10 Lessons WWE Can Learn From The Biggest SummerSlam Buy-Rates Ever

But it’s not just the cheesy matches that have regularly featured in the more successful SummerSlam PPVs—paying customers also seem to be rather keen on the blood-and-guts violence of some of the more extreme matches that the WWE has in its arsenal.

Of the four most widely-purchased SummerSlam shows in history, two of them featured multiple extreme match stipulations—a Falls Count Anywhere, Lion’s Den, and Ladder match in 1998, and then a new-and-improved Lion’s Den Weapons match, a Hardcore bout, and a Greenwich Street Fight the following year. And furthermore, they were technically the most hardcore shows in the PPV’s long history, as no other edition featured quite as many extreme-themed matches. So it seems to be that hardcore equals buy more.

At the other end of the spectrum, the poor-performing shows had very few extreme matches. Across the seven least-purchased shows in the show's history, we saw just three extreme matches in total.

And so it seems that one of the key ingredients in a good SummerSlam is a decent dose of danger—the perfect tonic for that element of silliness we touched upon in the previous slide.