FMW Tape Library - Who owns it?

[ECWfan]

According to WWE themselves they own the footage for:

ECW
WCW
Jim Crockett Promotions
NWA footage (from the early 80's)
AWA
SMW

Check out WWE 24/7 for more information.

[sportsmrty]

All,

My brother and I are currently negotiating to purchase the FMW film library. We were great fans and jumped at the opportunity to acquire all archival footage.

We've been searching the net for a while looking for groups such as this to ask a question:

Is there a lot of interest out there for FMW DVD's? What we're hoping if we're successful in acquiring the library is to repackage the footage for DVD sale. We're even looking into the possibility of "per your request" DVD's. You would tell us what you want and we'd put together a DVD. Obviously, the price would be more substantial than run of the mill DVD's, but we think it would be a novel approach.

Any thoughts? Thanks

[Tradewynd]

Is there a market for FMW DVDs? Yes. There is a huge market for all puroresu DVDs, at extremely reasonable prices. Due to the fact that no one seems to be able to understand that in Japan (outside of DSE, who hasn't actually tried to make any money in the US DVD market), American bootleggers have made the most of the opportunity and started selling satellite to DVD recordings at rock bottom prices. Tokyopop has shown that people are not willing to pay $20-25 for FMW footage with crappy commentary and clipped matches. However, if Big Japan DVDs can sell at $4 each, there is no reason that FMW DVDs can't. And since there is no reason to pay more than $4 or $5 AT MOST for puro on DVD, if you charge more than that people will instead choose to buy more discs at a lower unit price from someone else.

You're also going to have to accept that there will be almost no way to protect your intellectual property without ****ing off the paying public. This is why Bill Brown isn't doing any more shoot interviews. DVD trading and bootlegging is extremely popular on the net, and many people buy DVDs only to resell them. If you try to take legal action against people who do this there will be a lot of bad blood between the paying public and you. If you don't want to take my word for it ask people who have been sued by WWE, ROH or RF think about them being sued for distributing footage that the company itself might not even be trying to sell, especially WWE. And ask the collectors who buy that hard to find footage what they think of the WWE suing them and the people selling them DVDs they want to buy, but WWE refuses to sell them. The effect will expand rapidly if you make people wait 6-8 weeks to get their DVDs on top of it. That's why bootlegging of TNA DVD's ran rampant, no one wanted to wait for TNA to get off their lazy arses to mail the DVDs out. If you make all of your discs 8 gigs or more you'll be a little safer, as compressing that much video onto a DVD-5 reduces quality enough that some people won't buy rip offs. Or they'll just have it split onto 2 discs. It is only a temporary anyway, as DVD+-R9s will come down in price to make the issue moot within 2 or 3 years.

Using some form of copy protection to try to stop people from trading and bootlegging copies can be easily overcome with daemon tools, and will REALLY make people angry, because it will become a pain in the buttocks to make a legit backup copy they have a right to own. Especially if you don't even go through the expense of making pressed DVDs.

Is there money to be made? Depends on what the library is going for, but there isn't much money in it at best. Promoting it, remastering the footage, etc. will quickly become a full time job. This is not a small project you're talking about. That's a LOT of footage.

Making custom DVDs is an interesting idea, but do you have any idea how long that will take? You will have to sift through more than 10 years of footage to find every match that will go on that DVD, plus take the time to rip each match and then make the DVD. You would probably have more success with making large compilation DVD sets, such as a History of Kudo Megumi or History of Tanaka Masato or History of Onita Atsushi, that lots of people will buy.

I've gotta know, how much is the FMW tape library going for? If your deal falls through please give me contact info. I have some money sitting around, and never in my wildest dreams would I expect the library to pay for itself.

[sportsmrty]

Tradewynd,

Thanks for your insights. We are in the video business now, so believe me, we've done our homework on costs. In fact, four years ago we made a run at the WCW library, but found out something not reported in the press. Though AOL and Turner management expressed disdain for WCW, in the end we were not considered because we were not a wrestling company (WWE) or a company that would continue with live wrestling (Fusient). So, for all their talk, they did want the name to continue in some form in the mainstream.

Your comments on the negatives with regard to repackaging the material for sale has me a bit concerned, especially if you speak for many others. We are not looking to make a profit as this is more a labor of love. That said, we wouldn't mind a few dollars thrown our way either.

Due to the nature of the confidentiality agreement, I can't give you many specifics about the deal. But I can tell you the initial asking price was upwards of seven figures.

[Tradewynd]

I was under the impression that WCW and its assests were sold to the WWE because of a personal friendship between executives in both companies, so WCW management went out of their way to make sure no other investor could buy the company or its assets. Jerry Jarrett offered $5 million for WCW up front, plus more money over time if the company did well financially, and would have let them keep some of the highest rated programs on cable TV on AOL owned networks. Obviously, that was a much better deal than what it was sold for.

I really hope you know what you're doing if you are seriously considering paying close to $1 million for the FMW tape library. Tokyopop did go out of their way to screw up their DVD releases, but even with nationwide retail distribution they could only move a few thousand DVDs of any specific show. ECW and Shawn Michaels were not enough to push sales of those DVDs into 5 figures. Considering that all of WCW's assests barely got $2 million, and the ECW's assets were considered to be worth about 1/10th of that, I can't see FMW's tape library being worth anywhere near five times as much as ECW's tape library, trademarks and promotion rights. FMW One Night Stand is not going to do 300,000-800,000 PPV buys, nor does it have anywhere near the mainstream wrestling appeal that ECW does. Since DVDs sell for a lot more in Japan than they do in the US you might be able to do some good business releasing DVDs in Japan, although I honestly have no idea if there is a demand for it or not. The problem with doing that though is no one else worldwide will be willing to pay commercial Japanese DVD prices, and if you release the discs cheaper in other countries people in Japan will buy the cheaper version online. Region coding is a joke, and stopped people from playing DVDs in non-native regions for less than a year. It can also be removed, along with Macrovision and other annoyances, on any PC with about 2 minutes of effort. Anyone who honestly thinks any of these things are effective is out of his mind.

At least in tape/DVD trading communities, the negatives I mentioned are in line with the views of the average collector, who I am assuming is your target market. I highly recommend that you talk to Bill Brown about the sales of his Kid Kash shoot interview, since you will be facing all of the problems he did. If your prices are low enough and you stress that you won't be able to afford to produce more if people bootleg it, and clearly have lower prices than other commercial DVD companies, you might be able to get people to listen. But even then, if you charge $15 and SuperShiller554 is offering it for $4 shipped, you are being undercut and a large amount of people will still go for the bootleg. You obviously don't want to create an antagonistic relationship with your buying public like the music industry has through lawsuits. If you do have a genuine love of the product, and can convey that without trying to make it look like you are just after someone's money, that will help you a lot. If you are a good talker I would recommend trying to get on any wrestling radio show that has internet coverage. Even if people do not listen to the interview, what you say will be covered on all of the major wrestling news websites. And if you do not believe that the internet reaches the average fan, watch Brock and Goldberg's Wrestlemania match. The hardcore wrestling fanbase loves the business and prefers to support people that they can tell love the business as much as they do. Assuming they can afford to.

ROH does not seem to understand why fans are no longer buying every DVD the company puts out. The simple reason is they cannot afford to. One $20-$25 DVD every month or two is something a wrestling fan may be able to afford, especially if he truly believes in the product and wants to see it grow. He is not only buying the footage, but is making an emotional investment in the growth of the company. One DVD per month may work for awhile, but certainly not two or more DVDs at that price every month, with no end in sight. That is why ROH DVDs have begun to see massive amounts of bootlegging. There is a demand for the product, but most people simply cannot afford to spend $50+ after shipping costs every month on wrestling DVDs. If they could I would not be a wrestler, I would be a promoter.

Don't get me wrong, I hope you buy it and make the entire library available at a reasonable price. There is a lot of stuff in there I haven't seen and could certainly learn from, and depending on price, I would even be willing to upgrade a lot of what I have already purchased on VHS. But with the almost nonexistant cost of DVD burners and blank discs, you are fighting an uphill battle.

[sportsmrty]

Tradewynd,

Once again, thanks for your insights. The term "mark" has become household with regard to the wrestling game and trust me, my brother and I are "marks" in the truest sense. We can't get enough of this stuff.

Over the past ten years, we've managed to acquire every issue of "Pro Wrestling Illustrated" as well as it's sister publications, every WWF Coliseum video as well as all the old wrestling tapes (Ringmasters, JCP Productions, etc.). We've even gotten ahold of every WWF LJN figure. I'd be lying if I said our wives didn't think we were crazy.

Should we be successful, I will post on the board to make anyone interested aware of our plans.

Thanks again.

[Tradewynd]

You have every issue of every Apter mag?!?! AND you play with dolls? Your wives are right, you are both crazy. You should see a therapist. Or better yet, a hypnotherapist. My card.

I am glad you found my ramblings to be useful. If I can be of any further assistance, you only need to ask.

[mrpayperview]

I think that the 'Best Of' compliation DVD's are your best bet, as well as selling the major shows of FMW. I'd certainly be willing to buy them, or even send some money to help get you guys over the line

[ECWfan]

I have heard that FMW will be on the new Fight network in Canada, not sure if this is true or not.

Good luck with acquiring the FMW tape library and make sure to release some DVD's in the UK. A best of Hayabusa DVD boxset would be excellent and also all the events released unedited. The shows FMW jointly promoted with ECW would be big sellers too.

[Lobo]

If you want people to buy the discs and not burn them from the internet, you have to make purchasing the legitimate dvd attractive to the consumer.

-Do not sell DVD-R's. I find nothing more offensive than a commercial DVD release being a DVD-R, it's insulting. You are asking the consumer to pay $20 or more for what in reality is a cheap burned disc. I can go burn my own copy off the net for 1/4 of the cost and get the same quality disc with no picture art or a cheap sticker for disc art.
That is what the Hardcore Homecoming disc is, it's DVD-R with a cheap artwork sticker on the non-playing side. That's the reason I didn't buy this disc, it's a chaep DVD-R.
You can throw the custom DVD idea out the window, because that would be a DVD-R.
Sell only factory manufactured discs.

-Add some extra stuff like a really good booklet, not those one page crap jobs that only list the matches.
Do a quality 5 or 6 page colour booklet that has stuff people would be willing to pay the extra cash for. Maybe add in a trading card of a wrestler, something original that you wouldn't get if you burned the disc off the net yourself.

-Have an offer where if the consumer buys a disc and mails in their proof of purchase they will get something free in return or a coupon for a future release, password to a website with access to lots of images from the matches, membership to a web site, $5 off a t-shirt, something along those lines.

In this day and age of being able to download anything you want, you have to make purchasing an original copy worthwhile to the consumer.

[El Pollo Guerrera]

Well, I wish you luck in getting the licence.

My opinion is, to make money in such an endeavour such as this, you will have to appeal to an audience wider than the Puroresu crowd (purotaku!). I worked at a video store for a long time, and convinced my boss to bring in the first two of the TokyoPop FMW shows. The King of the Death Match tape rented over a dozen times in the first month, which is really good for a show that is foreign, wrestling (which carries that stigma of "low brow") and a company that no casual fan ever heard of. The other tape, with a big picture of Hayabusa on the front, we couldn't give away! The people who rented the KOTDM weren't just wrestling fans who saw the picture of Foley on the cover, they were the "extreme" fans who rented horror movies, extreme sports tapes (MMA, skateboarding, etc.), Steve-O type shows and the like. They saw the barbed wire, the bleeding Kanemura and the word "Death" on the cover and picked it up. So, I'd say advertise the heck out of the death matches. Best Of's would be risky, because not many of the casual fan could name an FMW wrestler (besides, would you pick up a "Best of Leon Spinks" comp?).

Just my opinion...

[Shadow_WX316]

Go to www.highspots.com and they will have FMW tapes