- WWE has announced that New Year's Revolution did 215,000-220,000 PPV buys this year, way down from 340,000 buys last week. The Royal Rumble did 500,000 buys this year, also down from 580,000 buys last year.

 

That's kind of suprising about the Rumble.

Is it really that surprising? PPV business has been down across the board for the last year or so. Neither of the title matches were as hot as the Cena vs Edge feud was this time last year. Nobody in the Rumble was as hot as Batista was two years ago.

Three reasons why the Rumble was down:

 

1) It was the second Cena-Umaga match, and yes, last year was the second Cena-Edge match, but Edge beating Cena for the belt was more an angle than a match and besides which, there's a lot more intrigue revolving around a babyface attempting to get his title back than a champion facing the guy who he already beat for a second time.

2) Batista-Kennedy was a weak title match and nobody thought Kennedy had a chance.

3) They didn't really do any angles around the Rumble. There was no "Rey winning it for Eddie" this year, just a bunch of dudes entering and wanting to win.

Ever since the infamous Bob Holly match, the Rumble always has a "dude who has no chance in hell of winning the title" match to give the champ a boost into Wrestlemania.

 

Of course by now most people KNOW that there's going to be a weak challenger at the Rumble, but whatever.

Considering that they no longer bring in money on ad revenue, PPV buyrates aren't what they were and house show attendance is on the rise, would it make sense at this point to restructure the business model and go back to doing more local hype and doing big angles and occasional title changes on house shows, only to re-show them on TV later? You can argue that they've moved on past the point where this would work, but if house show attendance is going up while everything else is stagnating or dropping, maybe there's something there.

 

Just an idea.