WWE Business Class Day 1: How to Restructure the PPV Schedule

Welcome, students, to day one of WWE Business Class. My name is Doctor Chris Mueller and I will be your instructor. I am not really a doctor, but I play one in my head.

In this five-day course I will take you through five lessons which can help to improve WWE in several different ways.

Today's lesson will involve the PPV schedule that is currently in place and how it can be altered to benefit the fans.

As we all know, WWE puts on numerous weekly shows which range from Raw, SmackDown and Superstars/NXT tapings to house shows in the US and around the world.

These shows are used to build feuds which will usually be resolved on a PPV, or perhaps after a couple of PPVs if the feud is valuable to the company.

While the PPVs are always an extravaganza that has to be seen to be believed, it sometimes seems as if a PPV with less build-up is usually destined to fail.

WWE would not purposely allow themselves to fail, but when you only give a feud only two to three weeks to simmer then you are not likely to have a successful show.

This brings me to my proposed solution for WWE and their crowded PPV schedule and pricing structure.

A big component of this new model will involve the WWE network as well as something that has never been done before, group PPV pricing, which will be discussed in tomorrow's lesson.

WWE, on average, has 13 PPVs per year, although that is not always the case.

In 2011 we had the following PPV schedule:

• Royal Rumble—January 30
• Elimination Chamber—February 20
• WrestleMania—April 3
• Extreme Rules—May 1
• Over the Limit—May 22
• Capital Punishment—June 19
• Money in the Bank—July 17
• SummerSlam—August 14
• Night of Champions—September 18
• Hell in a Cell—October 2
• Bragging Rights—October 23
• Survivor Series—November 20
• TLC—December 18

That is 13 PPV events in a 12 month schedule. If you look closely you will see that between HIAC and Bragging Rights there was only two weeks.

This is something which can be fixed very easily. Simply cut it back to 12 PPVS. That way we have one per month and each PPV gets four or so weeks of build-up time before the show goes live.

This way fans will not feel like they have to choose which PPV to buy in a month which contains two. October and May were expensive months for WWE fans.

I realize that by cutting 13 down to 12 it means WWE would be losing the revenue on an event, but with some of these events not being as profitable as others it would be easy to ensure that the loss is minimal.

Once the PPV schedule is trimmed it would make it easier to schedule them far enough apart where they have the right amount of time to build the feuds.

When you have a more engaging series of angles and feuds you are more likely to get people wanting to buy than you would with less interesting angles. I do not think I need to present facts to back up that argument as it is more logic than anything else.

Now, I will go over the PPV schedule for 2012 as well as present a new schedule with my proposed changes.

Current 2012 PPV schedule as it stands.

• Royal Rumble—January 29
• Elimination Chamber—February 19
• WrestleMania—April 1
• Extreme Rules—April 29
• Over the Limit—May 20
• Capital Punishment—June 17
• Money in the Bank—July 15
• SummerSlam—August 19
• Night of Champions—September 16
• Hell in a Cell—October 7
• Bragging Rights—October 28
• Survivor Series—November 18
• TLC—December 16

Now, here is a revised schedule that I propose would make things easier on the writers, wrestler and fans. Since some of these events are already past, we obviously cannot implement this in 2012.

• Royal Rumble—January 22
• Elimination Chamber—February 19
• WrestleMania—March 25
• Extreme Rules—April 22
• Over the Limit—May 20
• Capital Punishment—June 17
• Money in the Bank—July 15
• SummerSlam—August 19
• Night of Champions—September 16
• Bragging Rights—October 21
• Survivor Series—November 25
• TLC—December 30

If you take a look you will see that by eliminating one PPV and moving some of them up or down one week on the calendar we have a schedule where every PPV has four or five weeks to build up.

This would allow the writers to have a little more time between each event to plan out what matches and feuds will take center stage as well as allow fans to budget for one PPV per month if they chose to purchase all 12.

Losing the Hell in a Cell PPV is also a good move because it makes no sense to plan a whole PPV around a match type when we see that match pop up on other PPVs from time to time.

TLC is different because it involves several different match types, not just a TLC match.

This will all make more sense when you come back for tomorrow's lesson: creating a new pricing model for WWE PPVs.

Thanks for reading and please feel free to share your thoughts below.