On Saturday, the WWE confirmed that all pay-per-view events following WrestleMania will be dual brand shows, marking an end to brand specific shows.
This will signal the elimination of Payback, Battleground, Great Balls of Fire and No Mercy for 2018.
The updated pay-per-view schedule will amount to 12 pay-per-views in 2018 (a big decrease from the 16 events in 2017) with the following schedule:
WrestleMania – April 8th in New Orleans, Louisiana
Backlash – May 6th in Newark, New Jersey
Money in the Bank – June 17th
Extreme Rules – July 15th
SummerSlam – August 19th
Hell in a Cell – September 16th
TLC – October 21st
Survivor Series – November 18th in Los Angeles, California
Clash of Champions – December 16th
An interesting statistic from the WWE’s 2017 financials is that traditional pay-per-view revenue actually increased in 2017 by a slight margin. For the 16 shows, they brought in $14.2 million in revenue from traditional pay-per-view and was an increase of 12.7% from the $12.6 million in revenue from 2016.
They don’t know their own history. Why put hell in a cell in September? It’s always been october. The first hell in a cell was at badd blood in October. Just random. Also overkill on back to back gimmick matches.
Hell in a Cell, TLC, Elimination Chamber, and Extreme Rules should not be PPV/Network Specials. Hell in a Cell should be a match you see once every few years. Not 3 matches a year in which none of the feuds require being in a cell. Same with TLC. There’s really no point in Extreme Rules PPV.
Would’ve been nice if each got 1 PPV of their own between Royal Rumble and Wrestlemania. I think this makes Money in the Bank more interesting. And Night of Champions more… longer.
Less to watch per month, sure, but when I have to set aside a whole day to watch a B-Show then I’m seriously considering just not bothering and checking out the well reviewed matches at a later date.
I’d have rather they settled at 14 shows a year (not ideal, but still) and shortened the brand specific shows; either cap them at three hours and no longer or treat them like NXT TakeOver’s and have them at two and a half hours featuring only the best matches the brand can offer.
This is basically the WWE softly moving back to one brand, and doing so way quicker than they did last time. A bunch of people are gonna be out of jobs within the next year because this set up cannot sustain the roster WWE has right now.
Almost all of the “B-level” PPVs don’t even warrant 3-hours as their can be rather bland and forgettable within a few days after, MITB being the exaction to the rule.
