10 Fascinating WWE SummerSlam 1997 Facts
9. The Pay-Per-View Did Huge Merchandise Sales
By the summer of 1997, WWE was doing better business than they had done two years earlier, though that's not exactly saying much. The gap in the Monday Night Wars was a bit narrower than had once been the case, and fans were latching on to the coolness of Steve Austin, he of the understatedly-bad ass Austin 3:16 shirts. WWE had their perfect counter for the New World Order merchandise line.
SummerSlam 1997 brought a little more than 20,000 fans to the Meadowlands, and that mass of humanity spent a whopping $202,500 on merchandise once inside the venue. That's more than $10 a head, with the majority of those dollars probably going toward Austin-related wares.
The nWo made it cool to wear wrestling shirts in public, and WWE themselves were about to benefit from that change in perception.