Pay-Per-View Overload Just Another Burden For Fans
Get ready for another crammed month plus with three PPV's before the end of August. The WWE has been shoving PPV's down the throats of their fans for years, but one has to wonder if the latest stretch of PPV's with Judgement Day just five days ago and another PPV in 9 days is just plain overdoing it.
The company's stance would be that the One Night Stand PPV, set for June 2nd in Jacksonville, is usually an ECW PPV. With that though, the company realizes after the nightmare with "December to Dismember," which was just an outrage to the company, that they could not put the ECW product out there on its own. That is why they will have all three brands on the show, and use "Extreme Rules" matches instead of just making it a normal card.
I will give credit to the WWE for coming up with the idea of doing all extreme matches at the PPV, but again, after just sitting through a lackluster Judgement Day over the weekend, does anyone have the time, energy, or money, to plop down another $40 for One Night Stand? At this point in the year, if you have purchased all the PPV's, you've already spent $250, and add another $40 to that for ONS, and you already are at $290 before the end of June.
I realize that the sport is PPV driven, but the whole reason why the WWE insisted on 12 PPV's a year back when they made that decision a few years back, was because it was involved with a bitter feud with WCW. Now that WCW is gone, the company can scale PPV's back to 9-10 a year, and I think everyone would be happy. Now at 14 PPV's per year, it's just too much. Add up the total spent if you buy each one, including the extra $10 they now charge for Mania , and your throwing down $570 per year.
PPV's do have the tendency to be special, but more often than not now they are just three hour versions of RAW or SmackDown with some special matches thrown in. Take last weekend's effort at Judgement Day. We've seen Chris Benoit vs MVP on free TV, Cade and Murdoch vs the Hardy's on free TV, have seen Carlito vs Flair on free TV, and so on and so forth. We even had seen John Cena and Khali at one point on RAW awhile back. The company loves to not mention things like those matches ever even taking place, but if you watch the shows every week, you start to get into a trend of - "hey, I think I've seen this before."
With that, the PPV train will continue to roll on for the company, fans will maybe have to be a little more selective on how much they can afford to watch of the Pay-Per-Views. For some that have the income to do it, it won't matter. For the rest of us, the WWE should really consider some alternatives for its die hard fans and younger fans who just try to make it paycheck to paycheck.
