Club WWE gets its first tangible fan interaction moment, courtesy of the John Cena Classic, with subscribers voting for the winner.
It was recently confirmed that Club WWE subscribers would be voting on the winners of the men’s and women’s John Cena Classic, with the star himself confirming the details in a recent interview with SI.
Cena would note that the American Idol-style voting would be dependent on WWE having “the technological acumen” to deliver the fan vote.
For some, limiting the vote to Club WWE subscribers may seem to take away fan interaction, although there is a sound business point to the decision:
Club WWE
Announced in April of this year, Club WWE is described as “the ultimate insider membership program designed to bring fans closer to WWE than ever before through exclusive access, rewards and experiences.”
While the exclusive aspects have included ticketing offers, merchandise, a community forum, and hospitality, it has also been expanded to include content that can’t be seen elsewhere, including live chats with WWE stars, matches and legacy shows, all publicised through the official X account.
Lock down the vote
WWE has used fan votes previously, with the NXT Year-End Awards being decided through social media and the official website. Prior to that, the mechanism was seen in the Cyber Sunday and Taboo Tuesday PLEs, which saw fans determine aspects of the show online and via text message.
Providing a voting mechanism through Club WWE limits the input to subscribers, potentially allowing better management by locking out those who don’t pay the fee to participate.
The downside
Official numbers for Club WWE subscribers have yet to be revealed, with no indication of any particular milestone reached either on social media or the official corporate site.
While a lack of confirmation doesn’t necessarily mean that subscriber numbers are low, they’re likely to be lower than the viewership of the broadcast product on any given week, meaning that a large number of those who are likely to watch the John Cena Classic won’t have a say in proceedings, despite their fan status.
The upside
John Cena has previously commented that the Classic “might be a total failure“, and the vote is no doubt one of the ways that it could be unsuccessful.
With the winner seemingly being chosen from anyone who competed in any of the matches, an open vote could potentially lead to fans coordinating their choice en masse across social media for a variety of reasons, something WWE would be likely to want to avoid.
There’s also the possibility that whatever platform WWE uses to collate the votes wouldn’t be able to manage input from such a large number of potential voters, killing the point of the John Cena Classic in its first year.
On top of locking down the vote to the ones who have subscribed to Club WWE, it’s entirely possible that more fans will enroll ahead of the Classic.
Not the end
If the John Cena Classic returns for future years, there could be other ways for WWE to engage the fanbase beyond a subscription platform.
In September of this year, Nick Khan addressed how the company responds to social media criticism, speaking to The Varsity. The WWE President would compare such feedback to “comment or complaint cards” in restaurants and other hospitality venues, saying:
“Rarely, yeah, you got the nice person who would put in a comment card of, ‘I just wanna let you know how exceptional the service was tonight.’ But that’s not what that medium was created for. What it was created for was, ‘The service was terrible, the food was terrible, I didn’t like it,’ so you’d only get complaints.
“And by the way, those complaints, some of them we look at and say, ‘Hey, there’s some truth to this. Let’s make a little adjustment here, this or that.’ But you cannot cater.”
WWE has seen its far share on fan initiatives over time, whether it be around Daniel Bryan (now Bryan Danielson in AEW) and Yes! Movement, #GiveDivasaChance that would lead to the Women’s Revolution, or the reaction to stars such as Joe Hendry. While WWE no doubt take some feedback on board, it’s clearly in a limited and manageable capacity.
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