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WWE WWE returns to India for Superstar Spectacle on September 8, 2023 and more details of the business decision behind the event have been revealed.
The return to India had been announced on August 1 via an official WWE press release.
Plans for the return had been previously delayed while WWE’s broadcast partner in India underwent a merger.
On Wrestling Observer Radio, Dave Meltzer has now addressed the reasoning behind WWE’s upcoming show in Hyderabad, India.
Meltzer: explained
“They’ve been wanting to do this big show, it’s basically a television event in India. The building itself is like 3500-4000 seats for this setup. It’s not about drawing a big crowd, or anything like that, like big money from the fanbase. But it’s a show that their business partners in India are bringing them in, and it’s gonna be a primetime special I think on Sony Six.
“It was something that was planned months ago and delayed because they were waiting for a merger to go through that has since gone through with Sony Six.
“It’s gonna be heavily using Sanga and Veer and Jinder Mahal… (Discusses the previous Superstar Spectacle event and the fact WWE had so many Indian talents at the time, the majority of which were let go or haven’t been used much, if at all, since)…
“The idea was always to have a big stable of Indian wrestlers, because India is the market, even though they can’t go there and draw people at shows because culturally people just don’t buy tickets for sports events, other than cricket which is like the big national sport, but it’s very, very difficult to sell tickets.
“When they went with Jinder and Triple H, they did have 9,000 people, it wasn’t a sellout or anything but people think, ‘Oh, they’re so popular on TV’, which they are, but, they make more money on television in India than anywhere but the United States. They make more than Canada, more than the UK, I think Canada’s #4, UK’s #3, India’s #2 as far as the money that (they) make off of the television.
“So it’s a very important market for WWE, but not a market that they can run a whole bunch of shows in like they can in Canada or the UK.”
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WWE had previously held a show called Superstar Spectacle in January 2021 from the WWE ThunderDome, which featured the likes of Jeet Rama, Guru Raaj, Giant Zanjeer, Sareena Sandhu and the Bollywood Boyz.
Another Indian star that will seemingly appear on the upcoming show is Shanky, who is featured on the poster.
It had previously been reported that Indus-Sher were being strongly positioned for the upcoming show, despite the fact they haven’t appeared on Raw for a few weeks now.
More recently, it was also revealed that John Cena would be in action at the September 8 show.
If you use this transcription or any portion of it please credit WrestleTalk.com and link to this page.
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1 hour ago by Dave Adamson
