WWE published new data this week, indicating that SummerSlam 2014 did between 140,000 and 150,000 preliminary pay per view buys. This would equate to 60,000 domestic buys and 80,000 international buys. This can be viewed as somewhat of a success for the WWE. SummerSlam was up from Battleground, which drew 99,000 buys, 31,000 of which were domestic and 68,000 of which were international. So as you can see, Brock Lesnar being on the card ended up doubling WWE's domestic performance. Business was also up from Money In The Bank, which only did 122,000 buys. However, in some ways, these decent pay per view numbers are a bad sign. Why weren't these 60,000 domestic buyers watching SummerSlam on WWE Network? It goes to show that WWE still isn't convincing everyone to sign up to their service. In the long run, WWE Network will kill off pay per view, which will hopefully mean more subscribers for the 'over the top' streaming. However, if the 60,000 buyers were watching on PPV because they don't have internet access, that means WWE will lose a hefty amount of paying viewers when PPV eventually stops becoming an option. A year ago, SummerSlam 2013 did around 298,000 buys. 186,000 were domestic and 112,000 international. The decrease isn't really a sign of WWE declining, because the presumption is that those viewers migrated to the WWE Network. It was revealed in WWE's second quarter financial report that they have 700,000 Network subscribers. So in likelihood, SummerSlam 2014 was actually more watched than 2013's event was. This year's event was headlined by John Cena defending his WWE Title against Brock Lesnar. That's what spiked the PPV buys to almost double Battleground. The undercard was also solidly developed, including the Stephanie McMahon vs Brie Bella storyline which dominated TV time in the run up to the pay per view.
