My Long Term Concerns for the WWE Network (Worth the read)
Jan 9, 2014 1:02:12 GMT -5
Turnbuckle Zealot(Phil), The Mask of Truth, and 1 more like this
Post by BØRNS on Jan 9, 2014 1:02:12 GMT -5
Please consider this thread as a non-hype and non-FAQ unlike the official stickied one marked. If anything, please do not lock the thread because I spent a lot of time and thought on it.
I watched the entire WWE Network presentation this evening, and while I won't lie and say I'm not excited and impressed at this new service, the over-analyst in me has a number of concerns (both short term and long term) that I wanted to bring up and discuss. Clearly the seemingly low price point of $10/mo is worth it to the die-hard fans who are already paying monthly premiums of $50+ for pay-per-views. This is clearly a no brainer for them. I'm pretty confident the network will be a "success" when it launches, not only from devoted fans, but from a large number of casual fans that see the value of a service like this.
Concern #1: Pay-Per-View Desensitization. For better or worse (on my behalf) I am a pretty loyal WWE supporter. However, on average, I usually only order one or two pay-per-views per year, due in most part to my position near the brink of the American poverty line. Regardless of my plummeting socioeconomic status and nonexistent credit score (thanks, Obama
) I simply cannot comfortably afford to purchase pay-per-views on a consistent basis AND support a single twenty-something household of 1. Putting my financial instability aside for a moment, the only pay-per-views I will order are WrestleMania and seemingly can't-miss, must-buy, game-changing events like MITB '11 (I passed on TLC, by the way. In fact I haven't ordered an individual pay-per-view in a year). Now, I'm the type of fan who still gets goosebumps when I see something or hear something that is special. In my experience with cognitive psychology, I understand that the concept of a pay-per-view extends beyond the black and white economics of paying for a service; in our case watching three hours of professional wrestling. For me, ordering a pay-per-view is a ritualistic experience. Excitement builds on the day of the pay-per-view. I always need to listen to the official pay-per-view theme a few dozen times on the day of the pay-per-view (which I set for my alarm clock ring for the morning of). I watch the pre-show and get hyped obsessively over the card for the evening. Finally, I will order the show through my television service provider, which results in a catharsis of both my built-up excitement from three weeks of WWE programming and my $55 that I've worked approximately 9.1 hours for (post-tax). This is not to mention that I ask my patient and angelic boss for the Sunday off work.
While I understand I may not be the typical WWE fan, I cannot help but think that with a service like the WWE Network, pay-per-views will become devalued over the long term. Think about it this way. Currently, for most people, ordering every pay-per-view in a year is just not possible, as it is extremely expensive. So, one must make a decision of which number of pay-per-views to order and when. This very simple idea that you cannot have it all makes the IDEA of a pay-per-view something special. Something to get excited about. Something to truly look forward to. What I am afraid will happen is that if you have a relatively lost-cost service subscription, pay-per-views and will implicitly become devalued and this rare and exceptional experience will be lost. I know that because I don't watch each pay-per-view, on the occasion that I do, I really make an effort to take in the experience. If it's a lock that I'm going to see each pay-per-view from the start, it kind of makes each show less special because the anticipation and the "is the show going to be worth ordering" factor is lost. I think it's like having birthday cake only a few times a year and then suddenly working at a bakery and having the ability to eat cake whenever you want to the point that, "yeah, it's good, but now a birthday cake is just a cake". Hopefully this idea translates well, as it's the best analogy I can come up with at the moment. This is what I will call "pay-per-view desensitization". This will probably take a year or so for people to become consciously aware of when watching pay-per-views, but it is something that I think will be a result of this network.
Concern #1.5: Decline in quality of pay-per-views. This is just side-note to concern #1, but I think that if a majority of the pay-per-view-buying audience is a subscriber to the WWE Network, there will be a lack of motivation to craft a quality pay-per-view. Historically, the idea of a pay-per-view is to get as many people to order as possible. If you no longer need to persuade the large majority of those who are existing subscriber to buy the show, then what incentive is there to really get creative and truly fight for the order?
Concern #2: Burn out. While this may be a long term problem, we all know that wrestling fans can be a bit obsessive. Offering a service with access to 100,000+ hours of on-demand content across several decades and companies, I can find it easy for fans to go completely "over the top". I can see people just watching so much that they will blow through content just get sick of it. We all have had friends for whom wrestling was just a fad or a phase. I trust that nothing can stop this like over-exposure. Sure, we all love wrestling, otherwise we wouldn't be here. Right? But we only have a finite threshold of wrestling tolerance, and after all, there are only 24 hours in day. WWE is heavily emphasizing previous programming. Sure it would be cool to watch old shows and pay-per-views. But I think this might polarize the audience into two categories: 1) older fans who have for the most part seen this already, and 2) young fans for whom this overwhelming amount of content will be tremendously intimidating (i.e. "where do I begin?!?"). I don't think anyone has the time nor the patience today to start from the very beginning and watch a 30+ year history of WWE/WCW/ECW television linearly.
Concern #3: Subscription price. If you noticed the fine print in the presentation, the presumed $9.99/mo subscription rate is with a six month commitment. This means that this price could only be an introductory price and very well may rise quickly with time. It's hard to gauge just how many subscribers there will be, but there will initially be a lot more when it launches than a year from now. This is something that WWE will have to ride carefully and really keep a close eye on. Just look at the sharp price increase in standard pay-per-view rates over the past few years. It seems just yesterday they were $29 and now they are double that. Who know, but that fine print has me speculative.
Thoughts?
I watched the entire WWE Network presentation this evening, and while I won't lie and say I'm not excited and impressed at this new service, the over-analyst in me has a number of concerns (both short term and long term) that I wanted to bring up and discuss. Clearly the seemingly low price point of $10/mo is worth it to the die-hard fans who are already paying monthly premiums of $50+ for pay-per-views. This is clearly a no brainer for them. I'm pretty confident the network will be a "success" when it launches, not only from devoted fans, but from a large number of casual fans that see the value of a service like this.
Concern #1: Pay-Per-View Desensitization. For better or worse (on my behalf) I am a pretty loyal WWE supporter. However, on average, I usually only order one or two pay-per-views per year, due in most part to my position near the brink of the American poverty line. Regardless of my plummeting socioeconomic status and nonexistent credit score (thanks, Obama
) I simply cannot comfortably afford to purchase pay-per-views on a consistent basis AND support a single twenty-something household of 1. Putting my financial instability aside for a moment, the only pay-per-views I will order are WrestleMania and seemingly can't-miss, must-buy, game-changing events like MITB '11 (I passed on TLC, by the way. In fact I haven't ordered an individual pay-per-view in a year). Now, I'm the type of fan who still gets goosebumps when I see something or hear something that is special. In my experience with cognitive psychology, I understand that the concept of a pay-per-view extends beyond the black and white economics of paying for a service; in our case watching three hours of professional wrestling. For me, ordering a pay-per-view is a ritualistic experience. Excitement builds on the day of the pay-per-view. I always need to listen to the official pay-per-view theme a few dozen times on the day of the pay-per-view (which I set for my alarm clock ring for the morning of). I watch the pre-show and get hyped obsessively over the card for the evening. Finally, I will order the show through my television service provider, which results in a catharsis of both my built-up excitement from three weeks of WWE programming and my $55 that I've worked approximately 9.1 hours for (post-tax). This is not to mention that I ask my patient and angelic boss for the Sunday off work. While I understand I may not be the typical WWE fan, I cannot help but think that with a service like the WWE Network, pay-per-views will become devalued over the long term. Think about it this way. Currently, for most people, ordering every pay-per-view in a year is just not possible, as it is extremely expensive. So, one must make a decision of which number of pay-per-views to order and when. This very simple idea that you cannot have it all makes the IDEA of a pay-per-view something special. Something to get excited about. Something to truly look forward to. What I am afraid will happen is that if you have a relatively lost-cost service subscription, pay-per-views and will implicitly become devalued and this rare and exceptional experience will be lost. I know that because I don't watch each pay-per-view, on the occasion that I do, I really make an effort to take in the experience. If it's a lock that I'm going to see each pay-per-view from the start, it kind of makes each show less special because the anticipation and the "is the show going to be worth ordering" factor is lost. I think it's like having birthday cake only a few times a year and then suddenly working at a bakery and having the ability to eat cake whenever you want to the point that, "yeah, it's good, but now a birthday cake is just a cake". Hopefully this idea translates well, as it's the best analogy I can come up with at the moment. This is what I will call "pay-per-view desensitization". This will probably take a year or so for people to become consciously aware of when watching pay-per-views, but it is something that I think will be a result of this network.
Concern #1.5: Decline in quality of pay-per-views. This is just side-note to concern #1, but I think that if a majority of the pay-per-view-buying audience is a subscriber to the WWE Network, there will be a lack of motivation to craft a quality pay-per-view. Historically, the idea of a pay-per-view is to get as many people to order as possible. If you no longer need to persuade the large majority of those who are existing subscriber to buy the show, then what incentive is there to really get creative and truly fight for the order?
Concern #2: Burn out. While this may be a long term problem, we all know that wrestling fans can be a bit obsessive. Offering a service with access to 100,000+ hours of on-demand content across several decades and companies, I can find it easy for fans to go completely "over the top". I can see people just watching so much that they will blow through content just get sick of it. We all have had friends for whom wrestling was just a fad or a phase. I trust that nothing can stop this like over-exposure. Sure, we all love wrestling, otherwise we wouldn't be here. Right? But we only have a finite threshold of wrestling tolerance, and after all, there are only 24 hours in day. WWE is heavily emphasizing previous programming. Sure it would be cool to watch old shows and pay-per-views. But I think this might polarize the audience into two categories: 1) older fans who have for the most part seen this already, and 2) young fans for whom this overwhelming amount of content will be tremendously intimidating (i.e. "where do I begin?!?"). I don't think anyone has the time nor the patience today to start from the very beginning and watch a 30+ year history of WWE/WCW/ECW television linearly.
Concern #3: Subscription price. If you noticed the fine print in the presentation, the presumed $9.99/mo subscription rate is with a six month commitment. This means that this price could only be an introductory price and very well may rise quickly with time. It's hard to gauge just how many subscribers there will be, but there will initially be a lot more when it launches than a year from now. This is something that WWE will have to ride carefully and really keep a close eye on. Just look at the sharp price increase in standard pay-per-view rates over the past few years. It seems just yesterday they were $29 and now they are double that. Who know, but that fine print has me speculative.
Thoughts?
