What would it take to start a successful wrestling promotion?

[Ben Rodrigues]

In an effort to satisfy my own curiosity - What do you think you would need/have to do to start your own wrestling promotion and make it a success? As in the works - from the business standpoint, the capital required, to the staff, to the equipment - everything.

[loopydate]

This is based on just a little research and the assumption that you're talking about starting up an indy and that you don't have a couple million dollars to start up a national promotion running weekly touring shows. But I'm also assuming you want fairly high-quality equipment as far as the ring goes.

Venue - $50-70 (one-day lease of the large gym @ local comm. center)
Ring - $5,000+ (To buy one from highspots.com. Rentals $300/show)
Title Belt - $350-$500 per belt

I don't know what your personal skills are, whether you're looking to just promote, or whether you want to book as well. If you're not going to be writing the shows yourself, you'll need to hire a writer. You'll also want to hire somebody to run the sound system for your PA/ring announcer and entrance music.

You'll also want a crew to help you put the ring together and set up chairs and things. I've only done one indy show, but they had a crew of about a dozen people (although I think most of them were fans who volunteered to help).

I have no idea what indy workers make, but you'll need to pay them, too.

If you're interested in selling videos or possibly doing local TV, you'll need to hire a camera crew. I charge $600 a show (w/ a share of DVD sales), which is actually a bit high for this area. But that came with a four-man camera crew (stationary, ringside, stationary/swivel, and entrance/promos), commentary, editing, TV commercials, and DVDs w/inserts. I don't know what the usual going rate is, but that's what I made.

I'm not sure about this, but I think a lot of places require you to have a license to run a wrestling show, so you'll need to pay for that as well.

I'm sure there's more, but it's 2:45 in the morning and I'm a little bit spacey. That should be a pretty good primer on the kind of thing you'll need.

[Londoner]

If you're not going to be writing the shows yourself, you'll need to hire a writer.

I'll be more than willing to help out with this.

[Ben Rodrigues]

Thanks for that Loopy. Found some book on Amazon I might buy just for a fun read that is about starting your own promotion.

And to TL - it's just an idea I'm playing with - I have other goals in mind I wish to accomplish before I even consider the idea of running a promotion. But if I did in fact attempt to get into it - it would be on a grander scale then simply an indy.

But yeah - if I do ever require writers - wrestling forums seem to be the place to pick them up - I've read some incredible storylines on this website.

[Kane Knight]

Need a sound guy? ;)

[Londoner]

If you ever seriously do this then let me know, it would definately be a dream job for me.

[Stickman]

Need a janitor?

[loopydate]

If you ever do get this thing rolling, I can write and - as I mentioned before - I have video experience. Of course, you would need to be in central Florida for me to actually shoot the shows...

[St. Jimmy]

Insane amounts of money. Atleast 2.5 million. That's enough to build a decent roster, rent venues, create characters/brands, belts, website/promotion ect.

Plus you need to hire writers, TV crew ect.

[Blitz]

Insane amounts of money. Atleast 2.5 million. That's enough to build a decent roster, rent venues, create characters/brands, belts, website/promotion ect.

Plus you need to hire writers, TV crew ect.
You sir, are insane.

[loopydate]

That's awfully high, Jim. I would imagine you could put on a decent-sized show (500-seat auditorium, 20-man roster) for under 50 grand. And that's a really generous (as in high) estimate. Unless you're trying to launch something ROH-sized, you won't need $2.5m.

But, you'll definitely want a day job to help finance it. The only promoter I know also runs a construction company. He started UCW with the money he made as a contractor, and most of the crew (ring, sound, lighting) are people from his other company.

[Blitz]

Dont expect to make any money for a while, at least. In fact, expect to lose money for the first little while. Find people with a passion for the business who are willing to work for very little money, or for free.

[St. Jimmy]

You sir, are insane.

You said a Successful promotion. You could start a promotion, maybe seen by about 25,000 people a year for way under that cost... but In most standards that isn't what's concidered successful.

[Blitz]

Having a huge starting capital doesn't mean you're gonna be successful.

[The Naitch]

hire Nervous Ferret to handle booking.