Survivor Series 2012 PPV Numbers

There are a couple of reasons right away you can give for Survivor Series doing the all-time low in the history of the show on 11/18.

The show did 122,000 domestic buys and 90,000 international (212,000 total), down 32% in North America and 32% internationally from last year’s 179,000 domestic and 133,000 international (312,000 total). The show was going to be down, probably significantly, from last year, which featured The Rock’s first match in more than seven years, but the question was how significant would the decline be. Coming off the shockingly good Hell in a Cell number the month before, there was thought that maybe the decline wouldn’t be so steep because the main characters, C.M. Punk and Ryback, who headlined Hell in a Cell, were getting over.

Punk and Ryback were brought back in a three-way that involved John Cena. Even though Survivor Series has beaten the Hell in a Cell show in three of the last four years when it comes to North American buys, this year, the bigger name show had a significant decline, going from 152,000 to 122,000.

There are three conclusions you can draw, and all have merit. Reason No. 1 is that Hell in a Cell was way up this year because, aside from the getting rid of a show and having a seven week gap, you had a unique main event. Instead of the same-old, you had Ryback, who had never headlined, forced into the main event due to an injury to Cena. He had been pushed as undefeated and unstoppable, and Hell in a Cell meant there was going to be a winner. Like with Undertaker at Mania, something tangible had to happen. Either Ryback’s streak ended, or he would end Punk’s long title reign. Unfortunately, that was great for coming in, but made it very difficult to book, because the choice was either weaken long-term plans for Punk vs. Rock (you could still get to it by having Punk lose and then win it back via fluke) or weaken the Ryback momentum.

And what they came up with was a big dud, with ref Brad Maddox going heel, giving Ryback a low blow, and counting three. There were arguments that a loss wouldn’t hurt Ryback, but every character is different and the guys based on being untouchable are hurt by losses done the wrong way. Given that low blows are common, he’s invincible, but a ref low blow finished him, that was going to hurt, question was how much. Answer was very significant, because they went from way above average for a show to below average, a significant shift with essentially the same lead main event characters except throwing in Cena. The second non-win didn’t help either but the damage was already done.

With Survivor Series, you also had a three-way instead of a straight single, and that was going to water down the Punk vs. Ryback dynamic, although if the finish made Ryback stronger, or even didn’t hurt him, the adding of Cena wouldn’t have watered it down enough to make that kind of a difference. And the show would have done far worse had Punk and Ryback instead been opponents in a ten-man elimination match.

The second is Georges St-Pierre. The day before the show was the GSP vs. Carlos Condit fight, which did 680,000 buys, meaning UFC beat WWE by greater than a five-to-one margin in North America. It was same week WWE on “Did You Know” went after UFC by proclaiming Smackdown had ten times the social media activity on Ultimate Fighter on the Friday prior to the weekend. Given the results and revenue each company derived on their big show, it showed exactly how much value there was in that statistic.

The last time a GSP fight took place the day before a WWE show was in 2010, when his fight with Dan Hardy was the day before WWE’s WrestleMania. The result was the second lowest domestic audience, 495,000 homes, for a Mania show since 1997.

UFC has done a show the night before Survivor Series the past four years, with the only show doing well out of that group being last year, and that would not have done well without The Rock, and Rock being on the show ended up not being cost-effective to begin with (they’d have profited more doing the number of buys they did this year without the cost of Rock).

But doing the lowest ever for such a show during a year when PPV is up across the board on average for everyone, including WWE, that points to a weakness. Whether that weakness was GSP, killing Ryback as a draw or the cumulative effect of three hour Raws is a question.

TLC will remove the UFC factor from the equation, since UFC’s shows that weekend were on free TV. Although the TLC number could have been up based on The Shield being a hot group. You didn’t have C.M. Punk or the main title on the show, and neither Big Show vs. Sheamus or Cena vs. Dolph Ziggler were going to move numbers.

This year’s show was Punk vs. Ryback vs. Cena for the WWE title, a Team Ziggler (Ziggler & Alberto Del Rio & Damien Sandow & Wade Barrett & David Otunga, Otunga as the unadvertised sub for the injured Cody Rhodes) vs. Team Foley (Kofi Kingston & Daniel Bryan & Kane & Randy Orton & The Miz), plus Big Show vs. Sheamus for the world title.

Last year’s show was Rock & Cena vs. Miz & R-Truth, Alberto Del Rio defending the WWE title against Punk and Mark Henry defending the World title against Big Show.

Over the prior three years, the 2008 show did 191,000 domestic buys with Chris Jericho defending the world title against Cena and Edge winning a three-way for the WWE title over HHH and Vladimir Kozlov. That was the last time UFC didn’t run the night before Survivor Series.

In 2009, they fell to 136,000 with Cena vs. HHH vs. Shawn Michaels in a three-way for the WWE title built up with a series of comedy skits and Undertaker vs. Big Show vs. Jericho for the world title. In 2010, they were down to 127,000 for Randy Orton vs. Wade Barrett with Cena as ref with the idea that Cena would be fired from WWE unless he made sure Barrett won the title (he didn’t help Barrett, nor was he fired and Kane vs. Edge for the world title.