Damo

I thought I would write a bit about TNA from a business analysts point of view. Tell me what you think...

Why TNA Cannot and Will Not Succeed as a Business.

After seeing some of last night’s TNA Sacrifice pay per view, I felt myself getting ever restless and the sight of TNA doing things that would have worked in 1999 but have no place in today’s TV climate. As this frustration boiled over it reminded me of why TNA will never succeed as a business.

First things first, TNA will never succeed in becoming a competitor to the WWE. Numerous wrestlers including Kurt Angle have stated that this is their goal. This will never happen. In 2002 Jerry Jarrett had a very, very bad idea. That idea was to start a new wrestling organisation that would run solely on a pay per view basis. This organisation was intended to pick up the wrestling fans that WWE had lost when the wrestling bubble burst in 2001 and ratings plummeted. What Jerry did not realise was that those wrestling fans simply were not there anymore, they had moved on, grown up, found another ‘fad’ to fill their time. Without these fans TNA had to make do with a tiny, ‘smart’ fan audience.

The mistakes TNA made in its early years, and, in fact, all the way up to 2006 are never highlighted on forums like this one. That is because these forums are generally filled with the kind of fan that loves the stuff TNA produced in its early years especially between 2004 and 2005. The fact is however, this fan base makes up about 3% of the total wrestling audience. It is a blip on the radar, a segment that will never generate money on a national basis.

So by 2006 TNA have realised changes need to be made. They bring in the ‘master’ (and I use that phrase loosely) of the WWE’s success in 1998-99, Vince Russo. Now Vince Russo is not the idiot the internet makes him out to be. The guy does know how TV works, he does know how to generate ratings and his scripting of interviews and segments is often of a much higher quality than wrestling fans are used to seeing. But by the time TNA turns to Russo his type of TV is out of date and Russo is a different man to who he was in 1999. Watching TV in 1999 and comparing it to TV now highlights some amazing differences. In 1999 people loved controversy, they loved what became known as ‘crash TV’ creating publicity stunts for short term ratings, but now, if you look at your TV listings you find people want a running story, see Prison Break, The Sopranos or Lost, these are quality television programmes, with Hollywood like writing and production. Russo cannot give the audience those things. As for Russo as a person, the WWE in 1999 was an edgy company that had gained that reputation through use of sex, swearing and even Satanism. The Russo TNA gets is a reformed Christian. He is not going to write that kind of thing, and if he does Spike TV will probably block it.

So what does TNA do? It needs to be different that is clear, so its answer is crash TV without the controversy with lots and lots of gimmicks. Now, gimmicks are fine, once, twice maybe three times a night. But once you go past this the meaning of having a gimmick at all becomes redundant. Gone is the publicity, the ‘wow’ factor, the surprise or the intensity created by a gimmick. It becomes the norm, in TNA’s case it becomes irritating.
But TNA was never going to succeed. I am going to take a guess and say that Jerry Jarrett isn’t a great business man. He went out, set up a wrestling company, with a terrible business model. He did not have the money to promote this promotion properly. He did not have a forward thinking producer like Eric Bischoff to drive things forward. He did not have the backers to finance a move for some actual top talent. He did not have a TV deal and he set up his promotion in, of all places, Nashville TN, a place about as far from the glitz and glamour TV needs to be associated with as you can get.

TNA has nothing it can do differently to the WWE that would give it a big enough advantage to succeed. People point to the X Division as a unique selling point but that’s really false hope. Sure the X Division is something the WWE do not have, but it isn’t strong enough to bring in anywhere near the amount of new viewers TNA would need to even be close to competing with the WWE. TNA can do the gimmicks, they can do the comedy, they can do the better written segments and bloodier matches, but these are all things that, if successful the WWE can simply replicate. The fact is, TNA is in a no win situation. There is nothing they can do to get a head of WWE, because as soon as WWE realise what they are doing, they will simply copy it. Joe gets big, WWE gives you Umaga, TNA gains a measure of success through having more surprises, WWE inserts more surprises into its shows etc.

KenTheKiller

Very very nice post.

I must say I agree and I would like to comment specifically on the last paragraph. TNA, as everyone knows, has a much smaller fan base. With that said, what they could do that works, WWE could do a month later and over three times the fanbase TNA has would be shocked by it. That's a huge advantage and as you said, is something that will hurt TNA.

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Tommy Platinum

Well I would point to the X Division and the sort of matches they were putting on in 2005 (see the highly acclaimed Unbreakable 3 way) as the only really unique selling point they had, and the only thing they could try and replicate today to be different to WWE. However, as you pointed out, this is simply not enough, due to the tastes of the average fan and the market for this sort of wrestling action to be relatively small. The thing is, WWE do sports entertainment better than TNA (and currently do wrestling better too) and ROH obviously put on better matches and always will. That just leaves the gimmicks, which may draw attention to the product but can only get you so far. I think a great example of why TNA fails was the Sting/Abyss feud last year. You were talking about people wanting ongoing stories which keep you on the edge of your seat, like Lost etc. Well they had a very interesting, if slightly over the top, angle going on with Abyss, and Sting trying to make him see the light and break free from James Mitchell. Then, what did they do? Not only did they throw in seemingly pointless aspects such as Abyss's mum and the revelation that he shot his father three times, but even worse, they basically scrapped the whole story in favour of a few spotty, sloppy and actually quite horrific gimmick matches, with no psychology or reason behind them. To me this is a good example of what you are saying. TNA is now well known as gimmick overkill and this took prominence over the story they seemed to be building.

There are so many problems with TNA. I personally feel that the production values contribute. WWE is very easy on the eye, and while I don't expect TNA to be anything like WWE's level in terms of production values, they could certainly be doing a better job. The word I would use to describe the TNA product is cheap, both in its gimmick happy overkill PPVs and just the literal look of the product. The lasers for one thing are horrible, and even things like production value can have a big effect on how well the company does. The booking is unpredictable but makes no sense, and the point you made that WWE will just copy the successful aspects of TNA before they can fully capitalise is perhaps justified by WWE's noticably more unpredictable product as of late. It is not hard to believe that WWE is looking over their shoulder at the TNA product and thinking 'we could incorporate some of that into our show.'

So basically, I agree that TNA have a huge job on their hands, and I am not sure where they go from here. The most obvious unique selling point is not much of a selling point to the average fan, and they do seem out of touch with what draws in today's world. Mind you, it was profoundly unlikely that they were ever going to challenge WWE no matter what they did.

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Dman

honestly, I am sorry for calling any one a TNA hater in the past. I pretty much agree with everything that has been said in this thread. TNA needs to fix thier problems, if they ever want to succeed.

One thing, the Xdivision is steadily geteting better. One thing they need to do is have an actual championship fued, becuase all the number one contenders come from some sort of gimmick match(its really like that for every title).

Idk what TNA should honestly do, I don't think they do either. Shits getting pathetic...

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Flip

TNA can do a lot to better their product.

They have so much talent on their brand, that they have so much potential. The X division is getting better, but like Dman said...they need to have some better one on one feuds. The overkill of ridiculous gimmicks is crazy. Like honestly, they just give everyone a goofy gimmick. The tag division will get better hopefuly with LAX back on top.

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Tommy Platinum

Booking is one thing, and they are booking very badly at the moment, but as Damo says, they couldn't really go in any direction which would give them a big advantage over WWE. The gimmicks (both matches and characters) are obviously something TNA thought they could do to bring in casual viewers, but it doesn't work. I can't really think of any other way they could draw a large amount of fans to their product rather than WWE's though. There will always be some fans who are disgruntled with the current WWE product and will seek an alternative, but I see ROH and other indys growing at a faster rate than TNA, because they are a TRUE alternative.

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Sam

If I could just expand on what everybody is saying.

The main problem with TNA is that they are doing exactly what WCW did back in the mid 90's by pushing former WWE talent. Granted Kurt Angle in my opinion is a wrestler that should be pushed on anybody's program, but their dependence on guys like Christian, Booker T, Rhyno, Kip James and Road Dogg in place of pushing the 'TNA' *coughROHcough* wrestlers is hurting them. They didn't draw in WWE, what makes them think they're gonna draw in TNA?

They had an advantage over WWE when they had an X division putting on some good matches. Then they all turned to spot fests, and now its basically a trash title.

People who know me know I was very, very critical of A.J. Styles, however if there's anybody in TNA who should be pissed the most, it's him. Remember back when TNA first launched their show in 2004, "A.J. Styles is the new face of TNA Wrestling"? Now he's lackey for Christian, or Angle with no real character development. Which is the same of most of the wrestlers not on the top tier in TNA.

The other thing, is the six sided ring. Get rid of it. It was not, nor has it ever been, "cool."

Change the damn set. You could probably fit more people in the arena if you didn't have two separate entrances.

Hire Paul Heyman. Any man that can partner a wrestler with a mannequin head, and have him become the most popular character in the company, and have said wrestler main event a ppv, needs to be brought on as a writer.

Incidentally, it could lead to the ECW revival we've all been waiting for.


-my two cents

Damo

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Ok I will not dispute that Paul Heyman is a creative success in the world of wrestling. But as a businessman he really isn't that great.

TNA as much as people hate to admit it NEED the former WWE stars. Look at ECW the use of Terry Funk, Steve Austin, Mick Foley and Sid Vicious are all examples of how ECW used established stars to draw people in. Comparing TNA to WCW is ridiculously harsh. For a start TNA has created their own stars, the current Champ is a TNA star, AJ Styles (whos getting a major push by the way) is a TNA created star. The difference with WCW is they only really created one guy and that was Goldberg.

AJ Styles was not the star at the beginning. Jarrett was. Jarrett was the guy who was pushed constantly. Sure AJ was a main eventer, but he had no character, other than "watch this crazy guy do flips". TNA have helped develop him since they gained a two hour TV deal.

The reason why TNA won't succeed is because of factors outside their hands. Sure the creative is at times very bad in the company, but it is business factors which will ever prevent them from competing with WWE.

mrpogo

I dont think tna will compete with wwe in the forseable future however the company will maintain the fan base it already has and with the touring they do in japan and shortly in the United kingdom they can only keep growing