10 Lessons WWE Can Learn From Its Audience-Free Shows

WWE has started cancelling shows which were set to take place throughout April meaning that the likes of RAW, SmackDown, and NXT will continue taking place in the empty WWE Performance Center for the foreseeable future. That's no great surprise considering what's going on in the world right now, but it does leave the company in a rather unique position.

The audience is a big part of what makes watching these shows so much fun, and with ratings plummeting for even the RAW before WrestleMania (it averaged less than 2 million viewers), WWE is going to need to make some big changes if this is their new norm.

While WWE now attempts to tackle that unique issue, we've started thinking about what they can learn from these audience-free shows. By now, it should be clear to the sports entertainment giant what does and doesn't work, while fans are understandably making their voices heard when it comes to the things they want more of on these weekly shows.

Right now, it may be unclear how much longer WWE is able to continue holding shows (the situation is getting serious, and a wrestling match isn't a great example of social distancing), but when the world returns to normal, the company can make use of these lessons to deliver a better product!

WWE is reluctant to focus too much on in-ring action without a crowd (the six-man tag team match on Monday's RAW was twenty minutes of random shouting and grunting without fans drowning the wrestlers out), so we've seen a lot more promos. Not all of them have been great, but it's clear that at least some Superstars have been given a greater level of freedom with what they say.

Overly scripted promos have been an issue in WWE for a long time now, and while you can still pick out the lines which have been fed to talent, what we've heard from Seth Rollins, Edge, and The Undertaker in recent weeks has been a) fantastic, and b) not the typical scripted rubbish we're used to.

WWE needs to take note of how much better these sound, and how it's ultimately considerably more effective to use less heavily scripted promos instead of ones put together by Vince McMahon and a massive roster of writers backstage. No backstage interviewers reeling off a series of cringe-worthy lines they've been fed and a greater amount of freedom for Superstars needs to become the norm.