NXT TakeOver: Portland Review

Hello everyone. Here are my thoughts on tonight’s NXT TakeOver Portland that took place:

NXT TakeOver Portland Review

⁃ Poppy the band performs briefly to open the show. Good stuff

⁃ Keith Lee def. Dominic Djakovic to retain the NXT North American Championship:

Fun match to start the show. Generally, I’m not too fond of two big guys wrestling, but they made it work. What’s funny is how Keith Lee has the palm of the crowd in his hands. Never underestimate how charismatic he is.

⁃ Dakota Kai def. Tegan Nox in a Street Fight:

Solid match between the two ladies. Lots of emotional moments between the two. At the end, Dakota Kai wins after interference from Raquel Gonzalez putting Tegan Nox through a table. Wished the match was longer

⁃ Finn Balor def. Johnny Gargano:

The first half of the match was a little slow and felt a little lackluster. I can’t fault them since they had to follow two really good matches. Luckily, it got better and finished strong.

⁃ Rhea Ripley def. Bianca Belair to retain the NXT Women’s Championship:

Decent match. Felt a bit lackluster compared to previous matches, but not a bad match. After the match, 2020 Women’s Royal Rumble winner Charlotte made an appearance and announced she will face Rhea Ripley for the NXT Women’s Title at WrestleMania

⁃ The BROserweights (Pete Dunne and Matt Riddle) def. Undisputed Era (Bobby Fish and Kyle O’Reilly) to become the NEW NXT Tag Team Champions:

Fun match overall. Lot of close moments where it looked like a title change didn’t happen, but it happened.

⁃ Adam Cole def. Tommaso Ciampa to retain the NXT Championship:

Tremendous main event. Both guys brought their A game for this match and it looked like a title change was gonna happen, but it didn’t come into fruition. After several interferences from Undisputed Era, the key factor was Johnny Gargano turning on Ciampa. At the end, Cole retained

Overall, it was a fun NXT TakeOver show.

Grade: A-/B+

WWE should consider making the Network an add-on for existing streaming services.

As you all have heard over WWE’s Q1 Conference Call, Vince McMahon and WWE are considering options to have WWE Pay-Per-Views on external streaming services. Here is his quote, as transcribed by The Wrap https://www.thewrap.com/wwe-in-talks-to-sell-ppv-rights-to-another-major-streaming-service/:

“Well, we have a lot of options. We could continue on as we are now, with a … free tier and a more enhanced paid tier. Right now there’s no more better time to exercise the selling of our rights to all the majors who, quite frankly, all the majors are really clamoring for our content. So that could be a significant increase, obviously, in terms of revenue.”

What that means is that WWE PPV’s would be taken off the Network and streamed on another streaming service, where it’s likely you’d have to pay somewhere around $50 per PPV in order to watch. Similar to how consumers would pay to watch UFC PPV’s on UFC Fight Pass or ESPN+. To me, that is a bad idea for two reasons.

The Market Has Changed

Gone are the days when fans would purchase PPV’s on their local cable/satellite provider, watch the PPV at a bar or meet up with friends. When WWE Network launched in 2014, their goal was to have every PPV on the Network for a flat rate of $9.99/mo. It ended up becoming a success and revolutionized cord cutting and streaming as we know it. Nowadays if WWE fans want to watch a PPV, they can download the WWE Network on their smartphone, tablet, or streaming device.

Fans will cancel the WWE Network

I know #CancelWWENetwork has trended on social media on and off whenever WWE makes a bone-headed decision on certain things, but that’s mostly been a vocal minority. Should WWE take off their PPV’s, fans will cancel the Network for real and will likely never return. It’s true that WWE Network has classic WWE, WCW, ECW, WCCW PPV’s, original programming, and many more. However, their bread and butter has always been the live PPV’s since fans first priority to subscribe to the Network is that (which also includes your’s truly).

However, there is another way to increase revenue for WWE, while still keeping the Network as is. And that is to have the Network as an “add-on” for existing streaming services like Hulu, FuboTV, YouTube, Peacock, etc. However, I will leave out AT&T TV Now and HBO MAX as they’re carrying AEW, WWE’s competition. I subscribe to Hulu w/ Live TV and they have add-on’s for HBO, Showtime, Cinemax, and STARZ.

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What WWE can do is make deals with Hulu, FuboTV, etc to have WWE Network as an add-on for their existing services with the same price plan of $9.99/mo. That will have a live feed of WWE Network as well as on-demand shows integrated into the streaming service. In addition, they can still use the WWE Network logging into with their streaming service credentials and accessing the app with full features. And for those that still want the Network as a stand-alone, that can remain the same.

Hopefully, WWE reconsiders the idea of selling off PPV’s and instead making deals to have the Network as an “add-on” to increase revenue.

What are your thoughts on this?

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