The Hamilton Ave Journal 03.29.08: Volume 1 – Issue 27

Posted by JP Prag on 03.29.2008

WWE takes aim at six year olds, TNA extends their tour of England, WrestleMania brings $30 million to Orlando, all ratings drop except for ECW, and Jeff Hardy actually gained an additional spot in the Top Ten.

THE HAMILTON AVE JOURNAL
By JP Prag

Volume 1 – Issue 27

ABOUT THE JOURNAL

The Hamilton Ave Journal is the only wrestling news report focused solely on the business of wrestling. Here in the Journal we not only look at the stories that are important to the investor and business-minded person, but also delve deeper into stories that most fans of wrestling would overlook. That is because the Journal is about getting the heart of the matters that affect the companies and outlooks of the wrestling world.

And where is Hamilton Ave? That is the location of the WWE Production Studio in Stamford, CT, and thus the most powerful place in the wrestling world. Besides, The East Main Street Journal just does not have the right ring to it.

Who am I? I am JP Prag: consultant, entrepreneur, businessman, journalist, and wrestling fan.

Now, ring the bell because the market is open.




WHAT'S NEWS

The Journal's front page area known as What's News isn't just about telling you what has happened. The stories in this section are about what will have an effect on the wrestling industry, individual federations, and the wallets of the fans.

LEAD STORY: WWE takes aim at six-year olds

In continuation of a story covered here in the Journal, the WWE has released additional details about the upcoming WWE Kids Magazine. Premiering April 15, 2008, the bi-monthly magazine will be aimed at children as young as 6 years old up to 14 years old. According to Tony Romando, Vice President Editorial director:

""With content ranging from fitness and nutrition to geography to esteem building, ‘WWE Kids' will appeal to children, their parents, and their teachers. Young fans will get to know their favorite Superstars through activity-based art projects, fun games, interviews and trivia…"

WWE Kids magazine is part of an overall program to attract a young audience to be developed and groomed into long term fans for the future. As the WWE's domestic audience has been aging and/or moving on, there has been no one to fill the gap. Although international growth remains strong, the WWE wants to have a solid domestic audience.

Prior to the magazine, the WWE also signed a new deal with Mattel to replace Jakks Pacific as the developer of their toy line. This is most likely due to Mattel's closer relation with children's toy resellers and relative shelf position. Mattel also has a long history of marketing directly to children, something the WWE is looking for.

The entire project is being led by WWE's Shane McMahon as part of a "youth initiative". As Mr. McMahon stated:

"The WWE youth initiative, which includes the new ‘WWE Kids' magazine and the WWE website for kids. are all part of WWE's recommitment to provide its young audience with new, fun, age-appropriate content…"

As part of the launch, Walmart stores will have a 100,000-unit pallet display. This large beginning makes it appear as the WWE is fully committed to the "youth initiative" and are pulling out no stops to get the movement going.


TNA expands UK tour

TNA sent out the following press release on Wednesday:

Based on overwhelming demand, TNA Wrestling is happy to announce we've added a SECOND event in Liverpool on Thursday, June 12 (7pm bell time) at the Liverpool Olympia! Tickets for the new event will go on sale APRIL 7! Check out all the info below.

This is the first time TNA has expanded a tour due to positive ticket sales. Although their last two PPVs have been heavily papered, TNA is finding that in certain pockets they sell extremely well. TNA would best be served to test markets with house shows before offering a PPV in the future in order to see if they can get this type of response on a regular basis.


Newsbites

Some items of note in the rest of the wrestling business world:

As part of the WWE's attempt to grow WWE.com and gain additional ad revenue, the 24-man battle royal scheduled for WrestleMania will now take place before the show and air live on WWE.com at 6:30pm.

TNA has named Joe Hand Promotions, Inc. as the exclusive distributer of TNA PPVs to commercial establishments across the country. On February 26, 2008, the UFC and Joe Hand Promotions signed an multi-year extension of similar terms. It is most likely that TNA was introduced to Joe Hand through UFC and Spike. This is a positive sign for TNA's growth as now they will be available in many bars, restaurants, and clubs, exposing many other potential customers to their product.

Matt Morgan was recently named as one of the new American Gladiators. TNA is expected to user Morgan's presence on American Gladiators (a show that regularly gets 5-6 million viewers) to promote their own product.

Don't forget that WrestleMania 24 emanates tomorrow from Orlando, FL starting at 7:00pm EST. WrestleMania is the largest annual PPV event in the wrestling world. The Orlando Sentinel reports that WrestleMania is expected to bring in $25-$30 million to the city of Orlando over the course of a week.


MARKETPLACE

In the Marketplace we look at the trends in television ratings. This section is less for critical analysis by the Journal but more for the reader to see what is really going on and to draw their own conclusions.

As with stocks, here in the Journal we track the progress of television ratings. If ratings are the barometer by which we judge the product, then over the course of 52 weeks we should be able to see patterns, trends, and anomalies. Please note that gaps in the chart below are due to data not being released/available.

For the week ending Thursday March 27, 2008, here are the current standings of our shows:





RAW
Close (This Week's Rating): 3.4
Open (Last Week's Rating): 3.6
Percentage Change: ▼ 5.0%
52-Week High: 4.3
52-Week Low: 2.5
All Time High: 8.1
All Time Low: 1.8

SmackDown!*
Close (This Week's Rating): 2.5
Open (Last Week's Rating): 2.6
Percentage Change: ▼ 3.8%
52-Week High: 2.9
52-Week Low: 2.2
All Time High: 5.8
All Time Low: 1.0

* SmackDown! ratings may include fast overnight if final ratings are not posted. Also, SmackDown! ratings are for the prior week as overnights are not available before this article goes to print.

ECW
Close (This Week's Rating): 1.4
Open (Last Week's Rating): 1.3
Percentage Change: ▲ 10.0%
52-Week High: 1.8
52-Week Low: 0.6
All Time High: 2.3
All Time Low: 0.6

TNA iMPACT**
Close (This Week's Rating): 1.0
Open (Last Week's Rating): 1.1
Percentage Change: ▼ 8.0%
52-Week High: 1.2
52-Week Low: 0.9
All Time High: 1.2
All Time Low: 0.6

** TNA iMPACT's are for the prior week as ratings may not be available at the time of the Journal's posting

Analysis:

The big news out of the ratings world this week is the continual decline of WWE ratings moving into WrestleMania (except for ECW this week). Most use these declining ratings as a sign that WrestleMania will not make its PPV buyrate goal of over 1.2 million worldwide buys. While ratings are a general indicator of product health and potential buys, the real question is conversion rate. Of the nearly 500,000 viewers the WWE has shed since last year's WrestleMania, were any of those people buyers of the PPV? If so, what percentage? The WWE has a history of relatively high conversion rates, especially for WrestleMania. Although the audience in hovering between 3.5-4.0 million (domestic), the WWE is looking for a domestic conversion rate 0f 20-25%. The rest will be made up of non-regular viewers who purchase this one event a year, people curious with the "spectacle" of Big Show/Mayweather, and the vast remainder with international and post-show buys.

The other item to consider is the relative strength of AM RAW. AM RAW has been getting ratings in the 0.7 to 0.9 range. Much like during the early brand extension, AM's audience does not have a large percentage of overlap with RAWs. Those viewers are relatively unaccounted for in the conversion rate.

That also highly includes children. While many may not be allowed to stay up to watch RAW, they may catch AM RAW or follow online and at live events, resulting in a large portion of the audience that is not accounted for. As noted above, the growth in the 6-14 demographic is obviously where the WWE sees its long-term future, and they are even now taking advantage of what they have.


MONEY AND INVESTING

We all know that wrestling is a business, but we don't often pay attention to what sells and makes money. Money and Investing looks into the top selling items in the world of wrestling and any interesting figures that may have come out this week.

What are the top ten selling items for the WWE? From WWEShopZone.com:

1. Triple H Hammer T-Shirt
2. Jeff Hardy Armbands
3. Triple H King of Kings: There is Only One DVD/Retro T-Shirt Package
4. John Cena 8-Bit T-Shirt
5. Hardys Purple Logo Pendant
6. Triple H: King of Kings-There is Only One DVD
7. Triple H Grey Skulls T-Shirt
8. Heritage III Trading Cards
9. WWE Black Gift Bag
10. Shawn Michaels Creation T-Shirt

Please note that this list was pulled 24 hours earlier than usual. Still, this week Triple H is again dominating the list with four items compared to John Cena's and Shawn Michael's one each. On the other end, despite not even being mentioned on TV, Jeff Hardy has two items on the list. Although gone for another 50 days, Jeff Hardy continues to sell well. The WWE will be hard pressed to decide what to do with him when he returns.

Surprinsly, there are no WrestleMania items on the list this week. About a month back, the WrestleMania items started to break through, but have since disappeared.

TNA releases a list of Top Ten selling items, but in no order. Using the function to sort by most popular, they came up as:

1. Against All Odds 2007 DVD
2. Christian Cage "Instant Classic"
3. Sacrifice 2007 DVD
4. Motor City Machineguns T-Shirt
5. TNA Global Impact DVD
6. TNA Meltdown Vol. 2
7. TNA Anthology – The Epic DVD Set
8. James Storm "Sorry About Your Damn Luck" T-shirt
9. Turning Point 2007 DVD
10. Shark Boy 24:7 T-Shirt

As this list was also pulled 24 hours earlier than usual, it appears that no one at TNA has updated the database yet. Unless the items maintained all of the same positions after two weeks of little moves, which is plausible as well.


PERSONAL JOURNAL

Wrestling isn't just about watching and reading. The best way to be a wrestling fan is to experience it live. Where is wrestling coming to in the next 2 weeks? The Personal Journal answers that question.

Sunday	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday
30 (Mar) WWE WrestleMania Orlando, FL	31 RAW Orlando, FL	1 (Apr) SmackDown!/ECW Miami, FL	2	3	4 TNA Live Spencer, IA	5 TNA Live Lincoln, NE
6	7 RAW Albany, NY	8 SmackDown!/ECW Boston, MA RAW Live Trenton, NJ	9	10 RAW Live Belfast, Ireland SmackDown!/ECW Live Valencia, Spain	11 RAW Live Liverpool, UK SmackDown!/ECW Live Torrevieja, Spain ROH Live Boston, MA	12 RAW Live Cardiff, UK SmackDown!/ECW Geneva, Switzerland ROH Live Edison, NJ

Do you know a wrestling event coming up? Send one in to The Hamilton Ave Journal and we'll be sure to add it to the list.

EDITORIALS

The Editorials section is designed for you, the readers, to respond to the views presented in the Journal, send an important news item, or talk about another overlooked business related item in wrestling. Just beware: the Journal reserves the right to respond back.

From the commentary section last week, Cyrith wrote in with this in regards to TNA not promoting their live show:

Didn't TNA announce Sting for the live Impact? That may be how they're trying
to pop ratings.

TNA announced Sting in the very last 30 seconds of the show, a piece that could have been missed. Since then, there has not been much advertising on TV, and what little there has been has been relegated to SpikeTV. When the WWE had their last three hour event, advertising spots were run on USA Network and the other NBC affiliates, as well as a couple of weeks of build beforehand. TNA has not done anything substantial to promote this show or get the TNA name out to a greater audience besides the core audience that already watches. Yes, TNA does not have the monetary and reach resources of the WWE, but they do have more at their disposal that they are not taking advantage of. Advertising to the audience that is going to watch anyway is counterproductive. TNA needs to reach out to the audience that sometimes watches and let them know that THIS is the week they have to watch.

On the more positive end of TNA business, Northants Grecian says:

Bought my ticket for the TNA Tour in Coventry a couple of days ago - they only have bleachers left ... also booked tickets for Noah the week after (they had many more left !!)

Everyone within TNA seems much happier with ticket sales on this tour. Hopefully TNA will try again for Israel and Mexico now that their international presence has grown. The ticket sales for Lockdown in Lowell, MA are also doing quite well. Surprisingly, TNA seems to have more success in northern and English cultures than in southern and Hispanic cultures. Even though it would seem that TNA's core demographic is to the latter, they have found more success in traditional WWE markets.

Vitamin D was not appreciative of the headline for the Journal:

" Eddie Guerrero makes an appearance in the Top Ten despite being BURIED by Triple H's."

Anyone else think that was a little morbid?

To which bond89 agreed (unedited except for spaces):

yer i thought it was a stupid comment to make and served no real purpose, yer triple h has 4 out of ten top ten items but he is not burying eddie, i think the word buried should not have been used in that context neither the picture of him on the main page,

its just a cheap way for jp to get people to read his article.

For reference, the Journal has no control over what pictures will be used on the main page, or even if the Journal will be a featured article. That said, you both seemed to have read into something that was not intended. The word "buried", especially in association with Triple H, is generally regarded in the IWC as a term meaning to hold down, hold back from rising to the top of the card. The context was written that Triple H was burying Eddie Guerrero, IE holding him back. Triple H having four items in the top ten while Eddie Guerrero had one (and having one is quite amazing for him to begin with) was the humorous intent of the line, not anything morbid or lacking taste. With that, the Journal did use Eddie Guerrero's name to pique interest. Although the Journal gets enough hits on a weekly basis, the Journal tries to draw in new readers whenever possible. The line in question is called a teaser for a reason. The Journal stands by its use of Eddie Guerrero's name and makes no apologies.

Plenty more was written, so be sure to take a look. Also worth your read this week is:

Julian Williams goes overboard with the Top 50 WrestleMania matches. Why not just go all the way and rank every single match? Maybe next year.

Slimmer reflects on what he was feeling/thinking from WrestleMania XX until everything went horribly wrong.

Take a break from wrestling and enjoy Vincent Chiucchi's Hall of Shame for Atari's biggest flops!

JD Koziarski woke up at 3am to do live coverage of opening day Red Sox vs. Oakland A's in Toyko, Japan. I thought just waking up to watch the game was a lot of work!

And, of course, a week would not be complete without a good dose of my very own HIDDEN HIGHLIGHTS!!


CLOSING BELL

This concludes Issue #27 (Volume 1) of THE HAMILTON AVE JOURNAL. Join us next week as we get ready to ring the bell again.

Till then!