Welcome to the latest Roundtable discussion here at iFight365.com where ahead of our live WrestleMania 25 coverage we’re asking: WrestleMania 25 – Predict the buyrate!

Dan Short: I’ve never been good at predicting buyrates. It’s never been my thing, really. I tend to just wait and see the results, hope that people felt the same way I did. So, I’m just going to keep mine in a simple paragraph. The build has been quite terrible and there really isn’t a whole lot that is attracting fans aside Shawn Michaels vs. Undertaker. At the end of the day, I’m thinking the buyrate will be way below the norm. I’d say roughly 750,000 will buy the pay-per-view, three-fourths of what WrestleMania XXIV did. Call me crazy, but I think they just did a pretty bad job setting up the big event this year.

Phil Lowe: A lack of celebrity involvement and mainstream media coverage, combined with some pretty poor booking and build to the biggest show means that WWE head to Houston knowing that the buyrate for WrestleMania will almost exclusively be based on the Mania name itself.

Sure, the build for a couple of matches has been good. But other than Michaels/Taker and Triple H/Orton, it’s been a pretty shoddy couple of months. The Hardy vs. Hardy feud may add a few buys but nothing huge. The Edge/Cena/Show triple threat match has been put together in a really bad way with Cena being completely misused. Money in the Bank features Mark fucking Henry. And Chris Jericho vs. The Legends was an opportunity which was, quite frankly, wasted.

Here in the UK, we’re paying what works out at around $20 for tonight’s show. I will watch tonight’s show in HD for around a third of the cost that an American purchasing Mania in HD will pay. If I was expected to pay for tonight’s show three times the amount I actually will be, I’d be spending that money elsewhere.

The card is not a “must see” card. There’s a recession hitting everybody’s back pocket in the U.S, here in the UK and pretty much everywhere else. And if WWE didn’t already know that, take a look at the buyrate for the Royal Rumble back in January, which did under 270,000 buys domestically and 445,000 worldwide.

WWE are looking for tonight’s show to do over one million buys. That just isn’t going to happen and its WWE’s own fault to an extent. Looking past the financial side of things, WWE have put together tonight’s card as if it was a “normal” monthly PPV. It just isn’t a WrestleMania quality card. Because of that, I’m predicting 725,000 buys worldwide and I wouldn’t be surprised if WWE struggle to get over the 400,000 mark domestically.

Mark Bright: Predictions for the WrestleMania buyrate have been made in several other online destinations, with almost everybody expecting a drop from last year’s 1.06 million, and definitely missing the 1.2 million record buyrate set two years ago. Several factors have been argued as reasons for this. Firstly, we are in the middle of an economic downturn. Secondly, the mainstream media publicity has been way down on this show compared to previous years, mainly due to the lack of a celebrity figure like Donald Trump and Floyd Mayweather. Thirdly, PPV buyrates have almost all been down across the board for WWE PPVs lately, culminating in a buyrate for the Royal Rumble PPV that must have horrified most WWE executives. Fourthly, the build for this show has been very hit and miss. They’ve had some money angles with Orton and HHH/The McMahons, but one money angle was followed by a couple of weeks of backwards steps.

This is really the year that we will find out how big a factor the WrestleMania name is. There’s no Hogan v. Andre or Austin v. Rock level match. While Undertaker v. Shawn Michaels is a legendary match and the thing I’m most looking forward to, I don’t think it’s the kind of hook that will make non-buyers part with their $54.95 (or £14.63 for viewers in the UK) like, say, one last Stone Cold Steve Austin match would have.

Mickey Rourke appearing would have been a big deal if he had won the Best Actor Oscar, even more so if he was working a match with Chris Jericho rather than just appearing in the corner, but that didn’t happen. The shockingly low Royal Rumble buyrate could be explained away by UFC having their biggest PPVs in November, December and January including such marquee bouts as Brock Lesnar v. Randy Couture and BJ Penn v. Georges St. Pierre.

At least publicly, WWE officials have been insistent that UFC has no effect on their buyrates, and for their sake they’d sure better hope they are wrong and those UFC’s DID bring down the Rumble buyrate, because if not, WWE might be screwed even more than people think.

But while the Rumble was down, and some shows like Cyber Sunday did scarily low numbers last year, none of them are WrestleMania. WrestleMania is the show that the once-a-year buyers buy, in the same way as people who don’t watch Gridiron will still watch the Super Bowl, and people who don’t watch all manner of sports will still watch the Olympic Games. But the question is the economy, which had started its downturn last year but has really hit home in the past 12 months. Will those once-a-year buyers skip this year? Will regular buyers think they don’t need to bother as they will be able to illegally download the show come Monday morning and avoid spoilers anyway?

I agree with the consensus viewpoint that they will be down on past years, but I really don’t think by much. I do buy into the WrestleMania name as being a big deal, and I do believe people will put their money down for the biggest show of the year, which this unquestionably is. I think they will do around 800,000 buys on a worldwide basis, and despite public predictions of a million, most within the corporate structure within WWE will be fairly happy with that. It’s Backlash in 3 weeks that may suffer and struggle to hit 250,000.

Michael Campbell: Yikes. It’s tricky to gauge this one, for sure. Originally, I proudly declared that this event would draw 750-800,000 buys, a figure that, make-no-mistake, the WWE would not be happy with. There’s still a public belief within the company that the show is going to draw somewhere close to the region of the past couple of Mania’s, but that just isn’t going to happen. They are not going to come within touching distance of one million buys, even though that’s what they’re saying. Internally, they must know this, despite the public front.

There’s no doubt about it, the build-up to this show has been poor. However, it’s not been abysmal. There have been bright sparks, and for me the issue is more that the feuds have all peaked at different times, when typically, they should all have peaked this week, in time for the pay-off show. This lop-sided balance has been because Vince McMahon couldn’t decide on anything and stick to it. After the Rumble, we knew who one challenger would be. Post No Way Out, we knew who both champs were, and who one challenger was, but not to which champion. It was a messy situation, and the result was that the steamroller effect didn’t work in the company’s favour. As we got closer to the show, interest died, rather than peaked, as a lack of planning resulted in rivalries stumbling onto our screens, with little of an organic feel.

Matt Hardy cut a couple of awesome heel promos in his feud with Jeff.

The Big Show/Edge/Cena storyline was at its most interesting when Cena showed the world the video of Big Show kissing Vickie Guerrero. Chris Jericho’s feud was red-hot when it was with nobody in particular, but when the opponents were announced, the angle was sunk. Triple H and Randy Orton enjoyed some tremendous angles, involving Orton RKO’ing, and then nailing Stephanie with a DDT. But these situations occurred at the start and end of their build-up, with much that occurred in between, being really inconsistent. In fact, the only feud that showed consistency has been Undertaker and Michaels, which has been terrific, but is not pushed in the Main Event spot.

So clearly, there’s been a lot of good stuff, but it’s been spread out, and at no point created that necessary tidal wave of excitement.

That said, the last time WrestleMania drew a crappy buy-rate was in 2003, when Mania 19 hovered around a dismal 600,000 buys. For me, the build-up was very good to that show, though confused, as the company focused on McMahon/Hogan, instead of what the public wanted to see. But in 2003, we’re talking about what was essentially the pre-UFC boom period, which has coincided with WrestleMania becoming a one million buys-busting event. Since then, every Mania has done increasingly better than the last (with the exception of last year, which was down from 2003, but still up from all the rest). Clearly, WM 25, on name-value alone, is not going to come anywhere near as low as the atrocious 2003 buyrate, and realistically, should be closer to 2003’s record by comparison.

The interesting number amongst the more recent Mania events is WM 22, which pulled around 958,000 buys, beating the year previous. WM 21 had Hogan, the outstanding build for Batista/HHH, and Angle versus HBK. But the build for WM 22 (Cena/HHH, Rey/Angle/Orton, Taker/Henry, HBK/McMahon), was weaker, and the card was lousy on paper. By this point, clearly the brand name value alone was a vital component in Mania’s growth.

The other figure that must be considered as well is the buyrate for the Royal Rumble. WM 22, aside from name value, had no reason to be up on WM 21. But trends are important, and the 2006 Rumble drew far better than its predecessor. The year following however, 2007, drew less than 2006, but more than 2005, and considering the monster that was WrestleMania 23- go figure! But 2007’s WrestleMania had enormous celebrity involvement, with Donald Trump; therefore it had ridiculous media coverage. This year, the Rumble was down significantly, and it’s lowest in years, with its most recent comparable partner, being 2005.

Taking all that in………whew… I don’t think this year will be a colossal flop. There’s not the celebrity involvement, or solid build-up of the past couple of years. But the brand name is much more significant than it was in 2003/2004. Given the combination of all of these factors, I would be looking at WM 25 to hit somewhere between the standard set by WrestleMania 20, and 21. That is, somewhere between 826, and 941 000 Buys. And it’s looking likely to be at the lower end of that particular scale.

So – 850,000. That’s my guess. Optimistic? Yep. But just think; if the PPV only draws that, the WWE will be absolutely furious…just imagine if it comes in lower.