10 Major Flaws With WWE's Current Pay-Per-View Model
3. Lame Go-Home Shows
Pay-per-view go-home shows used to be among the most enjoyable weekly TV episodes on WWE’s calendar. When buyrates were still relevant, the company would go all-out to sell the PPV with two/three hours of exciting, all-action television. They didn’t always succeed, but when they did, the shows were often exciting enough to convince fans to buy the PPV on their own.
The advent of the WWE Network has changed this. There’s no longer an incentive to build towards conclusive PPV outcomes, as the company don’t need to worry about buyrates anymore. They already have your Network subscription fee, and can therefore do as they please on the go-home show.
This has resulted in little differentiation between the last pre-PPV stop and any other episode of Raw and SmackDown. WWE know they can get away with mailing it in, so why would they do anything else? This isn’t a huge loss, but it has resulted in the dilution of WWE’s PPV cycle as a whole. Go-home shows are now entirely meaningless, and this isn’t something that’s going to change any time in the near future.