Former WWE Superstar Maven has spoken out about the rising cost of attending WWE events, expressing frustration that families are being “priced out” of live shows and pay-per-views.
Speaking with TMZ.com, Maven compared the current state of event pricing to the more accessible days of his youth, emphasizing that affordability was once key to building lifelong wrestling fans.
“It’s one of the things that angers me the most,” Maven said. “You can say what you want about Vince McMahon. Vince knew that the everyday family was where his bread was buttered. He knew that in order to create generational fans, he was going to have to make his product accessible—accessible on a weekly basis, accessible on a monthly basis, at an affordable rate.”
The Tough Enough winner reminisced about a time when WWE pay-per-views and live events were attainable for average families. “I remember the day when guys would be scrounging together. You’d bring six to eight people together—‘Here, I got $12’—and then you could buy the pay-per-view. It’s not like that anymore,” Maven recalled. “I remember going to my first show when I was seven years old. I asked my dad how much it cost. He told me it was about $300 for everything—the tickets, the parking, the food. $300 for everybody. That was his whole investment. Right now, you’re not even getting one good ticket for that.”
Maven believes the shift toward corporate buyers and premium pricing has distanced promotions from their most loyal fans — and he doesn’t think WWE is alone in this trend.
“They’re pricing out loyal fans, and wrestling isn’t the only one doing it. Football’s doing it. Baseball’s doing it,” he continued. “I used to work for the Brooklyn Nets, and they encouraged us to sell to corporations. ‘Don’t call families, because they’re not the ones.’ They said, ‘Our courtside tickets run $150,000.’ Regular people don’t have that kind of money as disposable income. Corporations do.”
Maven concluded with a blunt assessment of the situation, “It’s sad that we live in that society. But I’m a firm believer that the answer to every question is money.”
