Pro-Wrestling Nothing Phony About It Page

Last updated 17 November 2004

Nothing Phony About It

WWF has turned a carny sideshow into an international enterprise -- and now wants to change the way TV does sports with its new Xtreme Football League. When it comes to business and the WWF, there's ...

NOTHING PHONY ABOUT IT

So the British dude was dissing the United States, right there in the ring at the National Car Rental Center, strutting around in his little red briefs and talking about ''disgusting dysfunctional families'' and trashing Thanksgiving just two days before the great holiday, and this was too much for the crowd to take, and they began booing and shouting obscenities, and then suddenly on the massive entrance ramp, there appeared . . .

The Rock! Not only the greatest professional wrestler the world has ever seen, but also, as the crowd well knew, in real life a man called Dwayne Johnson, who comes from nearby Davie. As he lifted the microphone to his lips, the crowd of 10,000 burst out with one voice: Rock-y!

For this, they paid $21 to $41 a seat.

What a business. The World Wrestling Federation has managed to turn what was once a sleazy carny show into an international entertainment complex.

Revenue runs more than $400 million a year. It's listed on the New York Stock Exchange. More than 15 million viewers in the United States watch its five hours of weekly TV programming -- and the shows are now syndicated from England to Bulgaria, from Kuwait to Japan.

Meanwhile, 2.5 million people annually go to its 200-plus live events -- better attendance than many Major League baseball teams.

Despite image problems with steroids and questions of taste that have caused some advertisers to shrink away, WWF has recently brought in NBC and Viacom as major investors and partners, and it's about to launch the Xtreme Football League, which it boasts will change the way television portrays sports.

This business empire rests on what Chief Executive Linda McMahon calls a ''a soap opera action adventure'' that has become a marketing vehicle for video tapes, apparel, books, music CDs and a $25 million entertainment complex on Times Square.

The soap opera's chief villains are frequently Linda's husband, Vince, 55, the company's chairman, and their children, Shane, 30, and Stephanie, 24.

Is there any other billion-dollar corporation in America where the chairman doubles as a TV villain?

Peter Swann, an analyst with Pacific Growth Securities, laughs at the thought. ''He's been likened to P.T. Barnum,'' the supreme circus showman. ''There are some similarities.''

The WWF does well, says Swann, because ''it does a good job of delivering its young demographics.'' Meaning males ages 12 to 34. One of the WWF's prime advertisers is Sony Playstation.

THE MCMAHONS: Vince is chairman of the World Wrestling Federation and his wife, Linda, is CEO. Son Shane and daughter Stephanie also have key roles in the business, and all but Linda regularly take part in the shows, playing the soap opera's chief villains.

What's more, though fans see five hours free each week, about 500,000 spend $29.95 once a month to watch a pay-per-view special drama that the regular shows have been building up to.

Who would pay such a price? ''They're guys who are hooked on a soap opera for guys,'' says Dave Meltzer of Wrestling Observers Newsletter.

LIVE IN SUNRISE

On Tuesday night at the National Car Rental Center, the WWF taped material for the upcoming Smackdown!, which ran Thursday on the UPN network, and for Sunday Night Heat, which runs tonight on MTV.

One performer was the weaselly, whining, greasy-haired Eddie Guerrero. Paying homage to South Florida's demographics, he boasted about his Latino roots and his God-given abilities to please women.

He was resoundingly booed.

Few Hispanics were in the arena. A recent demographic study of the arena's fans by Sports Management Research Institute showed that only 17 percent of WWF ticket buyers come from south of the arena, located in west-central Broward. That contrasts with the circus, which draws 43 percent of its audience from south of the arena.

Three of four of the arena's WWF fans are male, according to the survey, compared with one in five for Anastasia, a Disney on Ice show. Two in five are between 12 and 29. Though 55 percent came from households with income under $50,000, one in five were from families earning more than $100,000.

A cheap night, it wasn't. For a father and son sitting in a limited-view section of the upper bowl, tickets cost $42, parking $10 with another $20 for hot dogs, Cokes and peanuts. An Undertaker T-shirt was $25.

Yet pay people did. In row 10, section 431, sat three vacationing cousins from Scotland -- Kerry and Lynne Bolton and Diane McSalley -- who wanted to see live what they had been watching on TV at home.

Nearby sat Kirk Bennett of Hollywood, who brought his 13-year-old son, Wayne.

Wayne knew all the characters -- the Hardy Boys, the Undertaker, Chyna. His dad wasn't that up on the names. He hadn't followed wrestling since his own youth, when he saw performances at the Davie Rodeo Arena.

Since then, the WWF has graduated to major arenas. In some places, such as Boston, all tickets are gone within five minutes of going on sale, but that's not the case in Broward, where about half the upper bowl was empty Tuesday night.

''South Florida for whatever reason doesn't sell as well as other parts of the country,'' Meltzer says.

RAISED IN A TRAILER?

A corporate spokesman said Linda McMahon, the chief executive, would be available for an interview about WWF's business operations, but her husband, Vince, was too busy.

In fact, a search for WWF stories shows that when it comes to the financial side, Linda does most of the talking, perhaps because the McMahons fear that analysts might get confused about Vince's veracity, wondering whether they were listening to a bellicose television persona or the corporate patriarch.

Vince, Shane and Stephanie travel with the show, which is on the road half the week, with a dozen semitrailers carrying the complex set and lights between arenas.

Linda usually stays at headquarters, in Stamford, Conn., where she oversees the daily operations of 200 employees. Another 200 work in the Times Square complex, which offers a souvenir store, restaurant and studio.

She earned $1.6 million last year in salary and bonus. Vince earned $2.2 million, and owns 56 million shares of stock, now trading around $14.

Vince's grandfather and father were wrestling promoters in eras when the shows moved between carnivals, high school gyms and small arenas.

Born in 1945, Vince was raised by his mother and ''a series of stepfathers,'' according to his official biography, and he lived for much of his childhood in an eight-foot-wide trailer. When he was 12, he met his father, Vincent J., ''and idolized him immediately,'' according to his bio.

After marrying his high school sweetheart and graduating from East Carolina University, Vince begged his father to give him a chance in the business. In 1972, after successfully promoting an event at Bangor, Maine, he joined his dad's company full-time.

BOUGHT OUT FATHER

For the next decade, Vince focused on the television end, serving frequently as the on-air commentator while expanding syndication from nine stations to 30. In 1982, he and Linda bought out Vincent.

While previous generations had promoted wrestling as a sport and endured the snickers, Vince ''understood that the product was really about the entertainment side,'' Linda says.

Pyrotechnics, fabulous sound systems, grand sets and complicated scripts created by a writing team became the McMahons' strategy.

When cable came along, WWF got in on the ground floor with a weekly show on the USA Network.

The company had always had many minor and regional competitors, but its cable success caused Turner Broadcasting to launch a major rival, World Championship Wrestling, for its TBS cable channel in 1988.

WCW's big move came in 1995, when it started Nitro, going head-to-head against WWF's Raw is War on Monday nights.

''We had tremendous success from '95 to '98,'' boasts Alan Sharp of WCW, which is now part of Time Warner. One of the reasons was that WCW's boss, Eric Bischoff, was a character in the skits.

The warring shows grabbed each other's writers and performers, moves hindered somewhat because the firms generally own their stars' identities. When Hulk Hogan went to WCW, he became Hollywood Hogan. When the Giant went to WWF, he became The Big Show. (Steve Austin, once a WCW star, was allowed to keep his name when he went to WWF -- because his name really is Steve Austin.)

WWF's resurgence coincided with Vince's appearance as a character in his own drama. Arrogant, combative, he became the owner that fans loved to hate.

''It was an evolutionary process,'' Linda says. ''One time, Stone Cold Steve Austin couldn't make an event, and Vince had to explain why, and the audience suspected Mr. McMahon's intentions.

''Then our son Shane was woven into the story line. He wanted to be a superstar on his own, and I was sprinkled in as the voice of reason. Then Stephanie came along. At first, she was 'daddy's little girl,' and now that's changed until she's become one of the nastiest women on television.''

Such public images of her kids don't bother Linda. ''I get a kick out of it.''

Stephanie is director of the creative writing team that scripts the events, and she worked on the episodes in which she became the stage wife of Vince's bitter enemy, the vile Triple H.

On Tuesday, the Broward audience watched a tape of a previous episode, in which a teary-eyed Stephanie, professing a new innocence, confessed she and Triple H were trying to have a baby. ''Triple H finally realizes what's important,'' she sniffed.

Stone Cold Steve Austin, an enemy of Triple H, shot back: ''Get your a-- out of this ring.'' The crowd cheered and hooted while she fled crying to her stretch limo.

WCW STUMBLES

As fans have become enthralled with such story lines, the rival WCW has languished. ''The WCW has had a very bad product the past couple of years,'' says Meltzer, who writes the fan newsletter. ''WWF has newer, fresher stars, better in-ring action, better stories, better production.''

WCW's ratings on TBS and TNT have plummetted. While WWF averages $32 for a ticket to a live event, WCW gets about $14. ''Right now WCW is creating some new young talent,'' says Alan Sharp, WCW's director of communications. ''You could characterize it as a rebuilding phase.''

Some analysts question whether WWF can continue to grow, and a few fan websites are complaining that the all-important plot lines seem to be getting a bit repetitive. Swann, of Pacific Growth, believes WWF's best chances lie with new ventures, like XFL, or expanding WWF's TV market overseas, ''where there's a lot of opportunity'' without much cost, since the expensive productions have already been done.

STOCK TAKES A BEATING

Investors, too, seem to be concerned about the company's long-term growth. Though revenue was up 27 percent and net income up 38 percent for the most recent quarter from a year earlier, WWF's stock price has been hammered in this year's bear market, and Linda had to announce this fall that a softness in sales of action figures (which include one of Stephanie) would reduce upcoming earnings estimates.

Weathering problems, however, is nothing new for the McMahons.

In 1993, Vince was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of conspiring to give anabolic steroids to his wrestlers. Two years later, he was acquitted.

Still, the suspicions that his performers' bodies are artificially enhanced has continued, and WWF avoids Oregon because the state insists professional wrestlers take CAT scans and drug tests.

In April, a New York state senator, Thomas Libous, proposed that professional wrestlers should pass drug tests before being allowed to perform in the state.

McMahon cried foul, pointing out that there was no requirement for drug testing of Broadway actors.

Meanwhile, the WWF has had to take a $7 million write-off against earnings to settle a lawsuit filed by the family of wrestler Owen Hart, who fell 70 feet to his death in May 1999 when a rigging apparatus failed during a pay-per-view performance.

The company has been aggressive in the courts, suing a Broward lawyer, Jim Lewis, for alleging that a 12-year-old had killed a playmate because of an addiction to wrestling shows. The company also sued the Parents Televisions Center for ''flat-out lies'' it made trying to get advertisers to withdraw support.

In fact, both Coca-Cola and Burger King pulled out of Smackdown! because of violence and obscenity.

Though WWF likes to keep an edgy tone that young males consider interesting, the company has backed off a bit. ''They've toned down a lot,'' Meltzer says. ''In 1999, they were really raunchy and they had a lot of problems with advertisers. They've been making major changes, which are still continuing.''

Performers no longer grab their private parts on camera, and ''questionable characters'' named after parts of the anatomy have been dropped, as has a porn-star character.

During a conference call with analysts last Tuesday, Linda said the advertising problems with Smackdown! were over, and WWF had sold out the show through December.

Still, WWF walks the edge. During Tuesday night's performance in Broward, The Rock warned his British opponent that he, The Rock, planned to get a turkey drumstick and lubricate it with Worcestershire sauce. As the music swelled over the end of the Rock's threat, the crowd could still hear the words stick and it.

UP NEXT: THE XFL

On a corporate level, the McMahons are looking to the future. Last month, they said they had been having discussions with Time Warner about purchasing the WCW. Several fan websites pointed out that the deal could get complicated because both Viacom (which now shows WWF on MTV and TNN) and NBC own $30 million each in WWF stock, and that might make for regulatory problems if WWF controlled shows on competitors' networks.

Right now, Vince has his hands full with the Xtreme Football League, set to debut in February with eight teams, including the New York/New Jersey Hitmen and the Orlando Rage.

The move is a joint effort with NBC, which will broadcast the games on Saturday nights, with cable channels showing games at other times. Gov. Jesse Ventura will do color commentary.

The WWF is livening up the rules, permitting head slaps while prohibiting fair catches and touchbacks.

Vince told ESPN magazine that he will encourage cheerleaders to date XFL players, and if a player fumbled the ball, a sidelines reporter could rush up to his love interest and ask what they might have done the night before to cause the player to lose focus.

Still, Linda emphasizes that the XFL will be ''a full 100 percent sport that Las Vegas will certainly make book on,'' meaning that, unlike wrestling shows, the football games won't be following a script.

This article was originally found at http://www.miamiherald.com/content/today/business/docs/100180.htm