While dozens of promotions are flourishing in wrestling, no two operate in quite the same way. John Lister explains why such variety is proving a winning formula for fans and wrestlers alike.
“Venues are ringing us up asking us to put on shows where we used to have to try to get them to accept wrestling. That’s the big turnaround in the British wrestling scene.”
There’s no doubt that Ricky Knight’s experience in the past few years is shared across all sectors of the British wrestling industry. But while it seems everyone is tasting success, the approaches different promoters are taking in and out of the ring vary widely — and that’s something that most feel is benefitting the scene as a whole.
Perhaps the biggest variation in promotional strategies in 2016 is between those promotions such as All Star, LDN, MegaSlam that tour nationally in theatres and town halls and run holiday camp shows, and those such as Progress and Preston City Wrestling that run one or two venues regularly and concentrate on building up storylines.
The holiday camps remain one of the biggest outlets for wrestling when it comes to the sheer volume of shows, particularly in school holidays. For example, MegaSlam’s Brad Taylor says the company has 283 dates already pencilled in for 2016, of which around 60 percent will be in camps. That combination of a regular schedule (often wrestling two or three days a week) and the nature of the crowd can make for a particularly valuable learning experience.
All Star’s Brian Dixon notes that “Our job is to keep non-fans interested. Any wrestler who can do that on the camps can go anywhere in the world and do the job.” Taylor adds that the shows being free of charge to holidaymakers doesn’t lessen the pressure to keep their interest.
“On our shows its just as important if not more important to work the crowd and get them involved as it is the actual wrestling. The camp want people to spend money behind the bar, so you’ve got to keep the fans in the building during the show. On some of the independent camps we’re the main attraction, but places like Pontins have much more to do, so there is that competition.”
El Ligero, who has been wrestling full-time for just over six years thanks in part to the camp circuit, explains that such shows offer a great opportunity to finetune your skills. “On the big indy shows, your focus can be on remembering a new routine you’ve put together for that match. On the camps, you’ll usually work with the same guy all through the week, so after putting the match together and doing it the first day, you don’t have to worry so much about remembering what to do and instead can focus on things that got lost in the shuffle the day before like crowd work or ring positioning or timing.”
Although fellow camp regular Nathan Cruz agrees that such shows are a “great chance for trial and error — the match just gets better and better and better” he takes a particular approach that isn’t always standard on the circuit. “I always wrestle for the dad who doesn’t want to be there and thinks it’s all hokey. If for a moment in the match I can make him believe, I’ve done my job.”
Though both regularly appear for promotions which run a lighter schedule of more high-profile events, neither says they worry about not being able to take same level of big match risks as part-time performers who can afford to take time to recover. “I’m confident enough in my own ability to work hurt or worn out” says Ligero. “At the end of October I had a couple of ladder matches in a row at the weekend and I was quite beaten up but at no point was I thinking ‘I don’t want to take that because I’ve got a [camp] booking on the Monday.’ It’s not because one booking is more important than the other, but on Monday I knew that the audience wouldn’t require quite as much physicality.”
For Cruz, it’s a matter of pride. “I’m a professional, so I’ve still got to deliver to that expectation [on the big show]. What makes me better than a weekend warrior is that I can go just as hard as them and then go straight out and work the camps the next night. That makes me more a more valuable worker and if WWE is looking at the two of us, which would they think could survive more doing their live event schedule?”
Both All Star and MegaSlam also run as touring promotions in halls and theatres around the country, usually appearing only once or twice a year. “If you’re in this business to make yourself a living, you’ve got to pick the proper venues,” insists Taylor. “We look at whether they’ve got a marketing team set aside to promote shows and whether it’s in their interest to get people into the building. It needs to be a well-known and well-used venue: if a kid’s going to the pantomime in the theatre, he sees our poster and the family books tickets off that.”
Dixon notes that until around two years ago, his strategy was to go for major theatres because they were guaranteed to promote the events alongside their other entertainment such as plays and concerts. That’s dropped off a little now thanks to the competition for dates and the rising costs of hiring such venues. “There’ll be times when I run shows where the ticket sales only break even and I’m running the show purely to do it and keep guys working. If we can make a bit on the merchandise table and the guys are getting their wage, it means we can carry on having guys work full time.”
The theatre costs has meant Dixon has in a few venues such as Gravesend gone back to his roots in running monthly shows with more continuity in council-run buildings that have lower overheads and can be booked further in advance. Even then, he’s still picky about where he runs. “Financially there’s no point us running anywhere that seats less than 300. And places like a sports or leisure centre don’t usually work for us. Because we’re aimed at families, anywhere that’s got a large empty space and is characterless is no good when atmosphere is such a major part of our show.”
One downside of such a schedule is that anything other than generic marketing can be too time-consuming, as Taylor explains. “Next month we’ve got 18 town shows booked, so naturally we can’t give our full attention to one town. That does sometimes mean you get there and you’ve got the pressure of wondering ‘Have I covered my costs?’ and relying on the merch sales. But overall it’s working: a few years ago we’d get 50 or 80 people in and drawing 100 was a success. So far this year every town show has drawn at least 250 plus.”
He also explains that running a packed schedule helps smooth out the inevitable ups and downs. “It’s not about one show losing money, it’s about what you make at the end of the year.” That’s backed by World Association of Wrestling’s Ricky Knight. “My company runs on a yearly profit. Some shows will win, some won’t. One thing that really helps is that I’ve got 150 people in my training school, so I can use the best of them on my smaller towns and along with my family wrestling, we don’t have to bring in outside talent that would cost me an arm and a leg. That means we can make a profit on the smaller halls.”
Indeed, many of the promotions that have sprung up in the post-TV generation have their roots in training schools. For example, Dave Rayne, who has run the Futureshock school and promotion since 2004, explains that “Our focus on our shows is our trainees. I try to have interesting main events with guys like Jack Gallagher or Zack Gibson or T-Bone but they’re there so that people will come and see the midcard. I don’t see the end product of Futureshock being the shows, the end product is the trainees. Ultimately I’m trying to create these guys so that people like Progress can charge more for them.”
Knight also notes that in some cases it can be worthwhile running trainee-based shows that break even simply to give wrestlers more opportunity to work before the public and in turn make the training school more attractive. He also explains that the host of British and Irish wrestlers making it on the big stage doesn’t just make British wrestling seem hotter, but is a major boost for the training business. “My daughter Paige getting signed helped our company no end. We went from a school with just one ring to being able to have three rings, cardio machines, sunbeds: a one-stop shop for a wrestler.”
Though the talent is there, Knight believes TV exposure is still key, hence WAW holding a series of tapings last month. The shows, on which the likes of Scott Hall and Ken Anderson were used to attract an audience to see the British talent, will be shopped around to nearly 70 stations through a distributor. “Look at X Factor. They take about 30 people nobody’s ever heard of, put them on telly for five months, they’re number one at Christmas. I want my lads to have that power. Everyone’s doing great but we need TV exposure to get to the next level.”
WAW’s schedule of camp shows, trainee shows, touring East Anglia and the occasional big event is an example of the many promotions that don’t fall into a simple touring vs regular venue pigeonhole. Perhaps the ultimate example of straddling the fence is 4 Front Wrestling. Most weekends it runs self-contained shows in small community centres with a regular crew, many of whom came through its training school.
However, four times a year it runs a major entertainment venue in Swindon with a four figure capacity, putting on shows with a wide range of imported and UK name talent: its most recent show included WWE veteran Tatanka, New Japan’s Kenny Omega, joshi star Hikaru Shida, Lucha Underground’s Pentagon Junior and Drago, and an unannounced appearance of TNA’s Robbie E. The philosophy seems to be a buffet-style lineup to attract as wide an audience as possible while giving the regular crew incentive to earn a spot on the big show, such as teenager Saime Shahin taking the opportunity to win the 4FW title in the main event last month.
One of the big advantages of such supershows, along with the month-to-month storylines of the promotions targeting the hardcore audience, is that it makes it easier to attract media attention by having specific storylines and developments to highlight, rather than each show being “business as usual.” Brad Taylor readily admits that “We’re under the radar because you’ve got all these so-called bigger promotions running big shows with a big wage packet. We might not be as much talked about but I’m happy about that.”
Another benefit for the wrestlers is that building up to a big match can aid focus, as Nathan Cruz explains. “The monthly shows really help because you have time to think about ideas and research past matches, then come up with a more clear direction. With All Star you might only find out your opponent on the night. That said, you sometimes find you’re working with somebody that you’ve always wanted to work with and have thought about. The first time I worked with Dean Allmark, I already had lots of ideas of what I wanted to do with him.”
Building up to a big match or running episodic storylines can also aid in an increasingly viable area of business, namely online viewing. At least nine British promotions regularly sell shows through digital distribution, with a roughly even split between selling individual shows and offering a monthly subscription service similar to WWE Network. Both models have their supporters with Dave Rayne making the case for subscriptions. “The benefit for us is that we know we’ve got a certain level of subscriptions and thus a certain level of income each month, meaning we can keep our monthly costs under control.”
Meanwhile Revolution Pro’s Andy Quildan explains his preference for individual shows. “I have a value of what my shows are worth. I’ve also done some shows which aren’t up for sale because there were technical problems or they simply weren’t good enough for my liking: with a subscription service, there’d be more pressure to put everything up. There’s also the issue of people already being signed up to several other services. I think there’s a danger people will start cycling round, subscribing to a different service for a month at a time and blasting their way through the catalogue.”
While it’s early days, it does seem as if on demand services are starting to capture an international appetite for British wrestling. Around half of Futureshock’s subscribers are from outside the UK, split roughly evenly between Europe, Japan and the US, while the overseas audience makes up around 60 percent of Revolution Pro’s sales. Quildan notes that’s been driven both by his working with New Japan and the increasing exposure of the likes of Will Ospreay, Marty Scurll, Zack Sabre Jr and Mark Andrews in US promotions such as PWG and Evolve. Although such groups reach a small audience themselves, it’s exactly the type of fan predisposed to seeking out unfamiliar products online.
Just as with live event tickets, pricing has been one of the biggest issues with the digital services. Both ICW and PROGRESS charge £4.99 a month, which PROGRESS’s Jim Smallman says is a combination of the marketplace and seeking a wide audience. “We wanted to make sure that we were affordable to as many fans as possible. We get told that the price is a bargain a lot, so we must have positioned it pretty well.”
With online shows in particular, no promotion operates in isolation. Andy Quildan explains that “my pricing is based about fifty percent on our costs and profit margin and fifty percent on the going market price.” Meanwhile Dave Rayne notes that Futureshock’s pricing — originally £8.50 a month and now £7 — is under pressure from both WWE and the bigger online UK promotions.
“WWE is only $9.99, but they’re planning on getting a million subscribers and $10 million which is great, but everyone else is trying to price accordingly. I think Progress and ICW are selling their product too cheap. I just feel they’re undercutting themselves. When the top end products like Progress and ICW are pitching themselves so low it’s really hard for people who aren’t that big to keep up. The debate is what are we worth vs how are we going to compete in the market.
“There’s a balance and I don’t think the wrestling industry’s found that balance yet: we’re all still scrabbling around thinking about the pennies and not thinking about the industry as a whole and what the industry’s worth.”
As well as the revenues, on demand services can also be the solution to the problem of what happens when a storyline-based group expands and starts running multiple venues. PROGRESS, arguably the most episodic promotion (it even refers to individual shows as numbered ‘Chapters’), made a point of getting its on demand offering in place before expanding to Manchester where its first show included some key storyline developments.
“It’s very important because before we ran in Manchester we wanted our new fans to be as familiar with our history and storylines as possible,” Smallman explains. “It would be weird if I had to explain everything to the crowd there, but thanks to Demand Progress I didn’t need to. Everybody was on board already and aware of everything that was going on. And of course, we don’t expect fans to come to every show: [with the on demand] everyone will always be kept in the loop.”
Another example of coping with storylines amid expansion is Bristol’s Pro Wrestling Chaos. It’s now built up a circuit of four regular venues around the fringes of the city, appearing two to three times a year at each. Using a host of local, national independent and imported talent, it somehow manages to run regular storylines for fans who travel to every show or catch up through downloads, while still keeping things simple enough that a family or casual fan can enjoy an event as a self-contained evening.
Futureshock took a slightly different approach when it expanded outside of its Stockport home. It now brands its show by venue, with Stockport’s ‘Uproar’ shows being more storyline driven, Macclesfield’s ‘Underground’ being more about big matches and feud payoffs, and the Slam series (previously in Warrington and now seeking a new home) putting focus on giving trainees experience in longer matches without storylines. Rayne explains that the approach was largely driven by necessity.
“There’s virtually no crossover in fans between Stockport and Warrington. If somebody shows up in Warrington they don’t know why anyone’s fighting. If there’s a run in by some one who hasn’t even been on the show yet tonight, the audience asks why do they dislike this person? It’s no good if the answer is ‘Well it’s because three months ago in Stockport this happened.’
“With Macclesfield we originally planned it to be more trainee only, but the venue was so good it would be doing us a disservice not to take advantage, plus the size of the venue allows for matches like TLC that we couldn’t do in Stockport. We tend to bring new guys in to Stockport and build them up there before taking them to Macclesfield. Plus we’ve got people who’ve been coming to see shows in Stockport for years now, so we have that history with them and can bring back some of the wrestlers from the early days and know they’ll be recognised and have a back story.”
Part of that audience has been built up through half-price family tickets through Groupon, a deals site also used by ICW on its UK tours. While such offers have sparked criticism from some promoters who feel it undercuts the market, Rayne argues that it’s merely another promotional tool. “For us it’s simply another advertising stream to raise local awareness. I could pay a national magazine thousands of pounds for an advert, but for our shows that would probably only equate to selling as many extra tickets as I do through Groupon.”
Futureshock and ICW are among the many flavours of wrestling now available to fans in Manchester, something that concerns Rayne. “There’s now 5 promotions running in the city; go 10 miles out of the city centre and there’s 11. I do believe that a bunch of them are going to have to go under. It’s the nature of business. I don’t think there’s a market to sustain this many.”
While Rayne likens the very different products of Futureshock and ICW to a chip shop and a pizza restaurant not being direct rivals but still eating into one another’s market place, Ricky Knight believes that diversity in products can help overcome competitive problems. Last year he gave his blessing to ICW running a show in Norwich in the heart of WAW’s long-standing territory, reasoning “they were no threat to me show-wise because they do adult stuff.”
It’s that range of promotional styles and set-ups that many credit with developing a generation of talent that’s grabbing worldwide attention. Veteran grappler James Mason points out that “There’s a million training schools which teach the technical side of wrestling, but for the entertainment side of wrestling you need the volume of work. Whether its one promotion or 20 promotions, the volume is the key, but variety helps as well. I know when I started, my success was down to the fact that Brian Dixon would put me on with different people every night. He doesn’t like people to stay in their little comfort zone.”
Cruz credits his diverse experience for developing his performer instincts. “At first it took a while to practice: realising it was difficult to transfer something that would work at NGW and wouldn’t work at a camp show and figuring out why. It’s the same going to somewhere like PROGRESS and being smart enough to know this is a more adult audience and they’re not going to pop for the spot where I get my arse out. It’s not easy, it’s just something you get better at with experience. For example with a camp show I could go out there and ad-lib the entire match on the spot. You could never do that at Progress because my go-to spots, that crowd’s probably seen them a billion times when they’ve been watching wrestling for years.”
Though challenging, it’s proven a rewarding experience. “I find character changes are easiest. I can put a filter on and do the camp show as the flamboyant, campy character that loves himself and then switch up to NGW as more of a villain, mean and aggressive, and then go to PROGRESS where I’m somebody vicious and despicable who hates the audience. In my head it’s like a gauge.”
For El Ligero, the secret of his success is simple, and it’s helped tremendously by the diversity of the British industry in recent years. “My character is not as versatile as others, but I’m a versatile worker. That comes from the fact that I have worked every type of promotion. I think the best workers are the ones that you can give any sort of match in any situation in any place on the card against any type of opponent and they can make it work.”
