So I'm pretty tired of being argued about the fact that WWE and wrestling are a dying industry. A majority of people on this forum want to say that the WWE product sucks, the stories are boring, it doesn't have the same feel as in the past and that the wrestlers are not the same quality. Yet whenever you say those are telltale signs of a dying company they want to argue and say that wrestling has always been here and always will be.
Well wrestling has been around as long as American industry has. It's roots are actually dated all the way back to just post Civil War, when professional wrestling was a real bout performed at carnivals with staged outcomes. For the rest of the 19th century wrestling was performed across the United States where professional wrestlers would challenge audience members for high stakes gambling. These bouts divided the profession into three types of people involved in the groups, the impresarios, the carnies, and the barnstormers.
The impresarios were what are modern day managers except really protecting and promoting their wrestlers. The carnies would be the entire staff behind scenes today, the guys that rig the performance and create the hook around the event. The barnstormers were travelling wrestlers that staged the outcomes.
The point I am making here is that wrestling used to be performed solely at carnivals and fairs until the 1950's with the rise of television. Where for about 30 years the profession blended television and small venue mixtures. In the 1980's the sport evolved once again with cable, pay per views and large football/basketball venues. Then again it evolved with the advancement of the internet in the late 1990's and early 2000's.
Now almost 12 years past the high point of the internet induced and computer era boom of the entertainment and more specifically wrestling industry, both industries are falling apart.
Below are the reasons that WWE (along with its continued investments in movies) is probably heading on a downward spiral that it will not emerge from.
Now I am sure that all of you will use the recent Wrestlemania buy rate as some kind of contradiction to this data or to discredit. However, the company has been losing money significantly for four years now. A large company should be expanding every year and gaining revenue in its intended industry.
The biggest tell tale sign though are how the companies total assets are declining every year while the other assets are increasing. That is a blatant sign of panic by a company, as it is moving money there. Another sign is how even with a huge increase in 2010 in the feature films line, the entire assets drops 30,000. So take the feature films assets out of that equation and the company shows a steady decline still. That should not be the case. A good business can rely solely on its bread(WWE tv) and butter(WWE live), however WWE cannot even rely on their jelly(WWE films).
On top of the financial data, WWE will officially lose guys like Undertaker, Rock, HBK, Austin and others for good in the next few years. Everyone on this forum constantly complains about what is really going on as well, no real new stars are being pushed and no one really cares for Cena, even the kids according to these declining numbers.
This is real. The WWE is the biggest company in the wrestling industry and they are on a steady decline. Sure its possible for them to turn it around but currently they are not taking the right steps. WWE absolutely needs to increase their profit of $24.83 mil because steadily it declines each year.
My argument all along though is that this will not happen because wrestling is like a circus, rodeo, amusement park and other industries that are being replaced by technology.