10 Reasons WWE's Brock Lesnar Experiment Has Failed

9. WWE Viewership

Although there are many factors that go into how WWE determines the overall size of their audience, television ratings are still a major factor. WWE's belief over the past few years has been that having added star power on the show will increase ratings. However, this experiment with Lesnar hasn't reaped the benefits that they may have believed. When Lesnar returned to WWE the night after WrestleMania 28, Raw was able to muster a pretty impressive 3.43 rating with an average of about five million viewers. Brock's return was unadvertised, but a lot of fans knew that he was getting set to return. Later that year, Brock headlined SummerSlam 2012 against Triple H in a match that was built for months. Even though the buy rate for the SummerSlam 2012 pay-per-view was solid at 350,000 buys worldwide, the ratings for the night after SummerSlam were just a 3.14, averaging 4.48 millions viewers. The ratings throughout this run haven't been significantly boosted by Brock's come and go mentality. Raw has pretty much stayed consistent, with or without Brock Lesnar on the show. His presence has not given the casual fan a reason to watch like WWE may have thought. Furthermore, WWE hasn't done a great job in building compelling television around Lesnar's rare appearances.