HUGE WWE Cuts? Real Reason For WWE Changes! | WrestleTalk - video Dailymotion

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00:00 The WWE/Endeavor merger has already seen some big changes within the company. Backstage

00:05 staff, office workers and even talent have been released from WWE in cost-cutting measures,

00:12 but there are still costs that can be cut. But are these changes actually a positive

00:17 for both WWE and for fans?

00:27 On December 5th, 2023, WWE Home Video announced that it would no longer be producing home

00:33 video releases. They posted on Twitter, "With great sadness we must announce that WWE have

00:38 taken the decision to withdraw from the home video category. No licensing deals will be

00:43 renewed worldwide after 2023." This promoted a slew of nostalgic tweets from wrestling

00:50 fans with many telling stories of home video releases - be they DVD or VHS - that were

00:54 part of the fabric of their wrestling DNA. They might not be fans without them.

01:00 Anecdotally, this was my first experience of wrestling back in the early 90s. I wasn't

01:05 allowed to watch wrestling in my household as my mother thought that I would re-enact

01:08 it and get seriously hurt, but jokes on her because when wrestling was put on Channel

01:12 4 for free in 2000 I really got into backyard wrestling and got hurt. Wait, she was right!

01:19 But this VHS was the only thing I'd seen of wrestling for the longest time. And when

01:23 I got into wrestling in the 2000s thanks to Sunday Night Heat being shown on Channel 4,

01:27 I found a new friend at school who had loads of WWE PPVs on video and we spent our teenage

01:32 weekends watching them. He also had videos of ECW and WCW and that's how I discovered

01:37 all of those companies and all of those wrestlers as well. However, I am an elder millennial

01:43 so of course I discovered an interest through video. It's what we all did. And a lot of

01:48 the wrestling fans romanticising about the death of physical media for wrestling would

01:53 also be those millennials and older because, well, that's our nostalgia. Jet-Xers don't

01:58 know what a VHS is, that's not a TikTok. And a lot of them will discover wrestling

02:02 through other means, and then get their wrestling histories through a much easier source to

02:07 see all of the wrestling you want, the WWE Network. The last physical releases for WWE

02:12 PPVs will be Survivor Series 2023 in the US and Crown Jewel 2023 in the UK. House of Wrestling

02:19 reached out to their WWE source about the news and they told them the home video business

02:23 has long been in decline and it will no longer be a place where the company dedicates time

02:29 and resources. This actually isn't the first time that WWE have cancelled home video releases

02:34 of PPVs, as they announced in 2022 that they wouldn't be releasing DVDs and Blu-rays

02:39 of PPVs moving forward. However, they made a last minute decision to continue for two

02:43 more years. Wrestling Inc reached out to their sources to ask if something similar would

02:47 happen this time, and they write, "It doesn't appear another last minute change is in the

02:52 cards."

02:53 WWE are not the only ones stopping physical media of their shows. Disney announced in

02:57 August of 2023 they were no longer going to make DVDs and Blu-rays of their movies in

03:02 Australia and New Zealand after the release of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. Forbes

03:07 wrote, "While consumers will be able to buy discs currently in stock, no new shipments

03:11 from Disney's vast content library, including Star Wars, Marvel Studios, and its animated

03:15 classics, will be forthcoming." They'd already stopped making physical media in Latin

03:19 America and select Asian markets, and Forbes continued, "Disney cites declining sales

03:25 as the reason."

03:26 The decline of physical media, DVDs, Blu-rays, 4Ks, etc. has been a long-running topic in

03:32 the world of entertainment. The Digital Entertainment Group reported that DVD and Blu-ray sales

03:36 in the US had dropped from $1.97 billion in 2021 to $1.58 billion in 2022 - a decline

03:44 of 20%. And that decline has continued, with the same group reporting the first half of

03:49 2023 sales is $753 million, a drop of 70% from the same period of time year on year.

03:55 If that number doubles for the second half, it would still be under the total sales in

04:00 2022. Rentals have also declined.

04:03 On the other hand, streaming revenue is massively up. The first half of 2023 according to Digital

04:07 Entertainment Group is 17% up year on year - around $19 billion. But of course what is

04:14 old might become new again, just look at the rise of popularity with vinyl in the last

04:18 couple of years. But the numbers for DVDs and Blu-rays don't lie, and they spell disaster

04:23 for physical media at sacrifice. And it's not just the physical media market that WWE

04:27 are changing under TKO.

04:30 Speaking at the UBS Media Conference on the 4th of December 2023, TKO COO Mark Shapiro

04:35 said of WWE's house shows, "While there's a reason to have them because it's good for

04:39 the brand, we're building audience, we're putting them on in C&D counties, so we're

04:44 really stretching the brand and we're kind of amassing a greater array of eyeballs from

04:47 all demos so it's good for long-term growth. From a margin perspective, they are dilutive."

04:53 WWE house shows, or WWE Live as they're now known, are the live shows that happen in between

05:00 TV tapings. These are un-televised events, and they're used as part of advertising the

05:05 WWE brand. On very rare occasions, something big will happen at them. There was a period

05:09 of time when Kevin Owens and AJ Styles swapped the United States Championship between them

05:13 on house shows, but a lot of that was by accident. But most of the time they're just used to

05:17 let fans see wrestlers they like. For example, Omos has not had a match on WWE TV or PPV

05:23 since Summerslam, but he wrestles regularly on house shows. Sometimes house shows can

05:27 be used to trial out new gimmicks or new feuds before they debut on TV. Agents also provide

05:32 feedback about the wrestlers to higher-ups about performance, which can often dictate

05:36 who is going to get pushed next. The other thing that house shows provide is, to be blunt

05:41 about it, fun for the wrestlers themselves. House shows don't have the same time constraints

05:47 as TVs. You don't need to hit your commercial cues, you don't need to work the cameras.

05:52 You can just wrestle. You can experiment with new things. For example, The People's Elbow,

05:58 one of the most famous finishing moves in wrestling history, was born at house shows.

06:02 It was just a move that The Rock did to make the other wrestlers laugh, particularly The

06:06 Undertaker. But it got over at those house shows, so Rock started doing it on TV. Dave

06:12 Meltzer also notes in the December 11th Wrestling Observer Newsletter, wrestlers who came up

06:16 on the independent circuit - which let's be honest is most of the WWE roster at this

06:20 point - cut their teeth in front of live audiences with no TV pressures and therefore thrive

06:27 in these environments. Again, speaking anecdotally as a fan, I've always had way more fun at

06:33 WWE house shows than I have at TV tapings. So the question is, why cut them? One could

06:39 point towards injuries and the general wear and tear of wrestlers' bodies as to why you'd

06:44 want to scale back doing house shows. However, while writing about the decline of WWE's

06:49 house shows in that December 11th Wrestling Observer Newsletter, Dave Meltzer noted current

06:53 data doesn't really answer the question as to overall safety. He looked into the injuries

06:58 list of both WWE and AEW - one which does house shows and one which does not - and found

07:03 out of the 142 wrestlers currently active in AEW, 12 are currently injured, or 8.5%.

07:10 In WWE there are 15 out of 169, or 8.9%. Charlotte Flair, for example, didn't get

07:18 injured on the three house shows she'd wrestled leading up to the Tribute to the Troops episode

07:22 of Smackdown, she got injured on the Tribute to the Troops episode of Smackdown. Fightful

07:26 Select reported that the injury during the match with Asuka was real, saying she had

07:30 to be helped at the back and appeared to be in pain.

07:32 So if it's not for a wrestler's safety, then why cut them? If you've been watching

07:37 this video long enough, you'll probably already know the answer. The finger thing means money.

07:43 Wrestlenomics report via their Patreon page that WWE will run 206 shows in 2023, and note

07:50 only about 23 of those are in the "C&D" counties that Mark Shapiro was talking about.

07:55 That's only 12% of the company's current schedule. Which doesn't sound like a lot.

08:01 But Wrestlenomics do note that in a few quarters before the pandemic, WWE reported operating

08:07 losses in its live event division, meaning the division overall was unprofitable for

08:12 those periods. Speaking of 12%, that's also the amount of revenue house shows brought

08:17 into WWE between July of 2022 and June of 2023. TV Rights, on the other hand, brought

08:24 in 79% of revenue. In his speech at the media conference, Shapiro noted that the deal WWE

08:30 has with Saudi Arabia is worth over $100 million per year. That's for two shows. So yeah,

08:38 why would you spend money on 23 shows that you're not making a lot of money on when

08:42 you can just do two shows in Saudi Arabia for way more money? They're not doing this

08:47 for fans, they're doing this for cash. And more changes are likely still to come.

08:54 One of the things TKO has been quite vocal about since the merger is sponsorships. Now,

08:59 I know what you're thinking. Aren't there already a lot of sponsorships on WWE TV? Do

09:03 we have brand integration all over the show? The Women's War Games match was sponsored

09:07 by crisps. Or chips for our American viewers. Shapiro noted at the conference that Vince

09:12 McMahon used to see a wrestling ring like a religion. He wanted it clean. The mat was

09:18 clean, the ropes were clean. And not dirt, but of sponsorships. And under TKO that will

09:24 change. Shapiro argues that sponsors don't want a banner up in the building, which is

09:28 what WWE previously did. They want activation. And that means sponsorships on the mat and

09:34 sponsorship on the ropes. When talking about UFC he said, "Until we get over $1 billion

09:40 in sponsorship, I won't be happy. The same will apply to WWE." And while it's just

09:45 C and D counties that are being cut for house shows now, more will probably be cut if they

09:50 also don't perform. Which brings us to the weekly TV product. Now, that does make money.

09:56 79% of WWE's revenue is from TV rights. But that's for the show, not the look of

10:02 the show or how it's made. In fact, I'm just going to give you all of Shapiro's

10:06 quote here because I think that will give you the best look at what he thinks about

10:11 TV production. It's a long quote so bear with me. "Just think of how many events

10:15 we televise we put on. We bring the show on the road. We bring trucks out to different

10:20 cities whether it's a cloud or it's cameras or it's tape machines, replay graphics

10:25 operators, stuff we can do AI back at our headquarters in either Vegas for UFC or our

10:30 Stanford production facility for WWE. There are a lot of production efficiencies. Even

10:35 if our production chiefs want to tell me that there's not, frankly, I worked at ESPN

10:40 for 12 years. I oversaw all production. I've been through all the song and dance with every

10:44 producer who treats every tape machine and camera like it's a baby and doesn't want

10:49 to give it up. And we're here to improve our margins. So we are going to scrutinize

10:54 every dollar on the production end of every single one of these events and every single

10:59 one of these telecasts. And we're going to realize substantial savings."

11:04 The TKO merger is still new, but one thing is for sure, WWE in 24 might not look the

11:11 same as it did in 2023.

HUGE WWE Cuts? Real Reason For WWE Changes! | WrestleTalk

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