At the beginning of each year, the WWE embarks on their annual Road to WrestleMania with the Royal Rumble in January, followed by Elimination Chamber in February with the traditional 30-man Royal Rumble match and the two dangerous Elimination Chamber matches.
With both of those events earlier this year having cards with great matches, how did the Royal Rumble and Elimination Chamber pay-per-views do this year from the perspective of buy rates from the fans?
As noted earlier, PPV buys for both The Royal Rumble and Elimination Chamber were down from last year's numbers. This year's Royal Rumble garnered 443,000 buys, down slightly from 446,000 buys in 2011. The decline for Elimination Chamber was more notable as this year's installment did 178,000, compared to 199,000 buys last year.
The quickest and almost obvious solution to cure the WWE’s poor buys rates would be to drop the prices of their pay-per-view events from the nearly 50 dollar price tags that come on all of their events through the year.
With the obvious exclusions of the Royal Rumble, WrestleMania, SummerSlam and the Survivor Series, it makes no sense for the company to charge their fans the aforementioned high price for minor events like the upcoming Over the Limit.
In a perfect world, the WWE would offer their minor pay-per-view events throughout the year for a discounted price of around 25 dollars, while the Big Four events would remain at their current price.
With people going to sports bars to watch pay-per-views or simply streaming it on their computers, the WWE should definitely alter their current setup for their pay-per-view events before the buy rates drop even further in the future.
As pay-per-view buy rates continue to drop each year for events, what do you think the WWE should do to get their buy rates to be more promising and halt their continuing downward slide?