How much does it cost you to watch wrestling?

[XL]

If you were to watch every major TV show (Raw, ECW on SciFi, SmackDown!, Impact) and all the WWE / TNA PPVs, how much would it cost you?

What are the comparisons between the UK and the US? How much do cable subscriptions cost? How much do PPVs cost? How many PPVs do you have to pay for (differs in the UK)?

[Xero]

Basic Cable: About $50/Month
WWE PPVs: $40/Show times 12 plus $50 for WrestleMania (Going off 13 Shows/year)
TNA PPVs: $30/Show (I believe) times 12

Which comes out to about $1,490.

We have to pay for every PPV (hence the name Pay Per View) and can't understand why the UK gets them free.

[St. Jimmy]

$0.

I have free basic cable, I watch all the PPV's online (which I don't count the cost of internet service towards wrestling since I use it for much more than that).

[XL]

We have to pay for every PPV (hence the name Pay Per View) and can't understand why the UK gets them free.
Prolly something to do with the fact that we have to stay up til 4 in the morning to watch! It's a damn cheek to ask us to pay! :p

[XL]

Anyways, we have our answer from the US.

How much do you have to pay in the UK for a cable / Sky package that includes Sky Sports? How many PPVs do we have to pay for? And at what cost?

[Kane Knight]

Basic Cable: About $50/Month
WWE PPVs: $40/Show times 12 plus $50 for WrestleMania (Going off 13 Shows/year)
TNA PPVs: $30/Show (I believe) times 12

Which comes out to about $1,490.

We have to pay for every PPV (hence the name Pay Per View) and can't understand why the UK gets them free.I pay about 20 bucks a month more than Xero, but "Basic cable" doesn't include all the wrestling channels, either.

[Xero]

Actually I think Sci-Fi isn't carried on Basic here now that I think about it. It's on Extended Basic, which is the highest tier here before we hit digital cable.

Still, I included the price of Sci-Fi...

[Dave Youell]

The Brit Version:

You now need to have the full sky package for the basic TV. So that's £47 a month

They've just done a new deal for PPV's I don't know how many we will have to pay for now. I think it was 6 @ £14.95 each. But over the course of the next 12 months I think that number will increase so.

£47 x 12: £564
£14.95 x 6: £89.70

So £653.70 per year

So converting that it's roughly $1200 per year

[Dave Youell]

We have to pay for every PPV (hence the name Pay Per View) and can't understand why the UK gets them free.
There's changes coming this year.

But from the WWE's POV. The Sky deal was increased with the PPV's included.

How good do you think the buyrate is for a PPV that you have to stay up till 4am to watch?

They were probably testing the waters with previous deals and have now realized they can make more cash with PPV buy rates rather than the Sky inclusive deal.

[XL]

So £653.70 per year

So converting that it's roughly $1200 per year
Wow. Closer than I expected!

I was gonna compare to cost of following a football (soccer) team but I can't be arsed right now.

[DAMN iNATOR]

Well, my father pays the cable bill at our place so that's free to watch RAW, ECW, and SD! (I opt not to watch TNA, as it may give me some weird VD if I ever did...):shifty: But for the Pay-Per-Views I just go to Buffalo Wild Wings in the E.L. so they show it there free except I just pay only for food, drink, and raffle tix, cuz they sell tix for a giveaway of the promo posters that all the blast areas have. I SO wanted a No Mercy poster, so I bought tix on the 7 for $5 special they had goin, and I still lost. I literally slammed down the tix on the counter and stormed outta there like a bat out of hell! So total: prolly $90-$100, just a ballpark est. Since I don't keep the food receipts and keep track of it. So yeah, whatever...-

[Kane Knight]

Damninator's not on the same page, but while we're on it:

I don't pay for wrestling in the current market.

I've only watched about ten hours of wrestling in the last 6 months, and I would have missed none of it had I not had cable. I'd miss the Daily Show, or the Colbert Report, or House, or Bones, or Heroes, or any of a couple dozen other shows I most watch. Those are shows I'd pay for.

Wrestling, technically, gets none of my money right now. I don't pay for PPVs (And probably wouldn't even watch them free right now) and I don't rreally watch wrestling, so it's hard to consider it part of the reason I'm paying for cable currently. Technically, I'm paying for it in the same sense I'm paying for Fox News and Trinity (Christian BS Channel), but that's about as far as it goes.

I'm curious as to how many people would pay to watch wrestling if it didn't come part and parcel with all the other shit they normally watch.

[Dorkchop]

I think about $15 a month. I don't remember how much basic cable is a month, but I pay 1/3 of it. I don't order PPVs at all. I'd like to see them, but I don't have the $60+ dollars a month to afford them (and watch them by myself). If I had friends who watched wrestling, I'd be willing to chip in $10 a PPV.

I don't have digital cable, so I don't have WWE 24/7 or other wrestling/sports channels. I'd love to have WWE 24/7, but that's all I'd watch if I had digital cable, so all the other shit I'd have would be a waste.

[Lord-Of-Darkness]

I find it funny that in the UK we got everything completly free when it was red hot in the attitude era, and now when its a pile of trash we get charged for everything.

[94 SVT Cobra]

well back in the day heres what it cost me

20 bucks every mon and thurs night for a bag of weed.

[Dave Youell]

I find it funny that in the UK we got everything completly free when it was red hot in the attitude era, and now when its a pile of trash we get charged for everything.
If memory serves....

Back then (and probably still now) Sky would sign up for a few years at a time. It was probably the opinion that no one would want to pay for the PPV's. But they could cut a deal to give them for free.

After seeing the viewing figures Channel 4 got all wet and when the renewal came up, C4 worked out a 4 PPV deal, they only showed the Royal Rumble 2000, got loads of complaints and decided to drop the PPV's, then Sentanta Sports picked up the remaining PPV's, thus starting us having to pay to watch the shows.

When the next Renewal came up, Sky took over the PPV's and then added some more 'Pay' per view shows to the deal.

With the latest deal i've heard we may have to pay for up to 10 a year.

So basically they didn't know the market when it was hot, when they realized there was more money to be made, they jumped all over it

[XL]

After seeing the viewing figures Channel 4 got all wet and when the renewal came up, C4 worked out a 4 PPV deal, they only showed the Royal Rumble 2000, got loads of complaints and decided to drop the PPV's, then Sentanta Sports picked up the remaining PPV's, thus starting us having to pay to watch the shows.
They showed all 4 (RR, Backlash, InVasion, Vengeance/Armageddon if I remember correctly) but following the complaints off the back of the Rumble they showed them with a 50 min delay, pushing the start time back to 1:50am. Needless to say viewing figures dropped and they didn't renew the contract for 2001.

Unless you meant they only showed the RR before deciding it was a bad idea, in which case i juat wasted my time.

Anyways, the question wasn't so much how much do you pay personally, more how much would you have to pay to have access to all of the programming.

Personally, I pay for nothing except if I'm gonna watch a live stream of a PPV which usually costs £2.50, but after the fiasco surrounding the last attempt (and the fact that I'm too tired to work the next day) it's likely that I'll return to torrents.

[Dave Youell]

Ok, well that is still how much I pay personally as I own my own place and pay for my own bills.

[Team Sheep]

Ye I have the full sky package plus the 8 PPV's we have to pay for over here every year.

[The Genius]

i pay the $50 a year for the WM ppv and 8 a month for 24-7

[Skippord]

Nothing