- Image via Wikipedia
As we get to the end of the month, I’m reminded of the monthly traffic reports we’d get from the syndicated services such as Comscore. While we had our 24/7 monitoring and knew what traffic was doing, the syndicated services were important data since clients, agencies, and other used them for cross-site comparisons between the various sports leagues and teams. One thing that always bugged me was the inclusion in the rankings of a number of sites that weren’t content sites (Cabelas – sorry – commerce and shopping, not news content) as well as content sites that weren’t sports, and the inclusion of the WWE in our category was the biggest distortion of all.
Sports is how we organize our need for competition and the WWE is spot on there. We watch sports for the entertainment value and to get a vicarious thrill of being on the side of the “winners”. Again, pro wrestling works here.
But when you get to its core, WWE is the NYC ballet – choreographed athletics with a pre-determined outcome. In my book, it’s not sports. While there’s tension, its the tension of drama, not the tension of sports. Now, I get one doesn’t root for a dancer the way one does for a wrestler. But (spoiler alert) there can’t be anyone who thinks wrestling is “real”. The athletes are characters, very physically fit actors playing roles. The plot is written, not organic. That’s not sports – it’s theater. Rank these guys against Playbill or other entertainment sites, not the major sports leagues (or even minor ones!).
OK, this isn’t the most serious business issue confronting us all today, but it’s one of those tiny things – one little distortion in those monthly rankings – that sticks with you. I feel ever so much better!
What are your thoughts? WWE – sports or not?
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](https://i0.wp.com/img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png)
Consult Keith 
The “E” in WWE stands for “entertainment”, so yes, I agree it should be ranked with other entertainment sites. But pro wrestling requires more athletic abilities than sports categories like golf and curling, so if they are gonna clean up the categories, PGA.com should get moved to the gaming section with gamespot.com and such.
I guess Comscore doesn’t really have a clear definition for each category, and is just going by appearance/tradition instead of in-depth analyses you did. There are plenty of other examples of hybrid sites that are difficult to categorize using traditional ideas, and as time passes and needs evolve, category lines will be blurred further.
As an avid MMA fan, nothing makes me cringe more than people trying to defend the purity of professional wrestling. I respect the entertainment value and consider the characters to be “athletes” of the highest caliber (considering most formerly competed in real sports in the collegiate or professional level,) but to defend fake punches, particle board breaking, and an organization where the CEO often participates in the matches is ludicrous.