10 Major Flaws With WWE's Current Pay-Per-View Model

10. Oversaturation

A huge problem during the original brand split, pay-per-view burnout is back with a vengeance in 2017. At its peak, audiences were presented with 16 PPV events a year, and while WWE scaled back to 12-13 when the split was canned, the issue resurfaced in 2016, when the company held 15 major events.

With several empty holes on the calendar, WWE look set to top this in 2017. This weekend’s Battleground event will be their fifth pay-per-view in nine weeks, and they’ll likely hit 16 or 17 total shows by the year’s end. With an average time between PPVs of less than three weeks, the events have been completely devalued. Angles aren’t given enough time to build, and post-PPV Raws and SmackDowns are rife with repetition from the previous arc, or demonstrable panic as creative struggle with where to head next.

WWE are fitting too much into too small a timescale. PPVs now feel routine, and their mystique expired a long time ago. Fans will still tune in out of habit, but the company’s focus on ‘super serving’ their audience has led to a situation where there’s little to separate their biggest shows from the average episode of Raw or SmackDown anymore.