What percentage of WWE fans does the IWC represent?

[Chewy]

We always revert back to the "We're the minority" excuse when our favourite guys and gals don't get the push, but is it really true that we are a minority?

In this day and age surely more fans have the internet than don't.

So how does this affect the smart to mark ratio.

If s=m[d]*iwc

[The Legend]

Yes most people have the internet, but how many people look up and get involved in the same community are completely different numbers. I'm sure it's about 15-20 percent.

[Daz]

Probably far greater than you'd think. Even if you have a passing interest in something, there's every chance you'd look it up online nowadays. Maybe follow a few of the wrestlers on twitter, you might stumble across the odd dirt sheet report. Obviously, there's varying degrees of that. Not every fan is watching AAA shows on youtube every week ... like me ... but I'd say the IWC represents a far greater percentage of the WWE audience than WWE would ever admit.

[Chewy]

Probably far greater than you'd think. Even if you have a passing interesting in something, there's every chance you'd look it up online nowadays. Maybe follow a few of the wrestlers on twitter, you might stumble across the out dirt sheet report. Obviously, there's varying degrees of it. Not every fan is watching AAA shows on youtube every week ... like me ... but I'd say the IWC represents a far greater percentage of the WWE audience than WWE would ever admit.

True, and I'd imagine that it'd be pretty hard to find a forum that remained completely within kayfabe.

Even the WWE official forums has discussion on the best workers etc.

[Chewy]

Probably far greater than you'd think. Even if you have a passing interesting in something, there's every chance you'd look it up online nowadays. Maybe follow a few of the wrestlers on twitter, you might stumble across the out dirt sheet report. Obviously, there's varying degrees of it. Not every fan is watching AAA shows on youtube every week ... like me ... but I'd say the IWC represents a far greater percentage of the WWE audience than WWE would ever admit.

True, and I'd imagine that it'd be pretty hard to find a forum that remained completely within kayfabe.

Even the WWE official forums has discussion on the best workers etc.

[ShaneOfan]

Well we have to look at a few things...

1-Facebook. The most "liked" athlete on facebook is none other then John Cena with more than 18.6 MILLION likes. He also has almost 5.9 MILLION Twitter followers. I'll surrender half of that .6 on facebook as companies hoping t get noticed, fake accounts, other people in the business, athletes, etc. Even if he has only 18.3 million fans that is more then most countries have people. As a matter of fact if all of his fans lived in John Cena he would be the worlds 58th most populated country. That said we know damn well there are plenty of fans who dislike Cena and would never follow him. There are also plenty of fans who like Cena but would not bother to follow him online. So we can't get a good number but between those two factors I would say it is probably safe to ad at least a conservative 5 million to our total, and I think that is being very conservative.

2-Now the hard part is we have to define the "Internet Wrestling Community" if we go just by who has liked a facebook page on the internet we have at least 18.3, if we conservatively adjust we have minimum of 23.3 million that shows that there is at least somewhat of a large Internet base with wrestling. But are all of those fans part of the IWC? Or do they need to actively facebook, tweet, tout about wrestling? Do they need to be on message boards? Because the biggest one by numbers is likely reddit's r/squaredcricle which boasts 36,158 members. Are THEY the IWC? I mean a lot of them have to be fans from decades ago who no longer watch wrestling period. There are a decent amount of snobs on there who like to tell everyone they hat WWE and how much better TNA, ROH, CZW, etc is, are. So if we are trying to say percentage of WWE fans the IWC represents we cant count any of those people. Still even IF all 36,158 are active WWE watchers and posters, that is nowhere near all of the fans of WWE.

3-The really hard part is figuring out how many fans DOES WWE have? According to their sources (http://corporate.wwe.com/company/overview.jsp) "WWE programming reaches nearly 15 million viewers in the U.S. each week." now where they pull that number from is beyond me. Are we talking house holds or actual viewers? If it's viewers how do they know how many people in a household watch? Are they assuming a nuclear family all sits down and watches? Or is it households? Also of that 15 million, are they separate viewers or does WWE count them twice if they watched both Raw and Smackdown?

Thing is we really can't get an accurate number for anything here. It's going to come down to bias. You either think that we as the IWC (I think it's safe to say that what ever the IWC IS we are a small part of it here) are a lot bigger then we actually are/were/ever will be. Or you think we are smaller then we actually are.

[Str8Shooter]

The number of fans who are "smart" is definitely higher than it's ever been. In years past there was some, but with the rise of social media I think even a lot of the younger fans have an idea of "face", "heel", etc. Not to mention WWE doesn't try and protect kayfabe the way they have in the past. Even the wrestlers in promotional interviews are a lot more willing to discuss things outside of kayfabe.

I'd go as high as 50% at this point. Just listening to a lot of the chants at the shows you can tell there's a pretty big chunk of them out there.

[Everlong]

Just listening to a lot of the chants at the shows you can tell there's a pretty big chunk of them out there.

Yeah this, and who the fans are choosing to boo and cheer for. The crowd reactions tell you a lot, and crowds have been getting generally smarkier every year for the last ten years or so. I'd say 50% is a reasonable estimate in terms of the kind of fans we're talking about, maybe a little more.

[JPG619]

I think enough of the fans theses days are online not sure of the percentage but I think high enough for people to talk about stuff plus the WWE promotes online activity on programing so people know there are stuff online

[DanielsonTHAGOAT]

Yeah the IWC gets smarker every year and its not just at shows in Toronto and Chicago. For God sakes, the crowd in Minnesota and Green Bay were smarks, smarks in MINNESOTA AND GREEN BAY. The smarks are growing and we'll see less Rybacks and more guys like DB and Cesaro in the main event scene.

[PorkChop]

I echo the shouts of 50% or so - infact, it could be as much as 10-15% higher in my opinion. It's 2014, plenty of people have the internet and can find non-kayfabe discussion of wrestling in one Google search.

[The Legend]

I echo the shouts of 50% or so - infact, it could be as much as 10-15% higher in my opinion. It's 2014, plenty of people have the internet and can find non-kayfabe discussion of wrestling in one Google search.

I guess the question to me is are we defining the IWC as people that look up wrestling online or people that actively participate in conversations and communities that promote the smark mindset. I believe those two different definitions give different answers. Just because you search something on Google doesn't mean you suddenly become a part of whatever you look up.

I'll use myself as an example, I've got 7 or 8 friends that are interested in wrestling, but I'm the only one of the group that has ever joined a message board like this or the previous club.