Wrestling Rematches the PPV edition

In my last article we looked at Wrestling rematches for TV, this time we are going to breakdown PPV matches to see if we can answer the same question, re whether Rematches are an issue.

Again, thank you to Wrestlenomics for the stats.

So, we are going to keep with the same 2019 – 2021 format as the last article to keep things fair.

Let us start once more with AEW, we start off in 2019 with 6% rematches across their PPV’s. Again, we can say this is a brand-new company so most matches will be fresh. That said 6% does seem high considering it is a new company.

In 2020 we see a massive increase to 22%, this is an increase of 16% in a year, considering this is the second year of AEW existing this is a high number.

In 2021 we again see an increase to 29%, so another increases this time by 7%. What this shows is that even though AEW the TV show is very low for rematches that does not carry across to the PPV product. Honestly, it is surprising to see it this high especially for a company that only has been around for 3 years.

I do not have NXT takeover numbers so let us look at the WWE shows and see how AEW compares with rematches.

2019 saw WWE with 36% of all matches being rematches, this is higher then AEW for the same period, but we cannot really compare them. That said 36% of all matches in 6 months on PPV being a rematch does seem high when you look at it on its own.

2020 WWE had 43% rematch rate; this is an increase of 7% while that does not seem like much it does mean you were nearly as likely to see a rematch as you were a non-rematch. But again, we can kind of write it off due to covid restrictions same as AEW.

Then we get to 2021 WWE had 39% of all their matches be rematches, with the average of 0.82, While this is a drop of 4% the roster was pretty much back, and things were running normal. So, it does seem like a high number of rematches.

When we look at 2021 directly AEW had 29% with WWE having 29% which is a 10% difference in the number of rematches you are getting between the two products. While WWE’s PPV has a lower number of rematches then their TV product AEW has more. I think that’ an interesting stat that will be good to look back on over the next year to see if this trend continues for both AEW and WWE.

Now when we take a moment to look at WWE historically, we see a peak of 58% in 2014 this means you were more likely to get a rematch then a new match. But once again if we take the total historical data, it shows numbers of 51% which is a lot higher then what we have currently.

So despite us thinking the current rematches are a lot, the data shows it’s actually dropped which gives us a more exciting product and more new matches.

It will be interesting to look at the numbers and see if viewership changed during the higher rematch periods. But that will be something we will have to investigate later.

For now, we can see PPV are different for AEW and WWE with the number of rematches and it will be interesting to see if the trends continue or if they go back to the 50% of rematches. We will keep an eye on it.