WWE Is Making Its Pay-Per-View Shows Shorter
WWE is known for their monthly pay-per-view specials, one of the most iconic being Wrestlemania, which is basically the Superbowl of wrestling entertainment. However, wrestling fans seem to have one universal problem with all WWE pay-per-view events, and that’s how long they all are. Even looking back a decade ago, wrestling events that you had to pay for to watch would exceed three hours almost every time, a dramatic difference compared to their weekly shows, RAW and Smackdown, which run at a fixed time of two hours each.
Now, it’s gotten even more out of control, with close to all of the biggest pay-per-view events, such as Wrestlemania, exceeding five hours! Just this past year Wrestlemania 35 ran for five hours and 24 minutes. In 2018 and 2017 the event ran for five hours and ten minutes, and that’s not even including the pay-per-view pre-shows which typically add another two hours to the beginning of every program.
The individuals working on the corporate end of World Wrestling Entertainment understand how excessive these events can be, and are finally making more of an effort to shorten down their pay-per-view shows. Just recently the event TLC (tables, ladders, and chairs) was televised, and fans noticed that certain matches that they expected to be on the televised line-up were either moved to the pre-show, or not shown on TV at all.
TLC this year was only three hours and 12 minutes, a typical time for a standard WWE pay-per-view, compared to 2018 when the same event ran for four hours. Beyond just TLC, the WWE has been working especially hard in 2019 to shorten their pay-per-view shows in comparison to the lengths they were in 2018. They basically treated 2019 as an experimentation year to test if they’d be able to get the same level of action, entertainment, and engagement from the fans if they were to cut down on how long each event was, however, that doesn’t mean they were making every show dramatically shorter.
“In comparison to the 2018 Survivor Series event, the 2019 Survivor Series show was roughly 10 minutes shorter, October’s Crown Jewel 2019 was slightly shorter (about 10 minutes) than the 2018 version while Hell in a Cell 2019 was roughly 24 minutes shorter than Hell in a Cell 2018. In addition, SummerSlam 2018 lasted nearly four hours and two minutes, significantly longer than the 2019 pay-per-view, which spanned just three hours and 30 minutes,” (Forbes).
According to WWE’s Key Performance Indicators, ratings for RAW went down 6% in 2019, and Smackdown saw a 4% decrease. What it all truly boils down to is the fatigue that WWE fans experience when trying to keep up with everything. Smackdown is now moved back to Friday night, however, previously it aired on Tuesdays, meaning every time there was a pay-per-view event, fans would be watching three straight nights of prolonged wrestling and story lines (WWE pay-per-views are always on Sundays and RAW is on Monday nights).
Keeping up with wrestling can be a 10 hour a week commitment if you’re a dedicated fan watching all the programs (RAW, Smackdown, NXT) as they air, but even the committed fans were growing tired of having to stay up-to-date with every story and wrestler, hence the staggering decrease in ratings.
On WWE’s corporate end, shortening the pay-per-view shows is a matter of quality and quantity. Longer shows, when planned right, allows the fans to witness all the major blockbuster matches of a given show while still seeing a slew of their favorite wrestlers. Shorter shows mean that, production wise, they can either have longer matches with highly credible performers, or shorter matches to make room for the most amount of competition. However, with three regularly scheduled events every week already, it seems like shorter events is the most feasible solution.
Eric Mastrota is a Contributing Editor at The National Digest based in New York. A graduate of SUNY New Paltz, he reports on world news, culture, and lifestyle. You can reach him at eric.mastrota@thenationaldigest.com.