WWE Attendance, TV and DVD numbers

For business in November, the company averaged 4,786 paid for North American shows during the month, down 12% from the 5,429 in 2011. The European tour attendance was also down 11% from 2011. PPV was way down, but that was going to happen no matter what when you compare it to the same show with The Rock’s return on it, even given the Rock’s return match was probably about as weak a return from a booking standpoint as would be possible with Rock & Cena as a team, the one thing Rock fans least wanted to see, with a complete lack of storyline explanation (Rock did it because his Twitter followers asked him) against Miz & R-Truth, who they did try to push, but nobody took seriously as opponents at that level. Last year at this time, Raw averaged a 3.12 rating and 4.48 million viewers. This year the show averaged a 2.78 rating and 4.00 million viewers, so a drop of 10.9% in ratings and 10.7% in total audience. Smackdown last year at this time averaged a 2.05 rating and 3.01 million viewers. This year the show averages a 1.80 rating and 2.58 million viewers. But that’s misleading because the first November show was a Tuesday show out of the normal slot, so figuring that out to normalize the comparison, it’s a 1.88 rating and 2.67 million, so an 8.3% ratings drop and 11.3% audience drop. Remember that last year at this time they were going against the same sports competition (well, actually this year would be slightly easier with no NHL). They shipped 556,000 DVDs during the month, up 107% from the 268,000 from the prior November. The most shipped DVDs over the past year or so have been WrestleMania at 236,000, The Rock’s DVD at 150,000, C.M, Punk at 114,000, Undertaker at 102,000, Greatest Superstars of WrestleMania at 96,000, NWO Revolution at 94,000 and Royal Rumble at 89,000. The web site had 11.1 million unique visitors in November, down 4% from 11.6 million last year at this time. They averaged 1,267 web site orders per day in November, the exact same average to the digit (1,267) as last year.