This week’s episode of WWE SmackDown Live featured the return of Shane McMahon, an advertised United States Championship match that didn’t exactly go as planned, and a fatal 4-way main event to crown the new number one contender for the SmackDown Women’s Championship. However, it wasn’t enough to bring in the fans because there were a lot of empty seats this week.
Related: Two Title Matches Announced For Hell In A Cell, Bobby Roode Wrestles Before SmackDown
Unfortunately poor attendance seems to be a trend with WWE events as of late as there were quite a few empty seats at Raw last week as well. The situation didn’t look much better at Raw this week in San Jose because the entire upper section of the arena was closed.
You can check out a photo from this week’s Raw taping below.
Poor WWE RAW attendance tonight. Please give credit to WWE fan Nick if you use these photos. Entire upper deck closed, empty seats in lower. pic.twitter.com/ctjr5Q1exQ
— Bruce Blitz (@BruceBlitz) September 19, 2017
The upper section of the arena was also closed off for SmackDown Live this week, and the hard camera side of the arena was almost completely empty.
This is the Smackdown crowd…… it’s so depressing to look at…. #SDLive pic.twitter.com/RbgovdVcaJ
— Jジェームス (@SashaAndSami) September 20, 2017
@WWERoadDogg As much as i love smackdown How come the like Of Aj Have to Wrestle tonight in front of a crowd less then a TNA Taping pic.twitter.com/386Ey1R1Ry
— Nathaniel (@soldierofthewwe) September 20, 2017
@WrestlingSoup The SmackDown crowd is again half empty, this is embarrassing and sad. pic.twitter.com/939sC0eNlS
— #Canada150 (@MauriceBear21) September 20, 2017
The Maharaja meets his fans… or lack thereof! #SDLive #WWEOakland pic.twitter.com/2SfCBRbGNi
— Alex C. (@TheEvolutionWWE) September 20, 2017
Poor attendance happens from time to time as selling out every arena in every city is a tough task, but the fact that this seems to be a reoccurring thing as of late isn’t a good sign for WWE.
It looks like the company might have to make some changes to get fans to start buying tickets again.
Pyrotechnics?
I gotta be honest I do miss the pyro.
The shows have no energy. Nothing seems spontaneous. Everything feels like wanna-be actors reading from scripts. Not enough AJ Styles and Kevin Owens (passionate promos and good wrestling) and too many Jinder Mahals (Obviously scripted promos w/ bad comedy and average to poor wrestling)
It’s too bad, SmackDown Live was on a roll around this time last year.
It really was. I was all in on Becky as champ feuding with Alexa or vice versa, Styles as men’s champ, and Rhyno and Slater as tag champs. Not to mention the classic Ziggler-Miz fued. It’s like once the titles started coming off these folks, the show slowly descended to where it is now.
I literally FF the whole show stopping only for the compelling stuff and was done with it in 30 minutes.