10 Criminally Low WWE PPV Buyrates

3. Payback 2014 - (67,000 Buys)

Following the trend of the previous entry, Payback had a fantastic main event, one which had The Shield going up against Evolution (Triple H, Randy Orton and Batista) in a No Holds Barred Six-Man Elimination Tag-Team bout. The action flowed thick and heavy, and the live crowd inside the Allstate Arena in Rosemont, Illinois were enraptured by what they were seeing, but fans just didn't bite on Pay-Per-View once more. All of the 2014 events listed here, such as the previously-mentioned Hell In A Cell and Survivor Series, can point to the WWE Network as their saving grace, but that argument is nullified time and time again by the fact there are millions upon millions of people who could still check out the show. This creates somewhat of a problem for WWE - the company are setting records they don't want, low numbers which look pretty bad when viewed as isolated cases. The WWE Network helps, but doesn't take away the negativity which gathers pace when fans read that the latest Pay-Per-View didn't do great business. There's still the thought process that more PPV buys means WWE are doing things right, so the promotion really should be doing a bit more to try and keep people who don't have the Network buying into what they're selling. Even the Network service can't be used as full explanation for why Payback dropped to 67,000 buys in 2014, after pulling in 186,000 the previous year.