10 Major Flaws With WWE's Current Pay-Per-View Model
5. Giving Big Matches Away On Free TV
Pay-per-views used to be the only place you could see wrestling’s biggest matches. Promotions wouldn’t burn huge, first-time bouts on weekly television, because they recognised that nothing sells a PPV quite like a well built ‘dream match.’ If you wanted to see the best in-ring action the sport has to offer, you had to fork out for the big show. End of story.
This has changed in recent years, and WWE have developed the destructive habit of giving these matches away on Raw and SmackDown. AJ Styles vs. Randy Orton is a huge bout capable of headlining almost any pay-per-view, yet WWE booked it for a random episode of SD in March. The same goes for Shinsuke Nakamura vs. Kevin Owens, albeit on a smaller scale, and the problem persists.
Why would anyone pay a Network subscription when they can see these bouts on television, without paying a dime? It’s another example of the poor job WWE have done of giving fans a reason to subscribe to their streaming service and check their major events out. These bouts could’ve been PPV classics, but there’s a chance most viewers have already forgotten about them, which is a big shame.