Without casting it in a positive or negative light specifically, it’s fair to say that the WWE isn’t the same as it was 10 or 15 years ago. Granted, if you attend a major event live it might feel relatively unchanged. More broadly though, the sport and organization have changed. In some respects it’s lost the gritty authenticity it possessed in its popular heyday; at the same time, there are ways in which it’s better than ever.
Rather than just assessing the WWE now versus a decade or more ago though, it’s interesting to look at the landscape of the sport and wonder how much more it might change in the next five years. How can it improve, and what should we expect to see as fans?
We can’t say for sure of course, and it’s ultimately up to a combination of Vince McMahon and the fan market. We can make some guesses however.
First, we can almost certainly expect to see an even greater drive toward streaming and online content, and perhaps away from traditional television. To some extent this is the way of televised entertainment in general. “Cord-cutting” is leading consumers away from cable, and various entertainment companies and networks are responding with better streaming options and more digital content. More to the point regarding the WWE though, a thorough assessment of the organization’s popularity essentially revealed several interesting data points suggesting this idea. For the most part, we can summarize them by saying TV viewership is going down, but WWE Network subscriptions are going up, as is free online video viewership. It’s clear where the market is going, and we’d expect the WWE to meet it there.
Next, we’d also expect within the next few years a fairly strong push to force-feed new stars to the viewers. In a recent piece here, the PW Mania staff covered speculation about The Undertaker and John Cena at WrestleMania 35. That’s all well and good, and fans still love to see them, but these are wrestlers who have been around for a long time, and at some point the act will get stale. There have been younger stars and fleeting stars, but we really haven’t seen a fresh WWE mega-star in quite some time, and the sport may need one before too much longer. It would be surprising if there’s not a visible, enthusiastic effort in this regard.
More on the fan side of things, we’d also expect to see a bigger WWE betting market emerging in the next five years. This is less because of any specific change on the part of the organization, and more because betting is becoming normalized (and more importantly legalized) in large portions of the U.S. It’s already completely legal in New Jersey, and a few other states in the Northeast have followed the New Jersey model. Additional states around the country are earlier in the process. As this happens and sports betting becomes more popular, it stands to reason that more wagering will take place around WWE events, and we might just see the organization taking an active role in all of this. Time will tell.
Lastly, in a fairly overarching sense, it could be that we’ll see better scripting and less in the way of lengthy monologues or borderline theater acts preceding matches. It appears to be a simple fact that the viewing public has less patience these days, and the nature of modern entertainment is somewhat less forgiving to the often-cheesy antics of pro wrestlers. Action movies are actually a decent parallel here. The melodramatic hero one-liners and villain monologues of the ‘80s and ‘90s have given way to the strong and silent heroes complemented by mind-blowing action we see in films like John Wick and Mad Max: Fury Road. The WWE might just become even more popular by following a similar trajectory, such that this could be the most complicated but also significant change on the horizon.
