Survivor Series 2008 - Lowest draw in history?

[Tsaalyo Phoenix]

Source: The Wrestling Observer Newsletter (F4WOnline.com)

The early buyrate estimates are in for the 2008 Survivor Series pay-per-view, which featured the heavily hyped return of John Cena. As it turns out, Cena’s return to the ring ended up drawing the lowest domestic figure in Survivor Series history with a grand total of 205,000 buys in North America. Overall, the show drew 326,000 buys. While the numbers are not final, the first estimates for last year’s show drew 341,000 and 215,000 buys respectively, so they’re well behind pace.

From a comparison standpoint, last year’s show didn’t even feature Cena as he was injured at the time, and it still ended up outdrawing this year’s show featuring WWE’s apparent poster boy. Last year’s show featured a Hell in a Cell blow-off to the Batista vs. Undertaker feud, a match that had already headlined three pat-per-views as well as TVs during that year. The show also featured a Randy Orton vs. Shawn Michaels title match.

Survivor Series will likely end up being the fifth most watched pay-per-view of 2008, as last year’s No Way Out event featuring two Elimination Chamber matches drew an estimated 230,000 buys in North America.

The numbers for Survivor Series have to be considered a huge disappointment considering that the company pushed John Cena’s return to the ring for several weeks on all three shows with vignettes, not to mention that they tried to hotshot an Internet angle on the company website with Jeff Hardy on the day of the show.

 

[Soulpower]

I blame everyone on the PPV for this low buyrate... Except for John Cena, of course.

 

[The Rated R CMStar]

The card looked bad on paper. I dont blame anyone for not buying this.


Besides, concerning that Hardy thing, if anything, LESS people bought the PPV because of it, because on WWE.com they practically made it clear he wasnt wrestling, and so everyone knew that we were going to get *gasp* Kozlov vs HHH

 

[Montana]

as CMS mentioned....its fair to blame Michael Hayes and SD weak booking staff to book HHH vs. Vladmir Kozlov. Kozlov with his ppv debut.

 

[Dylanfsd]

I don't really think the PPV was bad. Year before this last SS was WAY better imo. Cena/Y2J for the WHC just by itself is a must see tbh..

 

[The Rated R CMStar]

The PPV was actually REALLY good, but you wouldn't know that if you didnt order the PPV, and again, looking at the card, the show wasn't a must see.


And if you say that maybe the replay orders might do the trick, meh, this isn't a show that if you missed, you would be desperate to pay $40 the week later already seeing Edge and Cena as champs in regular programming.



BTW, lol at the Newsletter in this one. It's obvious HIAC was going to outdraw Cena, specially considering Batista is just as big of a draw as Cena.

 

[Airfixx]

For SS to be a notably bigger draw than the majority of the years PPVs, they need to put a lot more work into the angles and build-up for the actual SS-tag matches...

Otherwise it's no different to a B-grade PPV like Judgement day or sumthin, but with a couple of random elim-tag matches with no overt appeal to them.

IMO whilst it is a bit crap having such a short amount of time after the final guy enters, I think the championship scrambles at Unforgiven looked more exciting on paper.

SS is such an underachieving PPV.