Guest HTQ Posted December 1, 2006 Report Share Posted December 1, 2006 This Sunday's December to Dismember PPV has almost a record level of non-interest in it. There's little buzz surrounding it, and what buzz there is is solely down to the use of the Extreme Elimination Chamber gimmick. It would be easy to blame this on the way the ECW brand has been treated, and while that is true to an extent it's more true that overall domestic interest in WWE PPV's has fallen dramatically in the last year or so. Due to a combination of a product people aren't interested in paying to see and over saturation of the PPV market, WWE's number of domestic buys has reached record lows for the post-boom period. Their PPV numbers look good on paper but a lot of that is being carried by their international business, as up to a third of their PPV buys come from overseas. With UFC really hitting in big on PPV, UFC 63 (Hughes vs. Penn II) reportedly drew 700,000 buys and Liddell vs. Ortiz II set to shatter the current UFC record of 750,000 buys, all of which is domestic business, WWE is facing stiff competition in the PPV market and unless things start turning around soon, or even steadying, they might drop below that 100,000 domestic buys level for the first time in over ten years. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest HTQ Posted December 1, 2006 Report Share Posted December 1, 2006 Aside from the 'big four' of the Rumble, Mania, Summerslam and Survivor Series, which will never get that low, I think the next WWE PPV that may hit the sub-100,000 domestic buys level is No Way Out in February. It's only a month after both NYR and the Rumble, with the Rumble usually good for 300,000 to 400,000 domestic buys, and a month before Mania, which is good for a minimum of 500,000 domestic buys. It's a Smackdown PPV, and unless something really gets hot, I don't see anything on the horizon that can draw for them with the roster that brand has. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Loss Posted December 1, 2006 Report Share Posted December 1, 2006 Five years or more. WWE is down to their core audience now, and they get more than that. Nothing they do seems to make business go dramatically up or down, with Wrestlemania drawing big every year and everything else doing pretty much exactly the same business, regardless of who's on top and what the storylines are. Weird as it is to say, there's not really anything WWE could do to kill business or increase it right now. It's just going to take a star coming along and catching on big, and anything short of that isn't going to matter. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest HTQ Posted December 1, 2006 Report Share Posted December 1, 2006 If any WWE PPV ever dips below 100,000 domestic any time soon, it's going to be a Smackdown PPV. They added Cena to Armageddon because they know that without him, it would have been lucky to get 150,000 domestic, and that's being generous. I think Armageddon is going to show two things; how strong Cena is as a draw, and if he alone can make up for what is a terrible roster when it comes to drawing. Batista pops the crowd but I don't think that on his own he can draw when it comes to PPV, especially when he has nothing to draw with. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Loss Posted December 1, 2006 Report Share Posted December 1, 2006 Batista is really exposed now that he is away from HHH and Flair. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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