No.821
First of all you will notice that every promotion began the year relatively strong. We can chock that up to the Japanese custom of giving younger relatives and close relations a gift of money on the first of the year. Tokyo has a number or students, many of whom usually do not have the extra money to splurge on luxuries outside of holidays such as this. Factor in the reduced class schedule and you have a lot of young people with free time and money burning a hole in their pocket. You will notice this trend almost every year if you look at attendance records.
Onto the individule shows. Starting off with DDT's Jan 3rd New Year's Special which has had the largest crowd of the year. This is almost entirely due to the fact the first paragraph happened to coincide with the fact the show was 3000 Yen for every seat on a first come first serve basis. A 30% discount off of the basic seat prices combined with a chance for those who arrived early to get the best seat in the house led to many people who likely never attended a DDT show at Korakuen at checking it out. As you can see by their next show, their second lowest drawing so far this year, most did not care for it.
NOAH and TJPW held consequtive shows on Jan 4th. that did almost the exact same numbers with TJPW drawing slightly (683 versus 680 people) more than the NOAH show. The NOAH show was the lead in and was and featured many tag matches and no title matches. It was primarily an opportunity to showcase as much of the roster as possible. The TJPW show was relatively brief and feature a title match that ended the Sakazaki administration and ushered in the KWABITO administration. Both shows were the highest drawing shows of their respective promotion so far this year, although NOAH does come extremely close in a show we will get to later.
The drop of almost 200 audience members for the next NOAH show can be speculated to be related to the end of the artificial New Year's bump combined with the fact that their next show on Jan 10th was a card almost entirely filled with tag matches. The sole singles match was the Jrs. title match. Despite that the show was rated very highly and will set a trend you will notice with NOAH since its ressurection. They tend to follow a pattern where people avoid the show due to bad experiences in the past, only to find out that the show with low attendance turned out to be quite exciting. Then when they go to the next show it turns out to be a disappointment which drives the audience away from the next show.
The drop in attendence for TJPW and its stabilzation is not reflective of the New Year's gift money discussed in the first paragraph. TJPW had been consistently running shows in the mid to high 600 range towards the end of 2020. The drop you see and stabilization to almost exactly 510 audience members is owing to the fact that Rika Tatsumi is not a draw and only the dedicated fans remained after she had driven away the audience that Yukkers had managed to build from her excursion in AEW and appearence in the Japanese bracket of the AEW Women's world title tournament. Despite what last night's showing at Saitama Super Arena may have led you to believe Sakazaki is a rather talented worker but for some reason, more than likely owing to the fact Miyu is the only roster member with seniority over her and Yuka's own massive ego, Miyu and Yuka simply can not have a good match together. It is a shitshow every single time.
Finally this brings us to NJPW's first show of the year and, yet again, its largest. To be honest there is really only one reason for the drop for you will see over the next series of Road To show. Gedo decided to run Wato as the main event with a series of partners including the Ace, the then current HebbyQ Ibushi, and rising star SHO against the, at the time, Jr Champ and NEVER Champ Hiromu and Shingo to see if anything would click and they could ge the kid over. People were willing to give him a chance on the first night of the Road To New Beginings show, but it just didn't work out. The worst two nights of Wato's push were the nights that Hiromu did not compete and Shingo did.
No.822
Following Wato's push you will notice, immediately after he excited the main event scene, that the audience gradually began to rebuild through a series of tag focused shows that were mediocre at best if I recall until we hit a drop of 110 audience members that I can only conclude is the result of the audience becoming extremely tired of the same matches. So what could have occured between Feb 2nd and Feb 14th to draw 101 new fans? Well that something happened to be a press conference Ibushi held on Feb 12th following his double title defense at New Beginings in Hiroshima. This press conference was where Ibushi announced his intent to unify the titles. The next show immediately following that press conference was the start of a new Road series and people though that perhaps things would finally start to become interesting under Ibushi's championship. Then they saw that it was more of the same booking and the next show was the lowest drawing even of the year thus far.
Following the end of the Road to Castle Attack series we entered the New Japan Cup, one of the lowest drawing in recent memory baring the previous year's corona restrictions. I personally thought this was a rather exciting one and the audience tended to agree as the attendance slowly recovered, once again, until we peak at a respectable 648 attendance just prior to the finals at Shizuoka. So what happened between Shizuoka and the second night of the Road to Sakura Genesis show which was help in Korakuen? Ibushi clarifying that the lineages would be united leading to a 240 person drop off in attendance. What happened AT the second night of Sakura Genesis that caused a further 140 people to not attend? Ibushi revealing the new belt. A five minute speech from Ibushi and a piece of tin was enough to cause a drop off in attendance of over 400 people, nearly 62% gone in the blink of an eye. People who swore they would never return to NJPW.
No.824
Well okay, if Billy Big Belts was what drew the audience back, then what occured on Apr 18th and Apr 19th to cause them to once again lose faith in the company? What could NJPW done to make the fans feel betrayed after they had finally started to return?
Well that would be when they began announcing the newest rounds of cancelations. Following the cancelations prior to Sakura Genesis the audience was still commited to their previously purchased tickets. After Sakura genesis NJPW canceled the majority of the Road To Dontaku shows. Without the road shows to build up to the Dontaku event and with an uncertain future on the horizon the weary and cynical local audience just gave up preordering tickets over not knowing if they would even be able to see the shows. Follow this up with CHADspreay announcing his injury, half the roster sick or injured, and the eventual vacation of the title and it is no wonder that NJPW is on this death spiral.
No.829
The state of emergency in Tokyo also must be tough on fans, some probably hesitant to attend shows. That being said, NOAH and DDT are doing well. NJPW are paying the price for their retarded move of introducing that new belt, threw out all the goodwill they built up the past decade.
No.830
>Those numbers
bingo hall tier
No.831
>>830The numbers are even more telling when you look at events outside of Korakuen. Outside of the spikes which are directly correlated to PPV blowoffs of their road series, the average NJPW road show draws comperable to what TJPW does in Itabashi Green Hall. Itabashi Green Hall is a civil service building housing the Itabashi Ward Welfare Office and their max capacity is 300 seats.
In the biggest non-arena venue in Japan NJPW is averaging what TJPW averages drawing in a literal welfare office.
>But that is a dishonest comparison, you can't just compare this without factoring in the PPV that have the highest draws of the year for NJPWOkay then lets just add in Cyber Fight Festival from two days ago which drew 4800 people and that narative is completely wrecked by drawing nearly seven times as much as NJPW's highest drawing show of the year baring Dominion which has not had the numbers come in yet.
I haven't even finished digging into the DDT and NOAH numbers yet as I am still building my spread sheets and graphing them, but Mutoh's run has been extremely damaging to Bushiroad's profit margin. The only hope for them that I see is that Stardom appears to be drawing more consistently and with a higher average than NJPW.
