TNA Lockdown on PPV

TNA caught a lot of shit in the day for various things, and as I go back and do a rewatch of some truly awful shir, it is justifiable for there to be some fan hostility. From the booking to Planet Jarrett to Dixie and the rest of the brain trust, it was low-hanging fruit to get a meal. 

One of the things they got shit for early was doing a show of all cage matches and the concept of TNA Lockdown as a whole. Dusty was the booker when they did the first one, and I’m not surprised since this man would be four gimmick matches deep on big house shows as a booker. But the idea might not be nearly as bad as people thought. Here are the PPV buys by year courtesy of the WON and Cageside Seats:

Analysis 

-As you can see, Lockdown was one of their biggest PPVs every year, climaxing with Angle and Joe in 2008, which ended up being around third in company history. 

-Three Lockdown events are among the top ten PPV buys in company history. 

-The drop from 2009 to 2010 is absolutely fucking ridiculous. If you take the average of both ranges, it’s a 69.3% drop year over year. Lethal Lockdown with Team Hogan vs. Team Flair was the main event. Hogan and Flair already worked against each other in a tag match a month before this on fucking Impact, which ended up being the lowest number the event ever did. This was during the disastrous Monday Night Wars period, where they were getting some of their worst viewership numbers ever, but still—my goodness. 

-When Hogan comes in and they remake the promotion and add a ton of talent, their PPV business dies for good. They went from an average of 25,708 buys in 2009 to 13,375 in 2010, a 44.1% drop. That’s wild with their talent and some of their name values. People don’t talk enough about what a massive underachievement this entire year was with who they had. Unfucking real. 

-Sting is a Lockdown All-Star. His second match back at Lockdown 2006 and against Foley are two of the top ten highest PPV buys in history.

-I liked the Bully Ray run a lot, but you can see it did no business. 15,000 buys was good for third that year. 

-Of the ten Lockdown events, four were the most purchased events of the year, and two were the second highest. 

-Nick Aldis defending the TNA title against Samoa Joe was the second-lowest ever. 

-They really never recovered from the Hogan era. There were five events before him and five after. The five before him averaged 38,500 PPV buys while the five after averaged 15,400. That’s a 60% decrease. There’s probably an article to be written on the business of that whole Hogan run.