WWE News: Another poor turnout for SmackDown Live

What's the story?

If it didn't sound like there were too many cheers coming from the crowd on SmackDown Live this week it's because half the building was empty... literally. These photos of the live crowd attendance for SmackDown Live's September 26th show don't look good.

In case you didn't know

WWE has been having trouble filling venues recently. The big shows still do pretty well but for some reason, they can't seem to bring people to the building.

Last week's crowd for SmackDown Live was pretty abysmal as well, so this if this is becoming a trend, it's not a good sign at all.

The heart of the matter

It appears as though WWE was more than ready to not have all of the seats filled. They tarped off a huge section of the Gila River Arena in Glendale, Arizona.

This tarping off the building tactic is rather smart because fans don't see empty seats in crowd shots so viewers at home only see a sea of blackness. It also helps to not show the empty side too much on camera and dim the lights as to not accentuate it.

But WWE can't fool social media and the pictures leaked from the event showed the real turnout in Arizona. They were all but encouraging.

I'm not there but these are from someone there pic.twitter.com/hEJJRtRTU7

— Thomas (TomTom)Scott (@tomtomtheman93) September 27, 2017

SMH a damn shame @CountdownEnded @RealJoeCronin @solomonster @OKayFabe #SmackDownLIVE pic.twitter.com/XFOtqjh20G

— Thomas (TomTom)Scott (@tomtomtheman93) September 26, 2017

Ready For #SmackdownLive pic.twitter.com/XMePbp5kdF

— Mayson (@MaysonMay) September 27, 2017

What's next?

WWE needs to turn this around. You can't blame this on Jinder Mahal. You can't blame this on Dolph Ziggler ripping off The Undertaker and you certainly can't blame it on Road Dogg. The SmackDown Live crew works very hard to put out a good product. It's just that people aren't showing up.

Rising ticket costs might be to blame and Tuesday nights are inconvenient for some people. It also doesn't help that there is such a diversified plethora of entertainment choice which WWE is competing against in today's age. But hopefully, WWE can fix this trend before it gets out of hand.

Author's take

WWE won't do smaller arenas for television and that might be their problem. But low turnouts are not a sign that people aren't watching pro wrestling anymore.

These aren't Attitude Era crowds. But this is the Reality Era where there might not be as many core fans, but they spend more than any fan before them. So as long as WWE keeps making money they might just have to keep tarping off buildings. Besides, as long as it still looks good on television everything seems to be working in a manner of speaking.