Complete Numbers For WWE Money in the Bank 2013!

The WWE got mixed news and I don’t have any kind of an explanation for why the 7/15 Money in the Bank PPV, from Philadelphia, was way up domestically and way down overseas.

The show did 192,000 buys worldwide, but 146,000 of them were domestic for a show built around two Money in the Bank matches, as well as a WWE title match of John Cena vs. Mark Henry and a world title match with heel Alberto Del Rio vs. Dolph Ziggler. The domestic number was excellent. The overseas number was less so. The WWE title Money in the Bank match was billed as the All-Star match with Randy Orton winning over Daniel Bryan, Rob Van Dam (whose return was a major selling point of the show to the point he was kept off television until the show), Sheamus, Christian and C.M. Punk. The World title Money in the Bank match had Damien Sandow winning over Jack Swagger, Antonio Cesaro, Wade Barrett, Cody Rhodes, Dean Ambrose and Fandango. 

In comparison, the 2012 version of the show did 114,000 domestic buys, but had 92,000 overseas buys for 206,000 in total. That show had Punk vs. Bryan as the WWE title match, Sheamus vs. Del Rio as the world title match, Cena winning the WWE title Money in the Bank over Kane, Big Show, Miz and Chris Jericho; and Ziggler winning the World title Money in the Bank match over Christian, Rhodes, Sandow, Santino Marella, Sin Cara, Tensai and Tyson Kidd. 

The show was up 28.1% domestically but down 50.0% outside North America, which in the end was a 6.8% drop overall. To put into perspective how impressive this year’s domestic total is, two years ago, for the John Cena vs. C.M. Punk match, the domestic buys ended up at 146,000, and at the same stage of reporting was only at 132,000.

I don’t see the increase being from the Money in the Bank matches, given the star power in them was stronger last year with the big push of Cena being in the WWE title MITB match. I think the only thing that was out of the ordinary that could have been a difference to this degree is the Mark Henry promo, which set up that main event, was a big-time money promo, and perhaps the return of RVD, but there have been plenty of returns of characters at the same level or much higher than RVD that didn’t make that kind of a difference. And why North America would be way up and international would be way down would indicate that whatever was so compelling in North America was something that didn’t translate outside. And I’ve got no idea what that would be. 

In other business comparisons for July, domestic attendance for the month minus the PPV event was 5,544, almost identical to the 5,464 average last year (up 1.5%). Two years ago the July average was 4,694.

DVD shipments were down from 357,000 last year to 231,000 this year, but that’s kind of a meaningless stat. The most shipped DVD’s over the past nine months, which is not the most sold, are WrestleMania 29 at 162,000, Best of Nitro at 136,000, The Attitude Era at 134,000, NWO Revolution at 120,000 and Top 100 Moments in Raw history at 101,000. The WrestleMania number is down 24.3% from last year’s DVD as of the same time frame.

Web site unique visitors were 14.0 million, up 8.5% from the 12.9 million last July.

They averaged 774 web site merchandise orders per day this year in July, up 41.2% from 548 per day last year.