WWE could be increasing showtimes for PPV events

For any fans who love wrestling, they are probably pretty happy to hear that WWE could be expanding their PPV events to five hours.

One piece of potentially great news for wrestling fans that came out recently is that starting in May, WWE could begin to run every pay-per-view event as dual-brand efforts. This would mean that the stars of Monday Night Raw and SmackDown would both appear on every single PPV. This is a great idea on paper, as having one brand fill a PPV can lead to repeated matchups that become stale. It leads to boredom and apathy from fans, which is about the worst outcome possible. The potential bad news is WWE is also considering making every single PPV five hours long, with a one hour pre-show and four hour main card. This report comes from cagesideseats.com via Dave Meltzer.

It’s kind of hard to understand how this solves any type of problem. If they put both brands on one three-hour show, it would force them to continually come up with fresh matches and would leave the fans wanting more. That’s truly not a bad thing. Fans shouldn’t feel like it’s a struggle to watch an event. If you go to the PPV in person, you’re probably looking at a roughly seven-hour experience. That’s close to the equivalent of two NFL football games back to back.

Extending the show and making both brands fill five hours of content makes absolutely zero sense. Each brand would still be responsible for around two and a half hours of programming every PPV. Is that any different than a three-hour event? The five hours doesn’t even include Raw, SmackDown, and NXT, along with 205 Live. If a wrestling fan wanted to watch every show, they would be trying to tackle 12 hours of programming between Sunday to Wednesday night. That is just far too much for anyone to watch when it’s the week of a PPV.

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Wrestling fans know that good ideas can become bad ideas in a hurry. Combining the PPVs is a smart idea for WWE, but extending the run time and asking fans for five hours in a sitting every month is far too much.