The Tiger’s Take 1.29.08: ROH Cutting Costs

As has been reported both in the Wrestling Observer and right here on this very web site that Ring of Honor is going to be implementing a few cost cutting measures. While it’s obviously not a *good* sign for any promotion to institute measures to save money, I don’t think (nor do I hope for, despite my labeling as a hater of ROH) this is some sign that ROH will be out of business by the end of the year. I honestly think that it was something that should have been expected, but for some reason is actually seen as a surprise. It’s simple really, ROH is headed in the same direction that Smoky Mountain Wrestling went into, they’re getting too big to be small, and too small to be big.

“Indy” is often seen as a dirty word of sorts to ROH diehards. ROH is certainly bigger than your average indy. Most indy groups have a ‘home base’ like CHIKARA does to Pennsylvania and 2CW does to New York. ROH has run shows in the Northeast, Midwest, West Coast, England, and Japan. How many indy groups self release and distribute their shows? IWA-MS, CHIKARA, CZW, and others retain the use of Smart Mark Video. 2CW does self realease their own shows, but it’s on DVDR, and their production compared to ROH’s isn’t even in the same galaxy. How many indys are on Pay Per View? It’s safe to say that ROH is bigger than your typical indy, but the fact remains that they are just an indy, and that means that they don’t have the financial backing that a WWE or TNA has, and soon or later that had to start to catch up with them. Just for fun, let’s look at a few of ROH’s ventures in 2007, and you’ll see why it was inevitable that things would begin to catch up with them.

– The two shows in Japan. There is absolutely no way that ROH made back all the money that they spent on these shows. Flying over talent, production crew, lodging. Even if NOAH and/or Dragon gate supplied them with a ring, and paid the fee for the arena. Once ROH lost Samoa Joe, any chance of these shows drawing a huge gate went away. Sure, there’s the DVD sales, which I’ll talk about later. But even if all of ROH’s most dedicated fans decided to attend these shows in person, the real winner in the whole grand scheme of things would have been the airline.

– The two shows on the west coast. I’m not sure about Survival of the Fittest in Las Vegas, but from all accounts, the second show in San Francisco drew horribly. Grated, this was not totally ROH’s fault, there were problems with the big convention beforehand. But just looking at the card, there’s really nothing, with the exception of seeing Human Tornado in ROH, that really seems all that attractive to fans. So while not as expensive as the Japan trip, ROH still flew over talent and production, and while it’s a better shot than that Japan shows, the only way they could hope to make their money back was DVD sales.

– ROH on PPV. Yes, the big one. I did an entire column about my feelngs about ROH on PPV, and the possible repurcussions. My general thought was that while it was good for them business wise, they might be taking some chances by booking themselves into a corner to keep both the diehards and the PPV fans happy.

What’s the reported reason that they’re going about taking measures to cust costs? Because the PPVs haven’t had their desired effect for ROH, namely getting new fans into ROH and buying more DVDs. Why not? The PPVs have been great great shows and every web site, and newsletter in the business is raving about them, just check any ROH newswire related to an ROH PPV and you’ll have loads of quotes heaping the praise on. To my knowledge ROH hasn’t released the terms of their agreement with the PPV providers, but I’d have to guess, based on Gabe saying on Wrestling Observer Live that ROH has no pressure for huge buyrates, that the PPV companies get at least the majority of the PPV revenue.

Why aren’t new fans flocking to ROHWrestling.com and ordering gobs of DVDs? My theory: Most of the fans ROH was trying to get probably don’t know about it, yet. I’ve only ever seen two ROH PPV commercials, both of them were on my cable’s PPV preview channel. Unlike WWE and TNA, ROH has no TV show where they can advertise the PPV shows. Even 2CW has ran a couple of ads for local shows during RAW when they were bringing in bigger names like The New Age Outlaws and Samoa Joe. With no advertising how exactly are potential new fans supposed to see it in the first place? Was Mark Wrestling Fan supposed be just surfing the channels and see that there’s some new wrestling PPV on for only $10 and order it based on instinct? Maybe a few of them did, but I’d bet the average person in that scenerio saw the price and was interested and then looked at the match list, realized he’d never heard of any of them and decided to save his money.

In addition, the few who did order on instinct, they went into the show totally blind. There was very little background or intro given to the promotion, wrestlers, and current storylines. Everyone points to ECW as the ultimate example of a promotion going down in flames, with good reason, but even ECW was smart enough to have the first show on TNN be an introductory show so that first time viewers could at least somewhat be caught up and current. So assuming they watch the PPV and are blown away (as they should have been), they jump on ROHWrestling.com and see over 100 DVDS of previous shows, that is an awful lot of catching up to do, and money to spend. Why spend all that money, when you can watch RAW or Smackdown! for free and be caught up with angles and storylines?

The big question to me is what will these potential cost cuttings have on the fans, and of the product. So let’s take a look at them and think about their potential impact.

– Daniel Puder will no longer be used. I don’t think this will make much difference. ROH doesn’t have very many ‘draws’ in terms of the workers, and as I said in Buy or Sell: Puder was good for name value because he’s still got a buzz since Angle won’t shut up about him. The only thing that it really effects is Claudio, and the big feud is Claudio vs. Sweet ‘n’ Sour Inc. not Purder specifically.

– Cutting back the number of performers on shows and fly ins. Now this could have an effect, if ROH was a typical indy and stayed within a home base, then it probably wouldn’t. But traveling on the loop they do it will have an effect, that being disappointed fans. A lot of fans have their favorites, and by scaling back on the number of workers brought in, it robs fans of a chance to see their favorites. I’m sure nobody will not attend a show just because they can’t see Davey Richards, but if you add in Hero, Strong, The Briscoes, and Delirious to that mix, the turnout could very well drop, because fans will want to wait until next time in hope to see their favorites.

– ROH stars being out on dates they’re booked in Japan. ROH loves to brag about working with Japan, but this week has already shown the downfalls of that to some extent. Gabe had already promised that all ROH titles, as well as the FIP and SHIMMER tittes would be defended at the sixth annviersary shows. NOAH had announced that Chris Hero, Claudio Castagnoli, and The Briscoe Brothers would be working the next NOAH tour from February to March. On the ROH message board there were plenty of fans posting how disappointed that four of their favorite wrestlers would be missing the big shows. Not to mention that it quickly erased any potential doubt as to the finish of the Hero/McGuiness cage match. ROH has never really had any major draws as far as wrestlers go, but the three closest they have are Bryan Danielson, Nigel McGuiness, and Austin Aries. What do they all have in common? Danielson and Nigel work in NOAH, and Aries works Dragon Gate.