Thread: What would it take to start a successful wrestling promotion?
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Old 06-23-2006, 02:46 AM   #2
loopydate
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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.
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