WWE has gone through some major changes over the last few years as the company was sold to Endeavor and a new regime is now in charge of creative. Under the new regime PLE cards have gotten much smaller as WWE premium live events typically featured 5 matches nowadays.
Sean Ross Sapp recently discussed the backstage reaction to WWE’s smaller PLE cards on Fightful’s Raw Review, and he noted that he hasn’t heard any negative remarks from anyone he’s talked to.
“It stacks Raw and SmackDown, and talent understand how important Raw and SmackDown is these days. That’s where a lot of the money is coming from, so they’re getting paid – the PLEs probably by show getting paid more, but it’s one of those things where talent understand it’s probably best to have 5 matches than 15 matches and that waters it down. And when they make it on a PLE, it’s a little bit more special now. And this is an aggregation of sort of how I’ve talked to people.”
“I haven’t had anybody say, ‘You know what? I hate 5-match PLEs.’ I just don’t have people in the company that say that. Now maybe after this, I will, but it’s one of those things where, again, there has been an increased emphasis on Raw and SmackDown in the types of matches that we saw in the main event tonight [Jey Uso vs. Seth Rollins] and other big title matches…Now I can’t speak for everybody, I can only speak to those I’ve talked to. But also some of the time constraints, even on the five-match shows, can be a little iffy.”
H/T Cultaholic.com