Hang on, aren't those articles just written by fans? Why the hell would any TNA employee spill the beans out to a fan writer?

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure there are problems backstage at TNA, and undoubtedly there are health-and-well-being issues, but for all we know 99% of that article could have been pulled out of his ass.

for as long as I can remember there have been "insider leaks" about everything from morale to drugs to kurt angle's inside leg measurements about TNA apparently from people claiming to work for them.

I would treat them all with equal disdain really.

Anyway I thought Sacrifice was decent enough. I enjoyed the mixed tag match purely for the entertainment value really.

I do agree about getting the belt off Sting though. I noticed he even messed up the first attempt at the scorpion deathdrop and had to do it again, with RVD patiently waiting in position as well ..

But then I guess if TNA won't get rid of Vince Russo after what must be nearly 10 years, they won't take the belt off Sting any time soon.

why would they want to get rid of the greatest and most successfull booker of all time?

weird thing to say.....considering russo is known for short title reigns

so if you you think sting is gonna hold on to the title that must mean russo doesnt have huge influence, or maybe IWC do not know a thing about russos booking like they think they do? thus why would you make a comment about tna getting rid of russo?

UK house shows. Also can't you buy the PPV's via their website? If not, that should be TNA's next step. Then again considering how poor their US buyrates are, it's probably not worth the hassle.

Advertising wise, if it's anything like the US, alot of advertisers think wrestling fans are stupid idiots with no disposable income, so you can only attract certain brands.

Why would UK fans buy PPVs from their website whenever they're free on Challenge?!

And their UK house shows performed well, from what I understand.

Nobody knows how well DVD or merchandising is going in the UK, but I've seen them advertising a few very good deals specifically for UK fans.

Vince McMahon?

i'm not getting in to it with you about russo since i know from past experience you worship him ..

that's your prerogative

Bound For Glory last year supposedly did 30,000 buys but i don't believe anything like that since nothing can be proved as TNA is a private company. The buyrates wouldn't be that bad.

Hmmmm but when you look at it carefully, buyrates like those would make sense.

Looking at WWE's PPV that month - Hell In A Cell - it did 210,000 buys.

Now, consider the fact that WWE PPV's live up to their name in pretty much every country in the world - you've got to pay if you want to see them (excluding illegal streams and such). Compare this to TNA who, outside of America, tend to offer their PPVs as part of the whole TV deal. That immediately cuts off the international market.

Consider also that, in America, WWE is doing much better business than TNA, ratings generally being 3 times or more than what impact is getting.

When you factor all that together, 30,000 PPV buys isn't that far off what you would expect them to be getting.

The only PPV that generates a substantial number of buys anymore is Wrestlemania anyway.

I'm sure if the product was must see, people would pay rather than wait 3 days.


30k for BFG was the exception rather than the rule. They actually attempted to book towards that show, plus it's supposed to be their Wrestlemania.

They're doing between 8k and 14k usually. Awful for a company with 1.5 to 1.7m viewers in the US. TNA Sacrifice did a horrible buyrate. I wonder if it went below 8k?

Wrestlemania is the one huge wrestling buyrate of the year, but thats again to do with WWE's indifferent booking.

Meltzer did mention on WrestlingObserver radio today that TNA are going to try and go on the road more.

If TNA were getting international buys like WWE do though, even you must admit that their buyrate would be substantially higher. Nowhere near WWE levels, but certainly more respectable.

It is a bit of a false figure because there are far more people seeing TNA PPV's for free internationally than there are buying it in the USA, and in the long run that's something that TNA will probably seek to address. Just like the way WWE took PPVs off TV for free in the UK, first on Channel 4 and then even on Sky Sports, when they realised they would make more money that way.

At the moment TNA are offering their PPVs as part of the full TV deal on the international market, as it provides more exposure and, of course, it's much better value for the TV station than just having weekly impact episodes.

I guess if Chris Harris does stick around and, hopefully, gets into something approaching shape, there'll invariably be a teased AMW re-union.

Or an actual AMW reunion. That wouldn't be so bad actually - they could do some kind of storyline where Beer Money split up and AMW get back together and fued with Roode and whoever his new partner might be.

(See, i'm talking about the actual product and not ratings and buyrates )

I thought Sacrifice was similar to nearly every PPV since Hogan and Bischoff arrived -- underperforming. Weaker than most IMO. X Division match was decent, mixed tag was fun and Sting/RVD was ok due to being cleverly booked to feature lots of brawling. Other matches were poor.

Ironically If TNA are actually placing emphasis on wrestling because the roster is arguably the weakest it has been since 2003. Styles, Angle, Jarrett, Kazarian, RVD, Beer Money, MCMG's, Daniels, Williams and Generation Me can deliver the goods. Everybody else is either limited or seen much better days...

But remember WWE buyrates are now combined and have been for sometime. Finding out what their true North American buyrate is will be a little tricky but there's usually one or two news sites who post the real buyrate totals.

I still think the PPV concept is out of date, it's not the 80's anymore and it isn't the 90's anymore. The wrestling business just isn't hot enough to warrant a monthly PPV and neither company should be running anywhere near 12 PPVs a year. TNA should focus on building their Impact Wrestling show up and try and get those ratings up rather than worrying about a PPV every few weeks. With Raw doing a 3.08 this week their getting closer to that 3.0 mark again and there is no Shawn Michaels, no Undertaker, no Triple H, no Ric Flair to fall back on. Raw and Smackdown is just utter boredom infact look at the WWE thread, a huge number of posters not posting there anymore but their still posting elsewhere in DS. That's what happens when you keep churning out the same stuff week after week, even the most die hard fans just change the channel and it's really that simple and i can see why. I stil watch it every week but i think i'm just going through the motions. TNA at least have 1 or 2 segments every week that is worth watching, that you can look forward to.

I hope Impact got a good rating this week. I know there used to be a thread in the TV Programmes section for ratings and there was a poster in there who used to inform people about raings, i'm not sure if he had some kind of membership to Barb but he used to tell people what the TNA rating was on Wednesday morning, over a week before Barb would post it. But there's a part of me that wants to wait until Barb post it just for the surprise element. 244,000 was impressive but with all those reveals promised i think they will have topped that again.

It would help TNA no question if they were available in other markets across the world via PPV. However, considering they can only convince at worst 8,000 people from over 1.5m people watching Impact in the States to buy their PPV's, whats to say that they'll attract substantial numbers elsewhere.

Until they build towards their PPVs, they will continue to lose money.

Interesting thing in this weeks Observer

It's not worth building towards PPV, no one cares about PPVs anymore, no one in their right mind would pay for a wrestling PPV in this day and age even if they were getting 10 million viewers a week! Eric Bischoff said way back last year about his idea of getting rid of all PPVs and having one monthly special live on Spike TV to build up to. PPVs are dead. Why waste 4 weeks building up to a PPV, then change things around a bit then waste another 4 weeks till the next one, then you need to make more alterations so you can spend the following 4 weeks building up the next one, start/stop/start/stop/start/stop. Too much going on. Wrestling is a TV show, just keep it as a TV show and let the storylines carry on from week to week.

So how come UFC, most Boxing shows and WWE still manage to get more than 8,000 people paying at least $45/$55 for HD PPV shows? TNA are charging $35 and still can't get many people.

TNA is a business. They need to make money. PPV has been and still is the biggest source of revenue to all of the other shows I've mentioned.

Finding the domestic/international difference is easy enough. Go to the corporate section of WWE.com, then under the investors section scroll down to key performance indicators.

For example: The average domestic buys for last year's quarter 2 WWE PPV's (none included a big 4 PPV) was 96,000.

Obviously the fact that TNA has a bigger market in the rest of the world than it does in America. We can talk all day about the reasons why that is the case, but all we're doing is speculating. Facts are facts - TNA is beating RAW and Smackdown in the ratings here in the UK nearly every week. Even before they went on Challenge, and they were on the pay-TV channel Bravo, the ratings were swinging 50/50 either way each week. So it's clear that TNA is making waves in the UK in a way that WWE is largely failing to do. When wCw was on terrestrial TV here in the UK, even at it's peak, WWF was still getting higher ratings than it.

As I said, the international PPV market is what inflates WWE's figures and deflates TNA's. That is a problem TNA need to address.

I partially agree with wildmovieguy here, however. The PPV business is crippled thanks to the internet, the sorts of figures that were seen in the 90s and early 00s will never be seen again. Yet what is the alternative? As you say, wrestling is a business, it's there to make money, and one of the major revenue streams of any successful wrestling company has to be PPV.

I would be in favour of reducing it from 12 a year to either 4 or 6, and then maybe once a month have a 'special' episode of iMPACT. More time to build up storylines and the PPV begins to be much more important again. Plus, it would give TNA a chance to hold their PPVs all out of the impact zone, which let's face it, they really need to do.

A lot of these "insider" stories are just laughable. TNA doesnt have many leaks, when it comes to wrestlers debuting or big storyline twists there is nowhere on the internet that reports them until the wrestler is seen backstage at the event or until it happens on screen.

Im sure TNA is in no way the perfect company but reports of its problems seem greatly exaggerated.

Especially with it being on Freeview too. I'm starting to really get into TNA got Sacrifice recorded at home

Very true. No "insider" called Chyna - in fact all the "insiders" were saying it was going to be Isis the Amazon

Hi guys -- first post on this thread.

I wasn't too impressed by TNA's earlier 8-week run on Virgin (too much talk not enough turnbuckle action) but it's reappearance on Challenge is way and ahead the BEST THING to happen to UK TV in the last ten years! It's great to be able to watch full shows on free tv for the first time, and all the PPV's for free. TNA also has a great roster of old and new characters, some of who have come on a looonng way since I saw them last - AJ Styles cuts much better promos now than he used to.

I don't have too many crits about the way things are going right now except they really have to DROP that Winter and Zombie Ken Gaga story RIGHT NOW. It's lame and it's not clever to see that straight-hipped TS not react to wrestling blows.

Sacrifice was good. The Jarett/Angle payoff was satisfying pantomime, Bully Ray cut his usual AWESOME promo (if only his moves in the ring were a bit less telegraphed!), and - Jesus - where did that Max Buck/Kazarian fight come from? I thought real wrestling was a thing of the past. It was great. I have to say I love Sting but his win was unsatisfying (I actually preferred his 10 second wipeout of Jeff Hardy). He was a punch bag for most of it, fumbled a deathdrop, then BOOM game over. Too little too late. We needed to see more fire from him.

But TNA highlight of the week for me has to be: Ric Flair on iMPACT! kicking Sacrifice in the nuts and toeing him out of the ring like so much garbage. I'm still laughing at that.

TNA! TNA! TNA!