WWE Live Events Analysis - Why John Cena Still Draws Big
WWE SmackDown shows up in attendance with the return of Big John.
WWE ran a total of 50 shows in January 2017, 22 of them house shows in January (11 Raw brand, 11 SmackDown brand). Interestingly, the return of John Cena to the SmackDown touring roster seems to really be making a difference in live attendance.
SmackDown house shows averaged 3,700 per show which beats the Raw house shows average which was only 3,200 per show. AJ Styles main evented the SmackDown house shows winning three-ways over Baron Corbin and John Cena and losing IC Title challenges to Dean Ambrose. Roman Reigns and Kevin Owens were the lynchpins for the Raw house shows with Roman beating Kevin Owens in singles matches or Roman & Rollins beating Jericho & Owens in tag team encounters.
SmackDown’s average attendance number of 3,700 being higher than Raw’s house show attendance is even more impressive when you consider that the Smackdown’s average includes the live events held on Monday nights where they are competing with WWE’s flagship show airing on USA Network.
These Monday Night SmackDown house shows averaged a decent 3,200 per show. They were spread between a low of 2,000 in Lake Charles, Louisiana on January 9 to a high of 4,800 for Hidalgo, Texas on January 30. The Raw brand tours from Friday to Monday and Smackdown tours from Saturday to Tuesday.
At this time, it still makes economic sense to run a SmackDown house show on a Monday night.
Chris Harrington is a pro-wrestling business analyst who writes about pro-wrestling statistics at indeedwrestling.com and blogs about the financials of WWE at wrestlenomics. You can follow him on Twitter at @mookieghana