6 Damning Things Jinder Mahal's Title Reign Says About WWE
3. A Flawed International Strategy
Artistic complaints aside, WWE's key reason for installing Jinder Mahal as WWE Champion at least made sense on paper. They wanted to expand into India, so they made a man of Indian descent the focal point of their programming. Simple, right?
The problem is that there's no evidence to suggest that this has actually worked. As revealed in last week's Wrestling Observer Newsletter, the WWE Network subscriber count in India has actually decreased, not increased, since Jinder became champion. Mahal's segments may generate decent view counts on YouTube, but subscriptions are the most important metric here, and they point towards failure.
It's entirely possible that WWE chose the wrong market to expand into, as Impact Wrestling were forced to pay fans to turn up to their Indian TV tapings earlier in the year. We'll learn more when WWE tour the country in December, but for now, it looks like their international expansion strategy is failing.
This is supported by the collapse of WWE's UK project, for which the company have continually failed to deliver on their initial promise of a weekly Network show - though the length of Mahal's reign suggest they haven't lost faith yet.