New Japan owner Takaaki Kidani, announcing his goals of surpassing WWE and UFC as the No. 1 sports entertainment group in the world, copied WWE with the announcement on 12/1 of New Japan World, a streaming video service at
http://njpwworld.com that will air all of its major shows, even down to the monthly price of 999 yen.
The service launched immediately after the announcement of the press conference, and was accessible worldwide. The next day, Kidani, without giving any numbers, said they were blown away by the number of sign-ups outside of Japan.
Kidani stated the first year goal was 100,000 subscribers, figuring at the time that almost all subscriptions would come from Japan, and figured they could eventually do several hundred thousand subscribers with strong international growth, and in particular brought up eventually having English language announcers for major shows and English subtitles, similar to how the show on AXS television would be done. He’s hopeful that the service, which will include all major shows as well as the weekly one hour television show World Pro Wrestling (although it appears they will run one month behind) will help international expansion, which is the group’s current focus.
What’s notable at the press conference is that they didn’t push that for the first time ever, the company will have a regular television show in the U.S.
Kidani said that they right now are the No. 1 company in the world when it comes to the actual wrestling product, but they are behind WWE when it comes to business.
Like with WWE, they are undercutting their PPV price, and will be airing their version of WrestleMania, the Wrestle Kingdom 9 show on 1/4 at the Tokyo Dome, with a two-hour pre-game show and four hour main show, on New Japan World, both live and with archives put up immediately after the show.
The service is priced at essentially the same price as the WWE Network and UFC network are for monthly subscriptions. Unlike both, they are including all of their up-to-date content with the exception of the one hour television show, on the service. In that sense, it is like UFC’s Latin America channel. Also different from the WWE service, this is no 24 hour live programming, and also different from both, the library is only New Japan content as opposed to purchased rights for footage from other companies. Also, unlike UFC, there is no price break for ordering multiple months, at least at first. Because the yen has fallen against the American dollar of late, the price at press time was $8.42 U.S., $9.54 Canadian and 5.36 British pounds, per month.
This undercuts Jeff Jarrett’s English language produced PPVs on television throughout North America and on the Flipps App on the Internet worldwide outside of Japan, which was charging $34.95 for the show alone. Last year’s Tokyo Dome was 3500 yen on either PPV or iPPV in Japan, and $35 for iPPV in the U.S. through Ustream. Essentially, like WWE has done with its PPV business, New Japan is killing its two-year-old iPPV business.
In this U.S., the mentality has been that it’s easier to get people to order a PPV on television as opposed to through a streaming service, although WWE may have sped up the curve on changing that one. ROH was doing maybe 2,000 iPPV buys for big shows, and did six times that on traditional PPV with a weaker show, its first time out of the blocks. However, WWE moving from PPV to the network saw regular PPV drop down to 21,000 buys in North America for Hell in a Cell, and that includes Canada, where the WWE is theoretically not even available to be ordered in 80 percent of the homes, and it’s a scaled down version.
But ultimately, the regular television PPV for New Japan is likely to have a short run. For the 1/4 show, while the super hardcores in the U.S. and Canada will order the network, a large part of the television audience won’t likely even know there is a New Japan World service, and for most, the Japanese commentary is a deal breaker and Jim Ross is a positive. But in the long run, once New Japan World starts broadcasting in English, people will learn to stream it for the lower price, provided there are no technical issues like what badly damaged ROH for years. The idea of Jarrett being able to build a PPV franchise with New Japan, which was a longshot but not an impossibility, via the traditional PPV route, seems far more than a longshot today.
A big difference is that while WWE takes in the lion’s share of its $9.99 per month, so there was some argument for doing it the way they did, New Japan and TV-Asahi are equal partners in this venture, since TV-Asahi owns the broadcast rights to the library. So they go from getting 50% of the Niconico higher priced sales from iPPVs to 50% of a much lower price point. Plus, for this year, the plans of doing doubles, which is two straight nights of PPV quality shows, means fans get both shows for the low price instead of having to order two shows individually. A usual New Japan PPV would be 2000 yen, so if there’s a double, like in February, it goes from 4000 yen for someone wanting both shows, to 999 yen, and you throw in probably three or more house shows during that month as well. It’s a super deal for the hardcore fan. The difference is, because of the television situation, New Japan is carried by the hardcore fan base. WWE is not, and the idea of the network was that the increase in casual fan buys by giving them far more content at a lower price makes up for getting far less money from the most ardent fan who buys everything. For New Japan, it’s far more of a risk. In addition, WWE, being an American product, has been able to provably be successful exporting their product, while New Japan has never been able to do so.
For example, the service would also enable subscribers to stream the entire G-1 Climax series in August for 999 yen per month. In 2013, to stream G-1 it cost $150 and in 2014, it cost $110 if ordered in advance and $160 if ordered the days before the first show. They also talked about how next year they were looking at doing every show of the tag team tournament airing live.
Besides doing four live events in December and five in January, they also have archival footage of some of the most important historical matches in New Japan history, dating back to 1972.
The first major event that will air is the finals of the tag team tournament from Nagoya on 12/7. Perhaps because of existing deals, this show will not air live, but looks to air on an eight-hour tape delay, at 10 a.m. Eastern time and 7 a.m. Pacific time.
The other shows airing in December are a 12/15 hour show from Koga (5 a.m. Eastern time), and the 12/19 and 12/20 shows at Korakuen Hall (both starting at 4:30 a.m.). Lineups haven’t been announced, but by tradition, the year-end Korakuen Hall shows usually have great main events. Last year they put the Tokyo Dome two main event matches together in a tag match.
The January lineup will be open with a 1/3 festival at Differ Ariake which airs in the U.S. on Jan. 2 at 10 p.m. Eastern time. I’m not sure if that will be matches with undercard guys or a fan fest.
The Tokyo Dome live broadcast will have a two-hour live pre-show at Noon Eastern on 1/3.
The Tokyo Dome show itself is likely to start at 1:45 a.m. Eastern time with one match, probably a multiple person match just to get people spots on the card, before the introduction of the main card at 2 a.m.
They will also air the “Raw after WrestleMania” show on 1/5 at Korakuen Hall, which starts at 4:30 a.m. Eastern time on Monday, the two major Fantastica Mania shows on 1/18 and 1/19 from Korakuen Hall, also with a 4:30 a.m. start time, plus the opening of the next tour, which will be 1/30 in Tokorozawa at 5 a.m., which starts the build for the two major New Beginnings shows in February.
Going forward, all Korakuen Hall shows are expected to be streamed live.
In Japan, most of these shows either aired as PPVs and iPPVs or they were live on Samurai! TV. It’s not clear what that means for the relationship with Samurai! TV. What is known is that when local media tried to contact services that worked with New Japan, Samurai! TV, Gaora TV, G+ (all sports channels that rely on a lot of pro wrestling programming, all would be very minor channels by U.S. standards) and several local stations that air New Japan declined to comment.
The network also includes all the matches from the 67 commercially released Best of New Japan DVDs, featuring many of the biggest matches in company history, dating back to 1972. There are also documentaries that are to be added in time, including the 2014 G-1 Climax documentary on the tournament that aired in Japanese theaters. There is also every episode of the one hour World Pro Wrestling show from January 31, 2013 until the first week of November.
It also has every 1/4 show at the Tokyo Dome in its entirety from 1992 to 2014, as well as most of the other Tokyo Dome shows, as well as a complete collection of the major PPV shows starting with the 2011 Tokyo Dome show. Not all G-1 shows from the last four years are up, because some shows are owned by television stations other than TV-Asahi.
In comparison to WWE and UFC, there are positives and negatives. The positive is on day one, this service worked far better than WWE, which was filled with technical issues at launch. The navigation is far superior to the other two, with searches on the front page with the names of every wrestler with a match, and you can search based on wrestler name, based on year, based on arena, based on television announcer and based on championship belt of tournament.
For those who don’t know Japanese, it’s best used in Google chrome with translations, even though some of the names are screwy. Without the translations, it would be almost impossible to navigate for someone who doesn’t read Japanese. However, it is inevitable an English version of the New Japan World web site is forthcoming and probably very soon. Riki Choshu is Choshu Force, Dynamite Kid is Thomas Billington (his real name), Jushin Liger is Beast God Thunder Liger, Vader is Big Bang Vader, Manabu Nakanishi is The Spiral Nakanishi, Shinsuke Nakamura is Eup True, Yuji Nagata is Hiroshi Nagata, Alex Shelley is Patrick Martin (his real name), Doc Gallows is Doc Gyarozu, Karl Anderson is Machine Gun Carl Anderson and Bad Luck Fale is Bad Rack Whare. But most everyone else is their usual ring name.
The negative is that WWE opened with 1,500 hours and now has more than 2,600 hours, and UFC has now increased its Fight Pass to 6,000 hours of footage. WWE has matches from numerous promotions, well in excess of 100,000 hours, but only a small percentage is up. UFC has virtually the complete libraries of UFC, Pride, Strikeforce, Elite XC, WEC, WFA, Invicta and other promotions, with almost all of what it has up. New Japan World only has New Japan, and has closer to around 350 hours of footage, nowhere close to its total library, but the quality, as far as main events and big names in the footage, is strong because everything before 2011 is either Tokyo Dome shows or either big name matches or significant historical matches.
The archives include most of the biggest matches in company history, but there are plenty missing. For example, the biggest match in New Japan history, Antonio Inoki vs. Muhammad Ali, isn’t there. However, Inoki’s mixed matches with Monster Man Eddie Everett, bodybuilder Mike Dayton, boxer Chuck Wepner and judo gold medalist Willem Ruska are there. At the press conference, they noted the Antonio Inoki & Seiji Sakaguchi vs. Lou Thesz & Karl Gotch match is up. Legendary matches like Andre the Giant vs. Stan Hansen, Inoki vs. Billy Robinson, Inoki vs. Hulk Hogan, Kensuke Sasaki vs. Toshiaki Kawada, Naoya Ogawa vs. Shinya Hashimoto and Keiji Muto vs. Nobuhiko Takada are all there.
The forwarding and reversing, at least on my computer, is the best of the three. WWE’s tool bar on the bottom is poor, and at times a disaster, although apparently an improvement is forthcoming. UFC’s works fine, but often there are issues in going away from full screen. The video and audio quality is excellent. From my experience thus far, the buffering has been non-existent, unlike WWE, which has constant issues and UFC, which has occasional ones, but that still has to be tested with a major live event.
The move is a big risk. Traditional televised PPV shows are not big in Japan for a number of reasons. Unlike in the U.S., where fans of wrestling were used to paying for tickets for major shows, and then the next generation was the big shows on PPV; while the boxing culture was closed-circuit tickets for the big fight and later PPV; the Japanese culture has always been about the biggest matches being available on free television.
While PPV did very well for Pride a decade ago, and the early New Japan PPV shows when it was first introduced also did well, it has lost popularity over time. Only a small percentage of the Japanese homes had the necessary equipment to even order PPVs. IPPV had pretty much rendered traditional PPV useless as last year’s Tokyo Dome show only did 7,000 buys in Japan.
However, for the new generation, the iPPV concept, which started in late 2012, was a big hit, peaking with more than 100,000 orders of the last two Tokyo Dome shows. Like with WrestleMania and WWE, the company is undercutting the price and thus, the Dome show almost surely will gross significantly less money this year. Kidani is a big admirer of Vince McMahon as a businessman, and the mentality here may have been as simple as, well, this is what WWE does and they are the world leader, not realizing what a disaster, at least short-term, the WWE Network has been. And perhaps he sees it that WWE will turn it into a success and long-term is the game. The problem from New Japan is they have huge long-term issues because of the age of the roster and having not developed marketable new top talent in years.
The company is planning on cracking down on its content being uploaded to the Daily Motion web site, which is where the majority of international New Japan fans follow the shows. At press time, a ton of New Japan content was still up.
The plan is also for the service to be available soon on Smart TV, PS 3, PS 4, Xbox One, and Apple TV.
