Being able to live through the internet's influence on business has been a practice of joy and pure hatred. To be fair, the internet is one of the causes of the most successful period in North American professional wrestling. Over the past 15 (or so) years, both the WWE and TNA head offices, as well as on air and off air talent, have made extremely harsh statements about "internet fans" and the IWC (Internet Wrestling Community for those who don't speak wrestling nerd). Most of the recent comments have originated from Michael Cole and are made on the company's most popular show. This is baffling to me, as it goes against every established business practice to insult a customer repeatedly in such a brash and annoying way.
Here is a little bit of math to break it down (All WWE demographic statistics were found at http://adsales.wwe.com/research/)
272.1 million homes in the United States have internet access (this represents 78.3% of the total American population) (Source: http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats2.htm#americas)
13.2 million unique visitors (on average) to wwe.com in the past 12 months (Source: http://corporate.wwe.com/company/overview.jsp)
6.3 million of those unique visitors to wwe.com are from within the United States
8.9 million video streams are viewed each month by American visitors
In addition to this, some enlightening figures regarding the audience usage of the internet are provided. 63% played games online, 52% listened to music online and 51% stream video over the internet. This means that at the very minimum, at least 50% have broadband internet access, which means access to the Wrestling Observer, PWTorch, Dave Lagana's IWantWrestling podcast, etc. Considering the prevalence of internet access in America, it is astonishing and dare I say, stupid, for this company to openly insult what they deem as "internet fans".
What furthers this problem is that they never clarify what they mean by "internet fans". This leads to the impression that any viewers at home with internet access could technically be perceived as "internet fans" even though they may not actively utilize wrestling message boards, Facebook pages, Twitter and such. Therefore, they are insulting what could be as much as 78% of the audience in a direct manner. If this isn't seen as a problem within the company from those within, then they are clearly out of touch with the perception of their audience and the perception of professional wrestling in general.
WWE's fan relations as well as the perception of the company by said fans, stands out as one of the reasons for the slow and steady decline in the product's popularity. This is unprecedented, by any other sport OR entertainment organization, this sort of ineptitude is squarely one possessed by WWE and TNA.
An excellent comparison can be made with the music industry, regarding the industry's reaction to the internet and it's effect on business. In the end it survived, but how many labels died or merged? How much have record sales dipped?
In order for the professional wrestling business to thrive or at the very least hold steady, it needs to realize that usage of the internet is ubiquitous and it is an obvious marketing tool that is barely being utilized. In my eyes, the professional wrestling industry's slide is directly related to the hostile relationship with the audience, which in turn has severely reduced the number of stars that are viewed as legitimate stars.
