WWE: How to Bring Money and Significance Back to Pay-Per-Views

In a time where WWE is having the worst 12 months financially across the board, WrestleMania 28 sets records.

In the words of the guy playing Jim Morrison in Wayne's World 2: “If you book them, they will come.”

Book the big stars, the people will come. Triple H, Shawn Michaels, The Undertaker and The Rock are all still bigger draws than nearly anyone else on the WWE roster. The name WrestleMania is over, more so than most of the regular roster.

The audience is still there; you can't say a profitable amount of people don't care about pro-wrestling/sports entertainment.

WrestleMania 28 drew 1.3 million buys. I don't know what an average number of people would be watching per buy, but taking that into consideration blast zones—I would believe somewhere between four and five million sets of eyes were on Sun Life Stadium.

WWE needs more stars on their full-time roster. That doesn't happen overnight, but I think the troops are coming—we'll get back to that.

My first obvious solution to enhancing the overall pay-per-view interest is not to eat steak every night. A pay-per-view every three to four weeks has taken away the significance of what a pay-per-view used to be. A pay-per-view every other month would open up some money in the wrestling cable bill budget for viewers.

Every other month would also have the audience see more story build and wait longer for storyline payoffs. The “big” pay-per-view Sunday night special isn't special if you get it on the regular, that's why it's called "special."

Sad thing is, in WWE's mind, fewer PPVs are no good.

The production cost to put on a pay-per-view is about the same as an episode of RAW or Smackdown. The boys get paid better, but WWE raises the ticket prices compared to a RAW ticket price and it costs $50 to order in HD from home.

WWE hasn't been having great numbers in terms of buys for a lot of the secondary pay-per-views, but they still are making money. Not as much as they used to, not as much to appease those who hold stock in the company, but they aren't losing money.

WWE's best bet is to once again change the landscape of PPV's. Enter the WWE Network.

If and when it launches, make every pay-per-view except for Royal Rumble, WrestleMania, SummerSlam and Survivor Series available to view for those who pay to get the WWE network.

WWE is going to make their money off the network by having a Comcast, Cox Cable, Verizon Fios or whatever carrier(s) they work out deals with to include the network in one of the cable packages you pay for, similar to the NFL Network.

Unless you have one of the cheaper basic cable packages which provides 50 channels, you likely have NFL Network, along with premium movie channels and more. WWE gets a lot more eyes on these secondary PPVs because more people can afford the premium channel of the network on a monthly basis versus $50 for a three-hour wrestling event.

People will be drawn to WWE Network because of the variety of archived programming, countdowns, behind-the-scenes specials and talk shows. So much of the network's content will feature the established stars of yesterday, the same ones who just set WrestleMania 28 records. 

WWE will get a percentage of money from the cable providers and can tout the amount of people who watched an “Over The Limit” PPV. It's almost as if they aren't pay-per-views anymore as much as they are “specials.” Like a Saturday Night's Main Event, except it will be on Sunday night.

The $50 for HD viewing you save for the big four shows that are traditionally the highest-bought shows each year. You bring back the model of these four shows being the cornerstones of the year in terms of storyline.

Specials and pay-per-views still need stars for people to care about. In my opinion, WWE is about to move into another strong period in the grand history for their talent rosters. They have an excellent crop of talent coming in who have an old-school feel because of their old-school learning by working many territories and independent promotions.

One of my personal favorites is a modern-day Brian Pillman in Dean Ambrose, who is going to be inserted into WWE programming in a more explosive fashion than another new guy squashing guys for a few months. In addition to these guys coming up, a core of talent on the current roster seems to be at the doorstep ready to knock the door down.

If taken care of, stars are coming. Let the stars work, tell a story. A story that is worth $50 and culminates after several months, not a few weeks.

Follow @JustinLaBar