CMLL delivered on their big news today on CMLL Informa, announcing both the Aniversario concept and a partial return to regular shows.
CMLL will return to running Friday night shows starting September 4th. The shows will air on Ticketmaster Live, a new-ish streaming service set up by the ticket broker site. There’s no price announced. Ticketmaster does not yet list the shows. Events on the service run from 150 to 400 pesos. It appears Ticketmaster allows international purchases, though every show may be different.
Previous attempts on CMLL iPPVs have been a struggle. Ticketmaster is doing this full time, has an existing relationship with CMLL, and this now has to be a top priority instead of just a side project. If CMLL iPPVs had to try iPPVs again – and they pretty much have to if they’re going to run shows – this is probably the best show they have at getting it to work. (If they are successful, it does open up the possibility of CMLL sticking with Friday night iPPVs even when shows go back to normal, but that’s an issue for another day.)
These are currently empty arena shows. CMLL is hoping they’ll be able to have some fans. They announced a plan to fill the building to 30% capacity (5000 people) if permitted by the local government. Mexico’s original plan was not to allow attendance at indoor events until they reached Green health conditions. That’s no close to happening – Mexico City would have to go to Yellow on Friday for it to arrive in time for Aniversario – but Mexico City has also moved to allow movie theatres to allow 30% capacity. I’m not confident in the science of that decision, but a 30% full wrestling building seems about as safe as a 30% movie theatre. CMLL may get those fans. Nothing is for sure until we get to those shows.
CMLL will run on September 4th, 11th, 18th, and 25th. The last date is the CMLL Aniversario show. There will be no mask or hair match, as expected by those paying attention to the economic situation. CMLL will instead have an all title match card, with challengers selected by the fans. CMLL fan polls have led to fan mischief in the past, though CMLL can also handle the situation by carefully choosing the challengers. CMLL will also have to decide which of their two dozen champions will defend.
CMLL’s commercial for these shows emphasizes they’ll be running some 1v1 single fall matches, which is unusual for only them. They’ll be running 2v2 and 3v3 too. We know nothing else about the matches. Or even the number of those matches. With over 100 wrestlers and only one show a week, there’s going to be a lot of competition for a few spots. It will also be a competition to get eyeballs on iPPV: will they go with a comfortable lineup like the show this past week, or will they feel a necessity to offer more significant matches to get fans to pay?
CMLL’s probably not going to change too much. I expect we won’t get a full card for a couple of weeks, though leaking out a match or two a week fits with the typical CMLL Informa style. Maybe watch those Informa lineups to see who’s wrestling first.
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Over the years, i’ve read that CMLL has attracted mostly tourists, so do they have enough of a local fan base to even draw 30%?
paying for cmll streams seems like a pretty tough sell until at least three happened successfully and were better than basically every cmll stream since Lucha Bros and Parks left
will these be live events?
They’ll no longer be able to treat these shows as an exhibition (for tourists) so hopefully some thought goes into the lineups. It’ll be interesting to see if the shows find their way onto their TV distribution.
For the short term, and for the Aniversario particularly, CMLL should have no problem putting 5000 people in the building if they want. Pent up demand, limited entertainment options, a far reduced scheduled make that not a problem at first. It may become more of a issue at first.
(5000 is also us assuming CMLL will open the whole building, including sections they don’t use 90% of the year. It may be a smaller number for most shows.)
CMLL did not specifically say live. I assume they’ll be live because “Ticketmaster Live” implies it and CMLL likes doing things live for the sake of it, but we can’t totally be sure.
I would think CMLL would have to try harder with more interesting lineups but that’s no lock. That Arena Neza show coming up on Friday with just regular tags matches shows some promoters are convinced fans will pay just for a normal show. I also think, as hard as it might for us to believe, CMLL believes what they were offering pre-pandemic (lots of tournaments, new titles being introduced) is already actually trying very hard. I’m not sure CMLL knows how to make an appealing iPPV lineup.