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Wrestling has been a spectator sport for as long as the history books stretch back and that tradition has continued into almost every local Independent wrestling show all over the world.
WWE have depended on their audience throughout their entire span as a company since it's the audience that adds to the atmosphere much like how football/soccer relies heavily on their crowd throughout the game to lift the players.
It's becoming more and more obvious that the live attendance figures for WWE have gone down in recent years since the recent European Tour saw more tarped areas in the arena than ever before.
Despite this, the company still managed to bring in 70,000 fans for Super Show-Down which is reportedly the largest event to be staged outside of the United States in more than two decades.
As part of the recent Q3 earning's call, as reported by WrestlingInc, the main talking points were the fact that Live Attendance at domestic WWE events was down from the same period last year almost 500 people (per show) on average which is something that many of the WWE Universe has picked up on.
Despite this, WWE have recently signed huge deals with FOX and NBC as well as having advertising ties with Hyundai and Coca-Cola, which means that they are definitely not in a position where they should be worrying.
Whilst ratings for Raw and SmackDown have also been seen as an issue since they are also down, this could be a sign of the change of times and the fact that many fans are now viewing the product on different platforms. WWE's social media platforms have a following of more than 950 million which means that they have been able to push forward much of their content onto places like Twitter and YouTube.
Streaming is obviously the future right now given the success of Amazon Prime and Netflix over the past few years and WWE have been able to get ahead of the game with the WWE Network where they reached 2 million subscribers for the first time earlier this year.
There are companies like Impact Wrestling, Lucha Underground and New Japan Pro Wrestling who are all pushing WWE forward because many fans view them as their biggest competition when in fact WWE have been the giant in the world of wrestling for so long right now that it's hard to see them as anything else.
The live audience figures have hardly affected WWE and given the fact that the company has so much income from advertising deals, Television contracts, and merchandise rights, there could be a future where wrestling is no longer seen as a spectator sport, since this income may not be needed.
Of course, there are still fans who rate the atmosphere of a live event higher than anything that can be found on the WWE Network or on Twitter, which is why there is still such a strong audience for the product right now. It does beg the question as to whether there will be a future where the company won't be reliant on that income and will be able to push forward whether there are fans in the audience or not.
Do you think WWE will find new ways to be financially stable in the future? Have your say in the comments section below...
