WWE Needs to Stop Advertising Partial Cards for Pay-Per-View Events

How many times have you started watching a WWE pay-per-view and realized that only four matches have been announced for the show? 

Your immediate thought: wait, that can’t be right, can it? 

This is the WWE we’re talking about. It’s supposed to be the clear-cut No. 1 wrestling promotion in the world, so you would think that the company would be able to fill up a card with more than four or five matches. 

But more often than not, that isn’t the case. 

The WWE has made an extremely bad habit out of announcing only partial cards before pay-per-views air, and then throwing another match or two onto the card while the PPV is going on. 

We saw this most recently at Elimination Chamber on Sunday when, out of nowhere, Jack Swagger defended his United States Championship against Justin Gabriel prior to the main event between John Cena and Kane. Um, where did that come from? 

Swagger and Gabriel are from different brands and have had virtually no interaction with each other, yet all of a sudden, they’re facing each other in a title match? 

I think this speaks volumes about the WWE’s lack of depth because the main reason why we’ve seen so few announced matches on WWE pay-per-views recently is that most midcard performers are finding themselves competing in the main event (See: the Elimination Chamber matches). 

Regardless of the reasoning behind adding matches to PPVs at the last second, however, it has to stop. 

While some may think that this isn’t really a big deal, it’s undoubtedly a disturbing trend that could hit the WWE where it hurts the most in the long run: its bank account. 

If WWE officials know that a certain superstar is going to compete on a pay-per-view, then the logical thing to do is advertise his appearance and hope that it leads to an increased buyrate and thus, more money in the WWE’s pocket. 

You may not think that advertising a match such as the one between Swagger and Gabriel is going to drastically affect how much money the company makes on a PPV, but even if announcing that match beforehand only slightly increases the number of PPV buys, it’s still worth it. 

There are, believe it or not, hundreds—and perhaps even thousands of fans—who consider themselves to be diehard Swagger fans or “the No. 1 Justin Gabriel fan on the planet.” They might not normally buy a pay-per-view, but knowing that their favorite superstar is performing on the show makes them much more likely to do so. 

Why the WWE wouldn’t want to take advantage of that is beyond me. 

Every WWE superstar—from John Cena to Yoshi Tatsu—is his own unique brand, with a loyal fanbase and at least some level of marketability. It’s imperative that the WWE capitalizes on this to increase its profit. 

And it’s so easy to do it’s ridiculous. 

SmackDown airs on Friday nights, so all it takes is a graphic that takes 10 seconds to put up on the screen or a 30-second promo to say, “Hey, these two guys are facing each other at the pay-per-view on Sunday. Buy it if you want to see them.” 

Heck, if the WWE doesn’t want to do that, then company officials can still use WWE.com to announce a late addition to the PPV card, even if that doesn’t happen until 20 minutes before the show is set to air. 

The bottom line is that not doing so is taking money out of the WWE’s pocket, and as Triple H might say, that’s bad for business.

Drake Oz is a WWE Featured Columnist for Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter and ask him any wrestling-related questions on Formspring.