10 Secrets To Vince McMahon's Success
It's all about the mon-ayyy.
WWE's Q3 financial results make for sobering reading.
Revenue hit a major high for what, traditionally, is a barren spell. While live attendances dropped, higher ticket prices and an inflated circuit compensated. Network subscriptions, albeit slowly, continue to justify the abandonment of the fading pay-per-view model. The mutual money generated by TV licensing, the company's most lucrative revenue stream, arms WWE with a strong negotiating hand.
It seems impossible to reconcile. While the buzz ahead of Sunday's Survivor Series is swarming (helped in no small part by a rare, hasty acknowledgement of failure), 2017 has not been WWE's best year, creatively. Far from it: Jinder Mahal reigned not supreme, but as a transparent rupee scheme, as WWE Heavyweight Champion. Bray Wyatt also won the WWE Heavyweight crown while still leading the charge for the 2017 Gooker Prize. Bayley was ruined. Shinsuke Nakamura was ruined. Bobby Roode was ruined. Brock Lesnar F5'd a shark in the 2003 SummerSlam promo; in 2017, he jumped it. 2017 is a year defined by self-indulgence and self-sabotage.
And yet, the prospect of Survivor Series is so exciting that it almost single-handedly reinforces Vince McMahon's genius - a genius shaped by factors beyond himself...
10. Old Money & Ruthless Aggression
The New York territory provided Vince McMahon with the perfect platform on which to launch his early 1980s nationalisation strategy.
The Madison Square Garden epicentre always represented a major payday for the travelling independent contractors of old, and acted as the primary lure for those turned by McMahon's monopoly attempt. With the moneyed northeast territory bequeathed to him by his father, Vince McMahon held the richest hand. In the plainest terms possible, McMahon simply threw that old money at the biggest draws of a splintered, superstar-powered landscape, which soon coalesced, ironically, under McMahon's divisive vision of "sports entertainment".
The National Wrestling Alliance model was oddly socialistic, given the country over which it ruled. McMahon's victory was secured through the very essence of capitalism. He likely wasn't the only man to recognise how antiquated the old model was - but, spurred by the game-changing advent of the cable television revolution, he was the only man with the transgressive balls to destroy its sacred, crumbling ground.