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Is "Merch Sales" the new "Drawing Money"?


Strummer

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Spawned off the Roman thread. With TV numbers and houses meaning less and less, merchandise sales seems to be the main indicator if so and so wrestler can draw. WWE even mentions it publicly So is it the new "drawing money"? Or do the other factors still matter? Is it just one revenue stream and not the sole indicator?

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It's also a metric they can easily control. Simple to be the #1 merch seller if 95% of the stuff for sale is yours and no one else's. I've always been suspect of that as a sign of someone's appeal. Especially when it's someone the company is trying to push as a top guy and all other indicators are lagging behind.

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As with most questions, it probably can't be answered as simplistically as yes or no. The answer may very well be yes in the current environment. But that environment may be a result of intentional and unintentional decisions the company has made over the years whereby they have become less reliant on individual talents for many aspects of business. That's very much the case with the Network, where no individual is moving numbers.

 

What if they made different decisions regarding developing and pushing talent? What if tomorrow they changed their priorities and got away from generally highly scripted promos? What if TV viewing habits, DVR, cord cutting, smartphones and all other technologies today weren't around or were present in different combinations? Would someone break out of the pack in a way that others haven't? I don't know. But all of this fosters a state of the business today where certain metrics mean more than others did during different eras not that long ago, or at a minimum have very different relative weightings in such an analysis.

 

I'm not sure what the answer is today or what it'll be in 3 years. But the process of thinking about it will constantly shift based upon decisions by the company as well as societal/content consumption changes.

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Yeah, it isn't a yes or no answer, but it is increasingly important as the way wrestling is mediated changes and the WWE's long-term goal of making the brand bigger than any one wrestler comes to fruition. The currency of merch has increased in a variety of areas as streaming becomes the primary way people consume media. It is probably given too much weight, especially when it is used as discussion enders or to dismiss other ways someone may support the claim that this or that wrestler is popular and people want to see them. At most, it seems like a way companies (mostly the WWE?) measures popularity. At least, it gives everyone a vague sense of comfort that we can still quantify popularity in a streaming wrestling world where live audiences can be really fickle.

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I hate using merchandise sales as the metric.

 

The last WWE house show I went to was about three years ago. At the merchandise stand, probably about 85% of the merchandise was for John Cena. Beyond that, there were two Roman Reigns shirt, an ugly Dolph Ziggler shirt, and a Daniel Bryan shirt. I bought an Erick Rowan sheep mask just to buy something not Cena.

 

Seth Rollins cut a heel promo telling people to buy his shirt, which wasn't being sold in the arena.

 

"We can't turn John Cena heel because he sells merch at a 5-to-1 level (or whatever the number is) over everyone else." Gee. I wonder why?

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It's also a metric they can easily control. Simple to be the #1 merch seller if 95% of the stuff for sale is yours and no one else's. I've always been suspect of that as a sign of someone's appeal. Especially when it's someone the company is trying to push as a top guy and all other indicators are lagging behind.

It's totally normal for people to go to the merch stand wanting to buy New Day or AJ or Ambrose gear only to see Roman gear and shrug and pay $25 for a Roman shirt they didn't want.

 

Talent who have more merch for sale than Roman Reigns:

 

Seth Rollins, New Day, Enzo/Cass, John Cena, Sasha Banks, Dean Ambrose. AJ Styles

 

Talent who don't sell as much merch as Roman Reigns:

 

Seth Rollins, New Day, Enzo/Cass, Sasha Banks, Dean Ambrose, AJ Styles

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It's also a metric they can easily control. Simple to be the #1 merch seller if 95% of the stuff for sale is yours and no one else's. I've always been suspect of that as a sign of someone's appeal. Especially when it's someone the company is trying to push as a top guy and all other indicators are lagging behind.

It's totally normal for people to go to the merch stand wanting to buy New Day or AJ or Ambrose gear only to see Roman gear and shrug and pay $25 for a Roman shirt they didn't want.

 

Talent who have more merch for sale than Roman Reigns:

 

Seth Rollins, New Day, Enzo/Cass, John Cena, Sasha Banks, Dean Ambrose. AJ Styles

 

Talent who don't sell as much merch as Roman Reigns:

 

Seth Rollins, New Day, Enzo/Cass, Sasha Banks, Dean Ambrose, AJ Styles

 

Yeah, but that is anecdotal. Sure it is meaningful and a point well made about how popular Reigns is despite a very vocal group of detractors, but it doesn't mean that they can't or don't manipulate that data (consciously or unconsciously). All kinds of things likely affect merch sales: advertising, design, tv time, amount of items, diversity of items, turnout of new items, etc etc etc.

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Sure, but using the "they're the only guy they sell merch for" argument in this case particularly is off base, as there are multiple people they sell MORE merch for that don't sell as well. If the theory is that the person with the most merch will sell the most merch, then it would stand to reason that all those people that have more merch to be sold would be selling more merch than Roman, right?

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Yeah, but I don't see the utility of picking on such a strawperson characterization of the notion that "merch sale" is a overdetermined metric that wrestling fans can and probably should be somewhat suspicious of, especially when it is passed off as a simple equation for popularity. I am not speaking for Sek of course, but I don't buy the absolute notion that more merch equals more sales and I guess I didn't get that out of anything in the thread (just different readings perhaps), but if we are going to use the metric of merch we should recognize that it is metric that can and is impacted by all kinds of things other than being over. This is particularly true since it gets tossed around with such frequency in the wrestling world.

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Continuing off of that idea, Cap, I would buy the old "Age of Orton" gas mask shirt if it were still around. Not because I'm an Orton fan but because that shirt's design looked more like a band tee.

 

Merch sales being the metric of drawing ability is like Disney execs justifying Mickey being the mascot solely because of how many Mickey pops they've sold in the parks. Never mind that the biggest film franchise in history is now on their roster (Star Wars), the fans want the MOUSE, god dammit!!

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No, it's one metric of drawing money. Today a lot of emphasis might be placed on it. But it does seem like a strong metric for how passionate the fanbase is for a wrestler.

 

Austin in 1997 was doing gangbusters numbers with those t-shirts (I think even outselling peak Warrior or Hogan), even as WWF was kind of struggling otherwise, so in that instance, and in the case of Cena as well, it certainly tracks star power.

 

But if somehow someone did great merch numbers, but all their house shows and segment ratings tanked, it'd be very interesting to see how that was handled, especially if the TV network started chiming in.

 

As others have mentioned, certainly merch numbers can be influenced by things like design, how available it is at houseshows, what's not available, etc., though I'd throw out a guess that in today's world that might matter less, since so many people shop online.

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Out of interest, what is the difference in available merch at specific PPVs/cities compared to live events?

 

 

This "well, they only sell Cena merch!" argument struck me as an odd one to hold if they're focusing on live events where the vast majority of attendees are Cena fans. It'd be rather stupid to diversify merchandise for the odd fan, especially seeing courier delivery/online shopping is an actual thing (and something I'd see more used by "smarter" fans). If they're still running 99% Roman Reigns in Chicago or at Wrestlemania then I concede, otherwise jury is still out on the validity of this claim.

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It's also a chicken and egg thing where of course they carry one particular wrestler's merchandise because well, it sells and you have to physically cart this stuff from arena to arena, store it, handle other logistics connected with keeping an inventory. You can't carry a bunch of Karl Anderson merchandise around for the sake of fairness.

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I agree that it's pretty much the only metric we have left now that PPV buys and house show numbers mean pretty much nothing - unless, in the case of live events, attendance numbers drop or spike a significant amount - but I'm with CapitalTruth in the sense that it is given too much weight and comes off as a weak tool to ends a discussion in terms of drawing. Nowadays I'm more inclined to think we just don't know who is a real draw or not (unless, as I said before, numbers are undeniable better or worse than before). When the n°1 merch seller on the active roster is not the top seller in the entire company, I'm not sure how much of a feather in his cap that is or if it's worth a discussion about his "drawing power".

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Heels can push Network/PPV buys and attandence figures but not neccisarily have good merch sales. What 12 year old kid wants to be the dick wearing a Miz or AJ shirt? The nerdy 25 year old man, yea maybe that guy will wear a heels merch. But the bread and butter demo of parents watching with their childs isn't going to be wearing a heel's merch.

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