Jim Cornette has signed with TNA!

[PureHatred]

lwpd said:

But yeah, Jarrett may be responsible for its birth...and his BSing may be responsible for people pumping money into it...and I DO get that he's not going anywhere...I said as much earlier this week or last week...but that doesn't change that TNA's pretty much screwed as long as Jarrett's got his creative control to ensure that a guy who has never drawn a dime in his life is constantly booked as the top man in the company, title or no title.

TNA is 'screwed' regardless. Booking AJ Styles or Samoa Joe or anyone else on top isn't going to magically change the fact that running a full time pro wres project under the fiscal realities of 2006 without a realistically profitable revenue stream is financially suicidal. Without Jeff to justify the red ink with his 'vision' the project would have died out completely.

I'm intrigued...what would you consider a realistically profitable revenue stream? Is the TV show not enough? Or the PPVs? I would think that if you decrease the costs by using talent on the cheap and the ratings drew some better sponsors, TNA would be bound to make money at some point. Your scenario makes it sound hopeless.

[canadianpittbull]

gwffantrav said:

Ohhh, we know it's just something in the water up there...wait, that's in Mexico. Then what is it up there CPB?!??

Or maybe in the snow. I might have gotten a mouth full of yellow snow and not noticed. Gonna have to listen to that Zappa tune again to get it into my head! Darn it all! ;D

[LWPD]

I'm intrigued...what would you consider a realistically profitable revenue stream?

Other than maybe testing the viability of international tours (where strong demand does exist for pro wres and TNA does have a television presence to promote a tour) I don't see reaching profitability as realistic. They are too deep in the hole to ever recover the eight figures they've already lost and the idea of 'maybe' one day making nickles and dimes above break even really isn't much of a worthwhile pursuit. The best move for Panda would be to sell their shares to the next money mark in line (likely Morphoplex). As long as there's the Spike TV slot...they'll be another sucker.

Is the TV show not enough?

The television is a laggard. Panda absorbs expenses for venue rental, insurance, talent, production, advertising, etc. They don't charge admission which means a very meager offset through merch sales to the point that they lose money on each TV taping. On top of that they don't share in any of the ad revenue due to the way their deal with Spike TV is structured. The whole process is a wash.

Or the PPVs?

After the middle man cut and split with the cable companies any PPV venture sees a net of roughly 30 cents on the dollar...and that's before taxes. It makes sense for someone like Vince to go through the PPV expense and walk away with $13 a pop when he's doing a minimum of 200k buys worldwide plus a sweet live gate profit while creating new content with a proven method for residual sales. For TNA the cost to run each PPV comes without a sizable live gate offset. Given the number of buys they put up the risk to reward ratio doesn't make much sense once put it into the context of the costs associated with producing their weekly infomercials..

I would think that if you decrease the costs by using talent on the cheap and the ratings drew some better sponsors, TNA would be bound to make money at some point. Your scenario makes it sound hopeless.

With the exception of the super funded WCW the idea of another entity other than Vince running a profitable full time operation domestically has been 'hopeless' in practice for almost two decades now. Had Turner not been willing to buy out Jim Crockett and bleed money Vince would have had his pro wres monopoly 17 years ago. The realities of the market place make anything beyond smartly budgeted low cost projects run on a well timed basis a bad idea.

LWPD (Terry Funk was ahead of his time in explaining why he and Dory sold the family promotion in Amarillo...he saw that the coming changes in the costs of running a promotion made it a money pit...decades later there's only one full time promotion in all of North America running profitably)

[PureHatred]

Thanks for the response. i'm going to go crawl in a corner and cry now.