The Pro Wrasslin' Thread (WWE, WWF, WCW, TNA, ROH, NWA, NJPW, etc)

[BasilZero]

Jumpin said:

I felt like the biggest feeling of decline in WWE happened roughly around the period of the ratings decline. Wrestlenomics did a nice graph of the 52 week average, and it shows the viewership peaks for the core demographic peaking right at the turn of the year December 2000 and January 2001; then falling off a cliff starting at the top of May 2001 with staggering decline until the end of 2004. Total Viewership decline began earlier, back in mid-September 2000, and fell off the a cliff in December 2000, although, that cliff ended in mid-2003, and decline slowed down after that.
https://wrestlenomics.com/tv-ratings/2025/entire-history-of-wwf-wwe-monday-night-raw-ratings-1993-2024/


For me, I was a big fan of WWE through the Attitude era, and I do feel that 2000 was the most memorable year with 2001 being the next most memorable, but the stuff following what I thought was the greatest moment of the year, Jericho capturing both titles from The Rock and Austin, I found considerably less memorable. Some stuff sticks out: Dust/Booker, Brock Lesnar, Stacey Keibler & Test, Evolution, Benoit and Eddie's title reigns, and Christian's (Sorry, I mean Jericho's) ass cream. Whereas I found like every feud and character to be fairly memorable from sometime in 1999 until late 2001 to be memorable. I liked the Alliance stuff more than most, but (like just about everyone), I thought it wasn't as good as the stuff before it - missing Triple H and The Rock (until the end) hurt.

Yeah, that was the beginning of when they went PG - even though the ratings went down, the sponsorships and partnerships they made in those years, made up for the loss in ratings.

Even now they are securing themselves into partnerships (like TNA, Saudia Arabia, etc).

Its the way to go if profits is what their looking for more than ratings. Though I would say ratings dont mean much now since they are going full streaming now.