WWE Gets Bad News in Buyrate For Summerslam PPV

WWE's latest key performance indicators packet confirms yet another disappointing buyrate for the leading wrestling promotion.

According to the WWE document, August's Summerslam pay-per-view garnered approximately 350,000 buys, which represents a decline from last year's already-disappointing performance.

As with Money in the Bank, Summerslam represented a pay-per-view that many insiders thought would "buck the trend" of dismal WWE buyrate performance, but that optimism proved invalid.

In addition to again confirming the troublesome decline of interest in WWE pay-per-views, the poor buyrate also provides another statistical condemnation of the Nexus angle. While the Nexus faction had been around for previous pay-per-views, Summerslam featured the group in a marquee "WWE vs. Nexus" main-event; its performance is thus the best available figure for determining how the angle translated into pay-per-view dollars. That determination is not favorable.

Between poor merchandise sales, weak television ratings and consistently weak buyrates, analysts will have a near impossible time declaring the angle commercially successful.

That is a bitch of a week for business, but I liked Summer Slam. Buyrates aren't so much about how good the show was, but how good the promotion was and if they were having matches that got people interested in buying it. I am not sure what to do about it though. People are going to say they need to have new talent with different matches, but Cena vs. Nexus was fairly new at the time, Orton vs. Sheamus only happened once before, and Kane vs. Mysterio was fairly new. If they would have had a more established main event, like say Cena vs. Orton, it might have sold better. I know they have done that a million times, but it still might have sold better.