A time where most WWE shows take place outside the US?

Curious with this drive overseas with most of the PLEs if they’d get the confidence to move Smackdown to the UK permanently.
Roving round the country with a live Friday night show with the brand recognition of Smackdown - it’d be massive and would dwarf what the other uk show was able to do.
Smackdown is the one tho because to come here they couldn’t do it on any other night besides Friday or Saturday.

The Nielsen ratings are archaic. They may still provide us with an idea of who's watching live on cable, but that in it of itself is a dated metric.


Wrestling is consumed various ways now, both in long and short form content. DVR also skews what is left of a dying cable medium.

The overreaction to weekly ratings is hilarious to me. More so with AEW, who are almost always top 5 in their advertising demographic. Some of the weeks their totals are down, they are ranked in the same exact spot on the night lol, less people in that and bracket watched tv overall that night.


Even more importantly though, is that attendance and traditional metrics for wrestling success are simply not as tantamount as they used to be. Your tv rights fees equate to your success now, all other revenue streams trail far behind what your platform is paying you annually. CM Punk recently said that he missed when you had to worry about such things, as it kept a promotion on track. Now things are never truly dire, as you've already secured your most profitable revenue on the year.

You could put a world title in Marko Stunt for a couple of months and wait until the TV took a big hit before having to course correct. Not that anybody would disrespect their network like that lol.


So to sum it, wrestling is MUCH more financially successful than it ever was. What WWE makes from USA, Fox, and soon Netflix, dwarfs any success it had between 1984-2001. They simply bring in significantly more revenue today. If AEW secures this years renewal with WBD for lucrative sum, all of Tony's mistakes and BS will just go unpunished.

Television and streaming in the modern era is the bread and butter of wrestling.

The foreign shows do so well because of how rare they are. Doing them more and more would only lead to the same problem they face in the US where there’s no urgency to see the live shows because they’lll be back again at some point.

I wouldn’t say the oversees show “keep the companies afloat.” WWE would still be profitable without them.

"Better than ever" is pretty relative. Like how recent movies are always the record breaking ones because tickets prices are higher than ever. Yes WWE had a good WM stretch with good attendance but I think that is largely the fans finally back after COVID and booking Rock on most TV 1-2 months. Is it sustainable over this summer and fall? Unlikely.

WWE is smart to lean into the international market because they can charge more and there is relative demand. On these international tours they'll often do only 1 arena show in a whole country, so only the biggest highest paying fans will go. Would the fans sustain that if they ran 150-200 shows a year like they do in the US? Unlikely.

Every Fortune 500 company has been smashing records in 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024 - it's called raising prices due to inflation. The same reason why McDonalds used to have $1 McChickens, then 2 for $3, then 2 for $3.99, and now buy 1 $3.50 get 1 for $1. It's all the same. Gas prices are higher than before. Grocery prices. And wrestling tickets, too.

What about WM40,WM39,WM38 all being the most watched shows in WWEs history? Same for SummerSlam & Rumbles in 2021,2022,2023,2024 etc. The countless sold out shows, TV deals, Netflix & peacock deals, merchandise records etc.

WWE are killing the game nowadays.

Just a reminder that the biggest grossing film in history is a Dances with Wolves ripoff with blue aliens, cross-species tail sexy time, and Unobtainium

Wrestleflation gains, boi-yee