15 Things WWE Wants You To Forget About Vince McMahon

12. The Failure Of WWF New York/The World

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOw10N8oQjI WWF New York (or "The World" as it was also known as) was a WWE themed restaurant built in the heart of New York City, Times Square. It opened in 1999, was renamed to The World in 2002 (when the company went from WWF to WWE) and was closed by 2003. If you watched WWE programming in those years you know they liked to show WWF New York. Most weeks on Raw, a wrestler or diva would be in the building hanging out with fans as the show was going on. Poor Big Show had to be there for WrestleMania X8 because he had no storylines at that time. They even used WWF New York to film Sunday Night Heat from late 2000 into early 2002. By that point Heat had become WWE's third biggest show since Raw was number one and Smackdown started in 1999. But the costs of running a restaurant in such a prime location are enormous and WWE/Vince, not used to the business, lost a whopping $36m on the project. It's fair to say that WWF New York or The World was a bad business move by WWE even when you consider how much they advertised it on their own programming. It just didn't work out for them.