WWE Will No Longer Use the Term "Pay-Per-View"

Beginning at WrestleMania XXX, WWE changed the business of pay-per-views. The company’s grand spectacle was the first pay-per-view to also air live on the WWE Network, causing many cable providers to look at potentially dropping WWE content from its live pay-per-view content in the immediate future.

In the latest edition of Wrestling Observer Newsletter, the newsletter reports that WWE will no longer use the term “pay-per-view” to describe its monthly, sometimes bimonthly, Sunday night WWE events. Instead, going forward, these events will simply be referred to as “special events.”

WWE recently revealed how many of its fans have already subscribed to the WWE Network, telling the media that it has 667,287 subscribers, as of April 7. WWE believes that it is well on its way to reaching its goal of 1,000,000 subscribers for the end of 2014. However, after the release of these numbers, WWE’s stock continued to plummet.

Editor’s Note

I am not shocked and agree with WWE’s decision to no longer bill anything as a “pay-per-view,” as the WWE Network already has more subscribers than the amount of buys WWE gets for a given pay-per-view, the only exception being WrestleMania. However, I think the company could have come up with a better name than “special events.”