10 Things Everybody Gets Wrong About WWE

2. WWE Is In Trouble

You'll read this, from time to time.

"WWE is in trouble if ratings continue to slide."

"WWE is in trouble if fewer and fewer people attend shows."

These are significant issues that must be addressed, at some point, but investors don't care about WWE using every last production trick to mask half-empty arenas. They don't care about narrative, nor fan uproar. They care only about money, and WWE, somehow, is generating more of it than ever. The discrepancy between revenue and popularity is wild, and untenable in the long-term - the TV industry feels like it is clinging on to one last bankable source of live viewership - but WWE is firmly safe in the medium-term. WWE is earning billions of USD and millions more from countless other currencies. It is a monolith immune to how terrible it is.

But how bad can it get, before that fading core audiences dwindles to a degree that might be considered drastic? At its dirt worst, WWE has in 2019 ruined its hottest act, become a WCW 2000-level nightmare of continuity, and seems both systemically incapable of building stars and systemically unable to not ruin stars imported from NXT.

And yet, enough people still watch - and every time a Yemeni schoolchild is scorched, Vince McMahon gets his wings.