ShareThisThe recent surge in pro-wrestling television ratings couldn't have come at a better time.
Grappling's popularity in 2008 took a dip for the first time in three years, according to an annual ESPN sports poll. Among almost 12,000 survey participants, 23.5 percent categorized themselves as having interest in the genre, with 7.6 percent being "avid fans." That is a decrease from 25.3 percent and 7.9 percent for those respective categories in 2007.
The percentages of casual fans declined in every age and race demographic except ages 55 to 64, which isn't the audience that World Wrestling Entertainment and TNA Wrestling scriptwriters are focused on capturing. Support remains strongest among fans ages 12 to 17 (41.3 percent) and gradually declines in each subsequent age group. WWE began targeting youngsters with a more "family-friendly" presentation last year by toning down the risque elements of its product.
The poll, which is a service of TNS Sport, shows an alarming drop in the 35-44 age group. Casual fans fell from 26.1 percent in 2007 to 21.9 percent in 2008; avid fans slumped from 8.3 percent to 6.2.
The survey only provides numerical data. But one reason for the loss of interest could be the 35-44 crowd being more attracted by the Ultimate Fighting Championship, which has combined some showmanship aspects of pro wrestling with real mixed-martial-arts fighting.
Brock Lesnar has brought some of his WWE following with him to the UFC. Lesnar's match against Randy Couture last November drew 1 million pay-per-view orders domestically, outdrawing WWE's flagship "Wrestlemania" franchise by almost one-third. Lesnar's next fight, against Frank Mir, is expected to corral an even larger pay-per-view audience. Originally scheduled for May 23, the bout will now be held July 11 at "UFC 100" in Las Vegas because Mir recently required minor knee surgery.
While the UFC has replaced pro wrestling as pay-per-view darling, the grappling industry is showing renewed signs of life on television. Two February episodes of "Monday Night Raw" (9 p.m. EDT, USA Network) averaged 6 million viewers, the first time consecutive shows reached that threshold since April 2002. While the viewing audience is down from when WWE's "Smackdown" aired on CW, recent Friday-night shows are averaging almost 4 million viewers on myNetworkTV.
Last month, TNA's "Impact!" (9 p.m. Thursdays, Spike) drew its first audience of more than 2 million viewers for an empty-arena match between Kurt Angle and Steve "Sting" Borden. "Impact!" is close to drawing the same average viewership as WWE's Extreme Championship Wrestling, which attracts roughly 2 million fans for its weekly Tuesday-night telecasts on Sci-Fi Network. WWE and Mexican "lucha libre" promotions also remain solid draws on Spanish networks that air in the United States.
Two more wrestling shows are on the way as well. "WWE Superstars" will air at 8 and 11 p.m. Thursday nights on WGN starting in April. The Philadelphia-based Ring of Honor debuts a weekly Saturday-night show March 21 on HD-Net.
The challenge WWE and TNA now face is getting television viewers to spend on pay-per-view during an economic recession. According t o the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, pay-per-view orders accounted for 12.7 percent of WWE's total revenue in the final quarter of 2008, compared with 15 percent during the same period in 2007. Domestic orders for four WWE pay-per-view shows -- "No Mercy," "Cyber Sunday," "Survivor Series" and "Armageddon" -- also were down from the previous year.
TNA, which is privately owned, doesn't release pay-per-view information, but sales lag far behind WWE's monthly offerings.
In six years of ESPN sports polls, wrestling's popularity was at its peak in 2003. That's when 32.7 percent of those surveyed professed to being at least casual wrestling fans, including a whopping 49.4 percent in the 12-17 age demographic. The bulk of those fans are now in the 18-24 category, where wrestling's popularity stood at 39 percent in the 2008 poll.
(Alex Marvez writes a syndicated pro-wrestling column for Scripps Howard News Service. E-mail him at alex1marv(at)aol.com.)
The facts and figures really
The facts and figures really tell most of the story. Pro wrestling is taking a hit, and more important the king, WWE, is more commercial, but less popular at the same time. May sound confusing, but what I mean by this is that it is popping up in the media in the US and around the world, but with the avid fans, they are losing interest, and some do not even remain fans. People around me have lost interest since 2003, and yet here I am still a massive fan of the business, wanted them to change. I feel it for the WWE, but not so much, because it is them that decided to change to a PG rated product. And I think that is the main reason, honestly, that popularity is decreasing. In the WWF days, content was 15-rated, or 18-rated, whereas now, the target market is 14yr old kids.
It really hurts, but the road to Wrestlemania 25 seems promising, we shall see what happens.
Interesting article, keep them coming!
Thank you for reading,
One of the few, AVID, WWE fans.
wwe/tna
the reason for the drop in wwe is how they use john cena. he is quite boring and comes out year after year with the same old crap every week. younger simple minded children catch on to him, but anyone looking for some entertainment and possibly someone fun to watch, has been sick of the cena show for years now. i liked him when he was a bad guy, but randy orton is probably their best guy in terms of wrestling and entertainment.
Now tna is, in my opinion, a much better show when it comes to storylines and overall entertainment. they just need to keep plugging in the original tna guys with the veterans. tna really needs to go for broke and start traveling outside orlando for their tv shows. i live in orlando and love going to the events at universal studios but i would rather see them travel and compete with the wwe like wcw did.
I think the reason for the
I think the reason for the decline of both avid and casual fans is that there is to much of the same old same in wrestling these days. WWE bought up all the others promotions, which in turned stopped the creativity in wrestling. I mean look at when WWE and WCW were at war; each promotion trying to out do the other, coming up with new and edgy ways that made you tune in every week. Now WWE runs three shows and they all are basically the same. They should allow the three brands to run as their own separate promotion giving them budgets and creative freedom. This would allow for some inward battles which might lead to some really creative stuff. Why can't you have an ECW which targets the more extreme based wrestling fan. WWE focuses attention on their live show to make most of there money and ratings instead seeing how all of their brands could elevate themselves, but Vince runs the place with an iron fist. Vince why not be the Viacom of wrestling. Like Viacom, WWE would be like an umbrella with each of their brands targeting a demographic.
I guess what I'm saying is that wrestling needs variety, we need your hardcore, we need our high impacted, we need our grapplers, our show men, we need moves that are awesome, we need blood, we need T&A, but we don't need it in just one promotion. We need it to be spread around. So nothing gets burnt out.
what needs to change
Im a big fan of the wwe and have been for many years ever since wwf vs wcw days ive been loyal to wwe.Like what the other person said they have 3 shows and treat them the same, like whats the point of ecw when ecw doesnt have any extreme rules matches.They have like 70 wrestlers and most of them dont get even get used they mainly focus on like maybe 20 dudes.They have two tag team champions which arent even defended on a weekly basis. I love the divas but they have like 30 and only maybe 10 get tv time and most cant wrestle.The cruiserweight title randomly dissapeared.It would be cool if they had it on ecw and brought back crusierweights.I just start to lose interest because its like they ran out of ideas. I still watch every monday night raw and go to live events when they come to ohio its just that things could be alot better and o yea the PPV prices could be alot cheaper too : ).
WWE reply
I have truly been a fan of the WWE for nearly 30 years. I remember watching the drama that involved Bruno Sammartino, Bob Backlund and Larry Zybysko! The entire industry was huge from the very late 1990's thru the early to maybe 2005!? One major reason I feel actually hurt the industry that the industry operators thought would help improve their product: They over exposed the product with too many TV shows every week. Think back to how popular it was with the Monday Night Wars!!! Raw versus Nitro? Now you have WWE Raw on Monday, ECW on Tuesday, TNA Impact on Thursday and WWE Smackdown on Friday? The WWE has truly failed in replacing their most popular stars. They had their run with Steve Austin, Mick Foley, Brett Hart, Kevin Nash and the Ousiders(also WCW fame), Hulk Hogan, Shawn Michaels, Dwayne Johnson(THe Rock), Kurt Angle and more recently Bill GOldberg and Brock Lesnar. The trait all these guys shared was over the top charisma and promo excellence! THey also in their prime were awesome in the ring whether winning or being able to carry and elevate the opponents. There is a true lack of an identifiable character for both WWE and TNA. WWE still relies on The Undertaker(who is my all time favorite) but is at the end, as is Shawn Michaels. TNA clings to Kurt Angle, Sting, Booker T and a part time Kevin Nash. WWE must see this vacuum, why else are they propping up the likes of Roddy Piper, Jimmy Snuka and others in the CHris Jericho program. WWE showed that they truly lost their edge and ability to connect with their fans with how they handled the career of Bill Goldberg. Another reason for the lack of talent depth has to be the presence and rise of the UFC. The WWE and TNA schedules their rosters endure is overly demanding. See the recent comments from Brock Lesnar and others. WWE PPV shows are $50 bucks while UFC is about 10 to 15 dollars less. One more thing, UFC is about true competition and WWE/TNA are actors. I still love the WWE and will always be one.