The latest reports suggest that WWE’s strategy of fewer house shows with higher ticket prices for its live events all around is here to stay. This approach makes sense on multiple levels. Being on the road in and of itself costs significant money in booking venues, transporting equipment, and coordinating travel for talents. If WWE can make what profits it generated back by charging more for its tickets—and fans prove willing to pay the higher prices (though there’s some resistance to that, and promotions like AEW are poised to take advantage)—it’s simple enough math to see fewer house shows makes sense. There’s the added benefit, too, that talents face a less rigorous schedule, which offers them more time at home with their loved ones, besides less wear and tear on their bodies from taking extra bumps on the road.
Despite the obvious benefits of this model, there are some drawbacks. Indeed, calling on wisdom from years past, WWE may unintentionally be gambling with its own future in embracing a philosophy of hosting fewer live events.
Legends Learned Their Craft On The Road
There’s No Substitute For A Wrestler Getting Reps In
- A lot of a young wrestler’s education can happen on the road.
- Triple H chose WWE over WCW for the purpose of honing his craft via a more intense house show schedule.
- Traveling the roads can be its own platform to learn from veterans.
Read any given wrestling legend’s memoir and a common thread tends to emerge: there was no substitute for their lessons learned via life on the road. Indeed, there’s a near-universal conception that wrestlers only get better by getting their reps in working match after match across time. As a specific example, Triple H referenced in his Thy Kingdom Come documentary that he explicitly chose WWE over WCW because he’d wrestle more dates, recognizing that’s the only way he was going to become great.
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In addition to wrestling frequently, there’s the matter of travel between towns as an up-and-coming wrestler. Countless old timers recount listening to veterans in the car, in airports, and in hotel rooms to accumulate wisdom about the business. While that dynamic won’t go away completely, spending significantly less time on the road all but necessarily does mean less exposure to experienced voices and fewer organic opportunities for a long conversation.
House Shows Are A Platform For Experimentation
With Fewer Eyes, There Are More Opportunities To Take A Creative Risk
- What happens on house shows doesn’t tend to live on in WWE lore.
- While the forgettability of house shows can make them feel less important, it also opens low-stakes chances to try something different.
- New moves, new gimmicks, heel turns, or even phantom title changes are on the table for house shows.
As Chris Jericho spelled out in the True Story of WrestleMania documentary, moments that happen at WrestleMania are subject to immortality because they have the most eyes on them in what’s expected to be the most important show of the year. People remember what happens. That occurs to a lesser degree on other PLEs and to a slightly lesser degree than on episodes of Raw and SmackDown.
What happens on a house show typically gets forgotten. There’s a way in which that devalues house show matches and promos, because they are less-watched, less-documented, and can sometimes even be considered “non-canon” if they don’t factor into or even diverge from TV storylines altogether. Heck, some house show outcomes have even resulted in phantom title changes. There’s a positive side to all that too, though, as house shows offer opportunities for experimentation.
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Trying out an outside-the-box move at WrestleMania risks an embarrassing outcome that lives on in infamy, like Brock Lesnar’s botched shooting star press in 2003. Experimenting with new offense, a new style of promo, or even a new gimmick altogether on a house show offers an opportunity to try things out in front of a live audience that cared enough to come to the arena and see what happens. That’s not to say wrestlers can’t take creative risks on TV, but the stakes are higher, and with TV time at a premium, ideas that are really outside the box may have far less opportunity to see the light of day without as many house shows.
WWE Can Recreate Some Of What They’re Losing With TNA
WWE Has Loosened The Hinges On Its Forbidden Door
- The TNA-NXT crossover deal and allowing more talent to work outside WWE rings have offered opportunities to make up for what’s lost in house shows.
- House shows offer a unique format to fine-tune a wrestler’s act.
- Short-term business gains may jeopardize long-term talent development.
To be fair, there are opportunities for WWE to recreate some of what it loses without house shows by other means. The last year has seen a formal relationship take shape with TNA that allows NXT talent, in particular, to appear on a different brand, in front of a different audience, with a different slate of opponents. WWE has also demonstrated a greater willingness in recent years to let talents wrestle for other promotions, like Natalya appearing for Josh Barnett’s Bloodsport or Shinsuke Nakamura wrestling The Great Muta for Pro Wrestling NOAH. On top of all that, WWE has welcomed in outside talent more, especially for Royal Rumble appearances, that help mix up whom their talents are working with. Each of these ventures allows WWE talent to get out of the strict parameters of WWE programming and work more despite a loss of house show opportunities.
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As long as the situations at hand remain one-offs or bound by very specific relationships, though, they aren’t going to set up talent for the same kinds of chances to go from town to town, fine-tuning their acts to polish them up for a TV spotlight. Yes, this move makes obvious short-term business sense. In the long term, however, it may have really hurt newer talents’ ability to grow into featured roles.
