for streaming issues, and then they offered the next iPPV attempt,
Glory BY Honor XI free with any ringside membership to get people to give their streaming service another chance. To accuse WWE of purposely choosing such a low price to try to hurt everyone else completely ignores the environment of the industry at the time and ignores the many non-malicious (and, quite frankly, more logical, seeing as how this supposed anti-indy crusade doesn’t start until early 2015 when WWE decides they don’t like indies piggybacking off of Mania weekend (and specifically that they don’t like ROH doing it for other Big Four shows, too, which ROH had done for the Rumble in 2014 and 2015).
cero2k wrote: ↑Jun 20th, '18, 13:33
Big Red Machine wrote: ↑Jun 19th, '18, 14:44
If WWE's supposed monopoly is so terrible and a monopoly means that the small guy is in a position where "you either find a way to KINDA make it work, or you die" then how do you explain the current indy boom? Pretty much every promotion in the world is doing better now than they were last year (other than maybe AAA and LU). Even NOAH. WWE's supposed monopoly then really isn't having much of an adverse effect on the indies or even foreign competitors
Because indies are now working together more and more and the age we live in makes it easier to access those indies and for wrestlers to travel. The talent is better until they get signed. WWE is not making the indie boom, but let's not pretend like WWE would take over that indie boom if they could (see NXT). This indie boom could be far bigger if not for WWE.
Bigger if not for WWE? Yes. But not because of the Network or any “monopolistic practices.” They’re signing the guys they think are the best. There’s nothing wrong with that. I feel like NJPW is “stockpiling” talent with nothing for them to do most of the time, too. What’s the difference between that and a sports team signing as many great players as possible? WWE (or even the combination of WWE, TNA, ROH, LU, and New Japan) will never be able suck all of the talent away from the indies and leave the indies with nothing the way people seem to be panicking about because there will always be new, talented indy guys.
I’m by no means an expert on the pre-2000s indy scene, but even if we start in 1998-2000 when your top indy guys from that period like Lance Diamond, Devon Storm, Crash Holly, Reckless Youth, the Hardys, York & Matthews are getting signed, you’ve got some guys who never get signed and stick around (Quack, Ace Darling, plus guys like Daniels, AJ, and Modest who were only signed for a few months) plus a new crop of top indy names starts to emerge, and by the end of 2002 you’ve got a whole new crop of stars: Dragon, Kendrick, Homicide, Low Ki, Joe, Super Dragon, Punk, Pearce, Hero, Maff, London, Briscoes, Amazing Red, Backseat Boyz, plus people start to bring the Brits like Fleisch, Storm, and Doug Williams over to the US… and when a few years later when some of those guys get signed you’ve got yet another new crop of guys like Aries, Roddy, Nigel, Shelley, Claudio, Sydal, Steen, Generico, Joey Ryan, etc. ready to take their place, plus it starts becoming more hip to bring over the NOAH and Dragon Gate guys. And when some more guys get signed a few years later you’ve got guys like the Tyler Black, the American Wolves, Ricochet, Gargano, Young Bucks, Callihan stepping up. And when more guys get signed they get replaced by Cole, O’Reilly, ACH, Swann, Fox, Elgin, ZSJ etc. and the new wave of Brits and the Luchadors start being brought in. And now that some guys from that generation of indy star are leaving you’re seeing new guys like Brody King, Tracy Williams, Austin Theory, Yehi, Adam Brooks, CCK/SPPT, etc. getting big, while people are bringing in some of the wXw crew. The talent will always replace itself.
cero2k wrote: ↑Jun 20th, '18, 13:33
Big Red Machine wrote: ↑Jun 19th, '18, 14:44
Yes, the UK stuff is pretty sh*tty. I've criticized it before and I'll criticize it now. But the guys that take those deals are making more money than they otherwise would have been, and if ITV or whoever could get a coherent core of guys together that they could decide to build around and get them all to commit (just like LU did), then they could do it. The problem there isn't
just WWE. It's also on how many of the guys they'd want to use are working New Japan and/or ROH all the time and doing other established indies that they like working (RevPro, PROGRESS, WCPW, ICW, wXw- or, in Thatcher's case, US indies) on their other dates. Their best bet would be to try to do what TNA did early on and pick a day like Wednesday when no one else other than Japanese promotions would be running shows and just book around NJPW's schedule, but even that would probably be a hassle for guys who don't live in the UK like Scurll, Ospreay, Thatcher, Smith Jr. (I think) to fly in for a day or two of tapings in the middle of the week.
They are not necessarily making more money, their contracts are at $16K, that's less than a teacher's assistant position, and yeah, they can run some indies, but as we've seen with the UK now, all those that signed can't book with non WWE-kids, Toni Storm is gone from STARDOM, Travis Banks is gone RevPro, that is gonna limit your big indie money bookings. So now you can't even work your schedule like you want between indies, NJPW, Impact, ROH, and the random WWE UK times they choose to finally do something. WALTER not signing with WWE will likely mean that he can make far more money going wherever he wants right now. I dont know what happens to the merch stores one signed with WWE UK.
They wouldn’t have signed the WWE contract if it wasn’t giving them more of a guarantee than they were currently getting. 16K is just the downside. They also get paid for every WWE use, plus if I had to guess I’d say that the WWE-Kids probably pay pretty well. Maybe not the top (and I’d doubt they alone pay what you might make signing with ROH, NJPW, or TNA), but I’d bet they pay relatively well. Plus, the list of places they’re not allowed to work seems to just be ROH, LU, TNA, New Japan, AAA, and CMLL. If they let them work freakin’ RevPro I’m sure they won’t have a problem with them working most other indies.