FloSports Files Lawsuit Against WWN

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Big Red Machine
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Re: FloSports Files Lawsuit Against WWN

Post by Big Red Machine »

famicommander wrote: Sun Oct 15, 2017 2:28 pm They "thought" they were going to get these promotions for no good reason at all. They "thought" they could get ROH and then "thought" that for some reason NJPW would forget about NJPW World and join them with CMLL and the big indies falling into line behind them.

The money behind promotions like ROH, NJPW, and CMLL have the resources, content, and ability to stream their own content without a middle man.

And yet ROH wasn't doing so, so it wasn't out of the realm of possibility that ROH didn't want to do it in-house and would have been happy to have FloSlam do it for them.
Duke of Bridgewater
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Re: FloSports Files Lawsuit Against WWN

Post by Duke of Bridgewater »

Big Red Machine wrote: Sun Oct 15, 2017 8:25 am Because the idea is that if you're getting not just EVOLVE but all of the WWN promotions, plus whoever else FloSlam signs up (IPW:UK, Beyond, Joey Janela's promotion, etc.) for the same price, it would be a good enough deal to attract more people.
Sure, but everyone who was already watching the other WWN promotions is not paying for iPPVs anymore, just for the FloSlam subscription. So if they bought two or more iPPVs per month until 2016, they paid less in the last year. Its not making a difference of what branch of WWN the iPPVs were.

And if you picked only a small number of iPPVs before, everything suddenly got more expensive. You either start to love EVOLVE, or you may decide not to make the move to FloSlam at all. Personally, I did the latter: I watched every SHINE iPPV until 2016, but almost nothing else from WWN. Out of nowhere the next SHINE event I was looking foward to watch wasn't on WWNlive.com anymore, and they told me to subscribe to FloSlam and what a great idea that is. Well, for me it wasn't, as the price went up, not down.

Furthermore I couldn't even give it a try, as I don't have a credit card (since it's not a very common way to pay where I live) and unlike WWN, FloSlam isn't using PayPal. I asked, others did too, but FloSports didn't even bother to give a generic answer like "Sorry, it's not possible for technical reasons." So I certainly was among the 5000 people they expected to subscribe, but I didn't. It's not Gabe's fault, FloSlam can blame this on their own inflexible concept and lack of customer support.

If other promotions had joined FloSlam, it would have drawn more fans. But the subscripion money had to be shared among more promotions, who have to make up for selling less on their classic distribution ways. So FloSlam had to attract a large amount of people who didn't buy from any of the promotions on a regular base, thus putting new money into the system.
Big Red Machine
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Re: FloSports Files Lawsuit Against WWN

Post by Big Red Machine »

Duke of Bridgewater wrote: Mon Oct 16, 2017 12:46 am
Big Red Machine wrote: Sun Oct 15, 2017 8:25 am Because the idea is that if you're getting not just EVOLVE but all of the WWN promotions, plus whoever else FloSlam signs up (IPW:UK, Beyond, Joey Janela's promotion, etc.) for the same price, it would be a good enough deal to attract more people.
Sure, but everyone who was already watching the other WWN promotions is not paying for iPPVs anymore, just for the FloSlam subscription. So if they bought two or more iPPVs per month until 2016, they paid less in the last year. Its not making a difference of what branch of WWN the iPPVs were.

And if you picked only a small number of iPPVs before, everything suddenly got more expensive. You either start to love EVOLVE, or you may decide not to make the move to FloSlam at all. Personally, I did the latter: I watched every SHINE iPPV until 2016, but almost nothing else from WWN. Out of nowhere the next SHINE event I was looking foward to watch wasn't on WWNlive.com anymore, and they told me to subscribe to FloSlam and what a great idea that is. Well, for me it wasn't, as the price went up, not down.

Furthermore I couldn't even give it a try, as I don't have a credit card (since it's not a very common way to pay where I live) and unlike WWN, FloSlam isn't using PayPal. I asked, others did too, but FloSports didn't even bother to give a generic answer like "Sorry, it's not possible for technical reasons." So I certainly was among the 5000 people they expected to subscribe, but I didn't. It's not Gabe's fault, FloSlam can blame this on their own inflexible concept and lack of customer support.

If other promotions had joined FloSlam, it would have drawn more fans. But the subscripion money had to be shared among more promotions, who have to make up for selling less on their classic distribution ways. So FloSlam had to attract a large amount of people who didn't buy from any of the promotions on a regular base, thus putting new money into the system.
Nothing you're saying is wrong. I just figure that FloSlam had more confidence in their ability to recruit more promotions than was warranted.
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Re: FloSports Files Lawsuit Against WWN

Post by Thelone »

The $30 price tag most likely didn't help. It was a decent price if you're an avid Evolve fan who's buying every show (and you get shit like Shine and all those lower WWN promotions like FIP and ACW "for free"), not so much if you're cherry-picking based on the card or whatever.

Also the Highspots Network is like ten bucks and you get a billion promotions.
http://thelone.be/ => My site, which means a bunch of random stuff really.
famicommander
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Re: FloSports Files Lawsuit Against WWN

Post by famicommander »

Big Red Machine wrote: Sun Oct 15, 2017 6:40 pm
famicommander wrote: Sun Oct 15, 2017 2:28 pm They "thought" they were going to get these promotions for no good reason at all. They "thought" they could get ROH and then "thought" that for some reason NJPW would forget about NJPW World and join them with CMLL and the big indies falling into line behind them.

The money behind promotions like ROH, NJPW, and CMLL have the resources, content, and ability to stream their own content without a middle man.
And yet ROH wasn't doing so, so it wasn't out of the realm of possibility that ROH didn't want to do it in-house and would have been happy to have FloSlam do it for them.
So they committed to this entire business model because they thought that maybe ROH might want to give them their content to monetize instead of partners they were already working with such as NJPW or Fite.

And ROH did have its own streaming via the website; it's just barebones and outdated.

The fact that Sinclair/ROH weren't doing it yet should have been a pretty good indicator that the economics didn't make sense yet. If there were easy profits just sitting around to be made, a company like Sinclair isn't going to just pass it up.
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Re: FloSports Files Lawsuit Against WWN

Post by Big Red Machine »

famicommander wrote: Mon Oct 16, 2017 7:45 am
Big Red Machine wrote: Sun Oct 15, 2017 6:40 pm
famicommander wrote: Sun Oct 15, 2017 2:28 pm They "thought" they were going to get these promotions for no good reason at all. They "thought" they could get ROH and then "thought" that for some reason NJPW would forget about NJPW World and join them with CMLL and the big indies falling into line behind them.

The money behind promotions like ROH, NJPW, and CMLL have the resources, content, and ability to stream their own content without a middle man.
And yet ROH wasn't doing so, so it wasn't out of the realm of possibility that ROH didn't want to do it in-house and would have been happy to have FloSlam do it for them.
So they committed to this entire business model because they thought that maybe ROH might want to give them their content to monetize instead of partners they were already working with such as NJPW or Fite.

And ROH did have its own streaming via the website; it's just barebones and outdated.

The fact that Sinclair/ROH weren't doing it yet should have been a pretty good indicator that the economics didn't make sense yet. If there were easy profits just sitting around to be made, a company like Sinclair isn't going to just pass it up.
Maybe they thought it wouldn't have been profitable for ROH to do it in-house, but it would be profitable for ROH to take a bunch of money from FloSlam and let FloSlam do it for them? You could even make the a similar argument for PWG, although instead of profitablity being the prohibitive issue, it was the time commitment of their already small operation.
I'm not disputing that FloSlam miscalculated. I just don't agree with everyone else that they were complete and total morons for thinking this might work.
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Re: FloSports Files Lawsuit Against WWN

Post by famicommander »

Thinking it might work and committing to the business plan are two different things, and doing the latter with not even the slightest inkling that the promotions they were banking on were interested is what makes them idiots.

PWG and all the indies are awesome, but they're really not relevant as far as moving the needle on subscriptions. The only promotions with the visibility and libraries that could have made this work were ROH, CMLL, or NJPW.

Even NJPW barely has 10,000 subscribers outside of Japan and they're the hottest thing going right now.
kovs27
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Re: FloSports Files Lawsuit Against WWN

Post by kovs27 »

Shine 46 is going to be available on the Fite TV App. At least that's what my App tells me. Could be a sign WWN is moving in that direction.
famicommander
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Re: FloSports Files Lawsuit Against WWN

Post by famicommander »

Fite is really making some headway. They've got major boxing, UFC, ROH TV and PPVs, CMLL TV, AJPW PPVs, Impact PPVs, etc.

When I first downloaded the app I never thought I'd see a freaking Floyd Mayweather fight on it.
BrandenScott
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Re: FloSports Files Lawsuit Against WWN

Post by BrandenScott »

powerbomb.tv announced a deal with smart mark video. They will be getting all the classic and new content starting November 1. Fuck Floscam
kovs27
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Re: FloSports Files Lawsuit Against WWN

Post by kovs27 »

famicommander wrote: Thu Oct 19, 2017 12:59 pm Fite is really making some headway. They've got major boxing, UFC, ROH TV and PPVs, CMLL TV, AJPW PPVs, Impact PPVs, etc.

When I first downloaded the app I never thought I'd see a freaking Floyd Mayweather fight on it.
I first got the app just to watch ROH PPVs for cheaper. The library that Fite has amassed is great. It's almost overwhelming. I think they have a deal with UFC now for certain shows as well.
SandsShifter
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Re: FloSports Files Lawsuit Against WWN

Post by SandsShifter »

kovs27 wrote: Fri Oct 20, 2017 7:09 am
famicommander wrote: Thu Oct 19, 2017 12:59 pm Fite is really making some headway. They've got major boxing, UFC, ROH TV and PPVs, CMLL TV, AJPW PPVs, Impact PPVs, etc.

When I first downloaded the app I never thought I'd see a freaking Floyd Mayweather fight on it.
I first got the app just to watch ROH PPVs for cheaper. The library that Fite has amassed is great. It's almost overwhelming. I think they have a deal with UFC now for certain shows as well.
I first got the Fite App just for ROH PPVs because they could be Chromecasted, and the PSN Live Events Viewer failed me one too many times. But the library is great and watching the TV on it every week is sooo good.
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Re: FloSports Files Lawsuit Against WWN

Post by famicommander »

https://www.fightful.com/flosports-reve ... rt-filings

Some bullet points:
-Floslam is going to make this an expensive, drawn-out legal battle that WWN likely cannot afford
-WWN has no shows announced between now and Wrestlemania weekend
-The single most successful WWN show ever was Evole 58, which was claimed to have done 2,475 buys. But, of course, Floslam claims that WWN double counted many buyers, included DVD sales as iPPV buys, and even still, those numbers came up well short of the real numbers.

The more you hear, the more it seems that WWN is really, really scummy and Flosports was really, really dumb to give them that money before they verified the buyrates.
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Re: FloSports Files Lawsuit Against WWN

Post by Wilson »

famicommander wrote: Wed Nov 29, 2017 6:53 pm https://www.fightful.com/flosports-reve ... rt-filings

Some bullet points:
-Floslam is going to make this an expensive, drawn-out legal battle that WWN likely cannot afford
-WWN has no shows announced between now and Wrestlemania weekend
-The single most successful WWN show ever was Evole 58, which was claimed to have done 2,475 buys. But, of course, Floslam claims that WWN double counted many buyers, included DVD sales as iPPV buys, and even still, those numbers came up well short of the real numbers.

The more you hear, the more it seems that WWN is really, really scummy and Flosports was really, really dumb to give them that money before they verified the buyrates.
I think you've mischaracterized what was written in the article. Here's what's been tweeted/retweeted from the author's Twitter (and I apologize in advance for not being able to put this in a spoiler block, folks):
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Evolve is also running a double shot in New York in the next week or so. It's somewhat normal for them to only focus on the months immediately ahead of them.
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Re: FloSports Files Lawsuit Against WWN

Post by Wilson »

And from Rick Kraetsch from the quoted above VoW article:
One can look at the huge jump from WWN (specifically EVOLVE) in 2016 and chalk that up to fraudulent, deceiving numbers inflated to help WWN secure a big money deal from Flo. But that ignores a number of factors that could have played into this rise — the most notable being publicity from the king of the pro wrestling world: WWE.

EVOLVE and WWNLive was the home of WWE Cruiserweight Classic qualifiers, WWNLive was mentioned on WWE.com and members of the WWE roster were seen plugging WWN the brand, WWN wrestlers and other WWN properties.

Had these occurrences not happened, then sure, I can see a case being made for an auspicious rise in buys, but that ignores just how important the WWE shine was and is to an independent property’s growth. This is my personal opinion interjected, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume that an extra 450-550 people discovered and began consuming EVOLVE and other WWNLive.com shows because of WWE publicity.

FloSports lawsuit alleges that these numbers are fraudulent but it’s hard to find an overwhelming case that they were. Are we to assume that WWN was doing far less than 500 buys in 2015? That seems unrealistic. Or are they possibly trying to say that FloSlam didn’t increase nearly 45% year-over-year from 2015 to 2016? That’s a little more plausible but certainly not the overwhelming case you’d expect with a lawsuit attached.
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Re: FloSports Files Lawsuit Against WWN

Post by dhads7161 »

I don't give a shit about the lawsuit. All I know is that it sucks this happened between the two companies. Enjoyed not having to pay iPPV price for EVOLVE and some other WWN shows.
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Re: FloSports Files Lawsuit Against WWN

Post by The Dragon Saga »

Actually, I wouldn't be at all shocked if less than 500 people were buying EVOLVE shows, yeah.

I can't remember the show, but I do remember once watching an EVOLVE show on Taima.tv when I was sick and there was a measily 120 or so people in the chat watching it too. That was some time in early 2016 I think.

I've already expressed my views on EVOLVE above, but at the end of the day, what does it matter? They had their five seconds, it blew up in their face, Gabe is back to hustling to keep it alive. I would say that right now NWA is more relevant in the grand scheme of pro-wrestling than EVOLVE is, and I wouldn't have been able to say that with a straight face even three months ago.
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Re: FloSports Files Lawsuit Against WWN

Post by Big Red Machine »

The Dragon Saga wrote: Fri Dec 01, 2017 1:09 pm Actually, I wouldn't be at all shocked if less than 500 people were buying EVOLVE shows, yeah.

I can't remember the show, but I do remember once watching an EVOLVE show on Taima.tv when I was sick and there was a measily 120 or so people in the chat watching it too. That was some time in early 2016 I think.

I've already expressed my views on EVOLVE above, but at the end of the day, what does it matter? They had their five seconds, it blew up in their face, Gabe is back to hustling to keep it alive. I would say that right now NWA is more relevant in the grand scheme of pro-wrestling than EVOLVE is, and I wouldn't have been able to say that with a straight face even three months ago.
120 people in the chat is seems like a very good number, as it seems to me that post people buying a show aren't trying to do internet chat during it.
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Re: FloSports Files Lawsuit Against WWN

Post by AlexROH »

Big Red Machine wrote: Sat Dec 02, 2017 5:29 pm
The Dragon Saga wrote: Fri Dec 01, 2017 1:09 pm Actually, I wouldn't be at all shocked if less than 500 people were buying EVOLVE shows, yeah.

I can't remember the show, but I do remember once watching an EVOLVE show on Taima.tv when I was sick and there was a measily 120 or so people in the chat watching it too. That was some time in early 2016 I think.

I've already expressed my views on EVOLVE above, but at the end of the day, what does it matter? They had their five seconds, it blew up in their face, Gabe is back to hustling to keep it alive. I would say that right now NWA is more relevant in the grand scheme of pro-wrestling than EVOLVE is, and I wouldn't have been able to say that with a straight face even three months ago.
120 people in the chat is seems like a very good number, as it seems to me that post people buying a show aren't trying to do internet chat during it.
The number that Taima show isn't the number of people chatting, is the total of people watching the show in that moment.

And talking about EVOLVE, I don't what happend in the second half of the year, but now I have 0 interest in watching the product. I used to enjoy the show, but crowds really suck. There are some very good wrestlers like Lee or Yehi, but EVOLVE has, again, failed. They always have a short period of time where people talk about them but then Gabe proved why he's an awful promoter. Their product hasn't improved or changed in months. And having always Lee and Riddle in the big match spot doesn't help too. They're both great wrestlers, but the fact that they wreste everywhere and, now with streaming services, people can watch every promotion, their matches in EVOLVE doesn't feel special anymore. That's why the super indy concept doesn't work as well as it used to work back in the DVD era. You have to offer a different roster or more diverse, just like AAW or even Glory Pro.

In all these years, Gabe hasn't been able to create a loyal fanbase and only La Boom has some big match feel, and that's because NYC has a wrestling fanbse in general. NWA, as Dragon Sage said, looks more interesting righ now. Corgan has a good mind. Maybe everything evolves... except for EVOLVE or EVOLVE really isn't for everybody haha.
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