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A house show is a professional wrestling event produced by a major promotion that is not televised, though they can be recorded. Promotions use house shows mainly to cash in on the exposure that they and their wrestlers receive during televised events, as well as to test reactions to matches, wrestlers, and gimmicks that are being considered for the main televised programming and upcoming pay-per-views. As house shows are not televised, all matches are technically dark matches, though that term is usually reserved for non-televised matches at otherwise televised events.
House shows are also often scripted to make the face wrestlers win most matches, largely to send the crowd home happy. If a heel defends a title, the face may win by disqualification, preventing the title from changing hands.
Until the 1990s, most televised professional wrestling programs were taped weeks in advance in small studios and featured primarily matches with lesser-known wrestlers while interviews revolved around feuds between upper level talent that were to be settled at an upcoming major show at the promotion's flagship venues. Prior to the 1980s, these were house shows, though with the advent of closed-circuit television, and later pay-per-view, these became televised events as well. Later on in the 1990s, the advent of weekly shows such as WWF's Monday Night Raw and WCW Monday Nitro, where competitive matches between upper level talent and storylines play out as they happen in front of a live audience, and with the increase in number of pay-per-view events held by promotions, angles are now typically developed during weekly shows, and resolved during the next pay-per-view (or, on occasion, a special episode of the series), rendering house shows to be mostly minor events with no long-term story significance.