New Japan Pro Wrestling Draws: June 2008 - July 2013; additional 1999-2013 data.

"How much has NJPW turned around?  Has anyone looked at attendance and laid out the trends?" - Dylan Waco

I tried a quicker approach this morning utilizing the WON results June 2008 - July 2013 which I've already compiled.  They included 517 NJPW shows (which had attendance numbers for the majority - 493 shows) which provides a very nice sample. However, I this dataset may be missing many of the biggest shows (i.e. iPPVs that might have been reviewed separately by Dave) so I may need to amend those results into the dataset.

Let me outright state that my NJPW knowledge is not strong.  I listen to WO radio, sometimes I'll read the reviews or follow buzz online, but I don't know the players or situations that well.  Names are easy to screw up (I remember having to google to check that Hiroshi Tanahashi and Hiromu Takahashi are two separate people.) Thus, trying to offer conclusions on a product that I'm not familiar has potential for some really basic mistakes.

I started with isolating the top 16 "important" NJPW wrestlers for the shows that I had in the database.  (Since I'm using Data Analysis package in normal Excel you're limited to 16 variables unless you utilize an add-in. While this is more evidence that it's time I just learn R, I stubbornly continue to ply my trade in my own personal Pro Wrestling Visicalc World.) I ranked "importance" by giving points depending on their place on the card - if you were in the last match you got a full point and if you were in the opener, you didn't get a point.  That was balanced against total number of shows to eliminate wrestlers like Akebono who did only 5 shows in the database, but was at the top of the card for those shows.

The people that came up were: Hirooki Goto, Ryusuke Taguchi, Togi Makabe, Shinsuke Nakamura, Toru Yano, Tomohiro Ishii, Yuji Nagata, Hiroshi Tanahashi, Takashi Iizuka, Wataru Inoue, Gedo, Karl Anderson, Yujiro Takahashi, Prince Devitt, Tomoaki Honma, Tetsuya Naito.This did exclude a few people who technically were on many, many shows but their position on the card wasn't sufficiently high enough - including Tiger Mask, Jado, Taichi and Manabu Nakanishi.
Additionally, there are some people that didn't make the cut which I've noticed have moved up the card substantially in the last few years such as King Fale, Kazuchika Okada, Tama Tonga.  It might be more appropriate to substitute one (or more) of these wrestlers in for guys who aren't moving up the card like Wataru Inoue, Ryusuke Taguchi or Takashi Iizuka.

The quick & dirty attendance regression against which guys were on the card would suggest:

Statistically Relevant (p-value is 0.02 or lower)

• Shinsuke Nakamura (886)
• Togi Makabe (793)
• Yuji Nagata (774)
• Hirooki Goto (669)
• Hiroshi Tanahashi (501)
• Tetsuya Naito (361)* (p-value = 0.05)
• Tomohiro Ishii (-1003)

Statistically Questionable (p-value is above 0.15)

• Toru Yano (287)
• Prince Devitt (169)
• Tomoaki Honma (-42)
• Karl Anderson (-50)
• Ryusuke Taguchi (-154)
• Wataru Inoue (-245)
• Gedo (-272)
• Yujiro Takahashi (-286)
• Takashi Iizuka (-407)

This is implying that if I card with all of these people on it, we'd draw a little under 2,000 people.  This doesn't take into account the era of the wrestler - for instance, I know Prince Devitt had a heel turn recently so it would be conceivable to separate his tenure (much like separating Okada into his Rainmaker and pre-TNA personas).  It would be possible to treat these wrestlers as different people if I knew who and where to draw the lines.

Here is a look at the NJPW Talent average
place on the card (100%=last match) over the timeframe.

June 2008-July 2013

Attendance of NJPW Shows (from WON Results Section)

NJPW Attendance (All Shows in Dataset)

2008 (Jun-Dec): 2,367 (51 shows)

2009 (Jan-Dec): 2,036 (100 shows)

2010 (Jan-Dec): 1,875 (104 shows)

2011 (Jan-Dec): 1,660 (105 shows)

2012 (Jan-Dec): 1,545 (92 shows)

2013 (Jan-July): 1,501 (40 shows)

However, before I project a "sky-is-falling" trend let me again reiterate: (a) This may be missing some of the big shows NJPW did (b) This includes only results from the WON Section (which includes some of those tiny shows they did with less than 300 people and a crew of young fellas).  

If we look just at the blue dots (which were all of the shows under 2,500 people), the annual averages aren't changing that much:

NJPW (Small Shows under 2,500 people)

2008: 1,345 (39 shows)

2009: 1,284 (82 shows)

2010: 1,282 (88 shows)

2011: 1,272 (95 shows)

2012: 1,322 (86 shows)

2013: 1,398 (39 shows)

My initial takeaway is that from a drawing standpoint in the last five years, Tanahashi is among the top guys in NJPW, but it's not the top nor is he clearly a sole difference maker. (He's not a Hulk Hogan.) However, I would need more context before I could say whether I thought the claim was ludicrous or could be substantiated.

EDIT: I'm getting feedback about the big shows that I'm missing from this experiment (i.e. Wrestle Kingdom shows), so I might have to dig around to add those to the dataset. I've since identified about 130 NJPW events that weren't in my dataset for this timeframe (see https://sites.google.com/site/chrisharringt..._draw_2008_2013 for a list which shows were and were not included). Don't know when/if I will get combing through the results to augment the dataset with these. I might make an effort to add all of the PPVs (39 were missing) and TV shows (34 were missing) for starters.

EDIT2: I started taking all of the 1999-2013 results from http://www.puroresufan.com/njpw/

NJPW Average Attendance
1999: 5,183 attendance (139 shows out of 141)
2000: 5,161 attendance (129 shows out of 131)
2001: 5,212 attendance (120 shows out of 122)
2002: 4,246 attendance (127 shows out of 129)
2003: 4,168 attendance (125 shows out of 127)
2004: 3,631 attendance (137 shows out of 140)
2005: 3,348 attendance (122 shows out of 124)
2006: 2,566 attendance (114 shows out of 117)
2007: 2,681 attendance (105 shows out of 109)
2008: 2,425 attendance (106 shows out of 108)
2009: 2,628 attendance (111 shows out of 114)
2010: 2,334 attendance (125 shows out of 132)
2011: 2,368 attendance (127 shows out of 136)
2012: 2,480 attendance (117 shows out of 122)
2013: 2,721 attendance (79 shows out of 85)

I hear ya.

Here's my last shot:

I split the shows up into four buckets: 0-1300 (quartile 1), 1300-1861 (quartile 2), 1861-3000 (quartile 3), 3000+ (quartile 4)




What I'm seeing is that they're running more small shows, and so it's pulling the average down. 

RAW NUMBERS:

1999
Q1: 775 (3)
Q2: 1669 (24)
Q3: 2329 (42)
Q4: 8289 (70)

(Read as three small shows with average of 775 attendance avg, twenty-four medium shows with 1,669 attendance avg, forty-two large shows with 2,329 attendance average, seventy giant shows with 8,289 attendance average).

2000
Q1: 812 (4)
Q2: 1663 (19)
Q3: 2334 (47)
Q4: 8834 (59)


2001
Q1: 717 (3)
Q2: 1708 (17)
Q3: 2283 (40)
Q4: 8383 (60)

2002
Q1: 965 (7)
Q2: 1595 (41)
Q3: 2329 (31)
Q4: 8227 (48)

2003
Q1: 965 (10)
Q2: 1554 (46)
Q3: 2265 (33)
Q4: 10144 (36)

2004
Q1: 990 (15)
Q2: 1534 (55)
Q3: 2293 (34)
Q4: 9706 (33)

2005
Q1: 928 (28)
Q2: 1457 (41)
Q3: 2150 (20)
Q4: 8476 (33)

2006
Q1: 959 (36)
Q2: 1494 (46)
Q3: 2286 (11)
Q4: 7812 (21)

2007
Q1: 967 (36)
Q2: 1494 (27)
Q3: 2228 (21)
Q4: 7598 (21)

2008
Q1: 884 (44)
Q2: 1526 (25)
Q3: 2112 (19)
Q4: 7772 (18)

2009
Q1: 972 (48)
Q2: 1475 (25)
Q3: 2153 (18)
Q4: 8470 (20)

2010
Q1: 889 (59)
Q2: 1530 (24)
Q3: 2149 (24)
Q4: 8390 (18)

2011
Q1: 857 (60)
Q2: 1599 (27)
Q3: 2096 (22)
Q4: 8889 (18)

2012
Q1: 818 (46)
Q2: 1499 (27)
Q3: 2123 (27)
Q4: 9103 (17)

2013
Q1: 1006 (21)
Q2: 1554 (27)
Q3: 2100 (17)
Q4: 8300 (14)

Total Average of attendance
Q1: 911 (420)
Q2: 1546 (471)
Q3: 2237 (406)
Q4: 8600 (486)