- Joined
- Sep 18, 2007
- Posts
- 14,002
They announced this as a sellout:
![HIAC-Arena-Shot.jpg](http://www.ringsidenews.com/wp-content/uploads/HIAC-Arena-Shot.jpg)
![HIAC-Arena-Shot-2.jpg](http://www.ringsidenews.com/wp-content/uploads/HIAC-Arena-Shot-2.jpg)
Oh my fucking god.
They're fucked.
Was working with Enzo that bad
The owners are trying now to make a television deal away from El Rey. Essentially they are shopping the show around hoping that another station will pick it up and pay enough to produce the show at nearly the previous levels. The people who put the money in for the last two seasons are not putting anymore in because the show drove almost no revenue. As noted, El Rey will pay something for programming, but not nearly enough to produce the show at close to the level it as been done at. El Rey and Robert Rodriguez would maintain having an ownership stake if it moves to a new station. The obvious issue is what television station would want a show with a budget of $400,000 per episode that draws 100,000 to 175,000 viewers weekly over two airings, and more importantly, where viewership generally has been down this season and not up, and overall buzz is way down. According to one person close to most of the parties involved, there is a major divide among the management team. On one side, they want to shut the project down, arguing that the costs are too high and after three seasons they’ve never made any money. The feeling on that side is that you know where you stand, the audience isn’t growing, and anything more would be throwing good money after bad. Two key executives are of that belief. On the other side is Eric Van Wagenen, Dorian Roldan and Vampiro, who all believe in the project and feel it just needs time and better exposure to watch on. Alex Garcia and Antonio Cue-Navarro, who put up the money for the last two seasons, have refused to put more money into the project. Right now it appears that unless they can find new funding, or get a new TV station to pay the costs, the choice is to stay on El Rey for a heavily stripped down version or to close it down.
Meltzer on the future of Lucha Underground:
Turns out when you run a wrestling promotion that doesn't charge for tickets, tour, sell DVDs, run PPVs/iPPVs, or sell much merch it ends up being hard to make any money.
I hope they can figure out a way to get another season. A severely reduced budget is better than nothing at all.
Right now they do less than NJPW on AXS despite El Rey being bigger than AXS TV.
They took away Rhino's Gore because it makes Reigns' shitty spear look even more shitty.
Rhino is finishing matches with a spinebuster now.