WWE’s Next PLE Is Ten Weeks Away — The Longest Gap Since the 1990s

WWE’s next premium live event is Money in the Bank, which takes place on Saturday, October 10 at the Smoothie King Center in New Orleans. With SummerSlam having run on August 1, that leaves ten weeks between premium live events — 70 days exactly — and it is the longest stretch WWE has gone without a pay-per-view or PLE since the company moved to a monthly schedule in the mid-1990s.

The gap is the result of Money in the Bank being rescheduled twice. The event was originally set for August 29, then moved to September 6, before WWE confirmed on June 8 that it would land on October 10 in New Orleans instead. No reason was given for either change, and the October date pushes what is normally a summer show deep into the autumn calendar.

That does not mean the diary is empty. Saturday Night’s Main Event is scheduled for September 6 — the date Money in the Bank had previously been assigned — but SNME is a network special rather than a premium live event, and it does not carry the same billing, build or streaming positioning. For anyone tracking PLEs specifically, the run between SummerSlam and Money in the Bank really is a clear ten weeks.

For context on how unusual that is: the last time WWE went longer between pay-per-views was 1994, when SummerSlam on August 29 was followed by Survivor Series on November 23, a gap of 86 days. The launch of the In Your House series in May 1995 moved the company to a roughly monthly cadence, and it has broadly stayed there ever since. A ten-week wait is a return to a rhythm most of the current audience has never experienced.

The practical effect is a long runway. WWE now has more than two months of Raw and SmackDown to build toward Money in the Bank, which is a luxury by modern standards — most PLE cycles get four or five weeks. It also gives the roster breathing room after a physically expensive SummerSlam, which produced at least one significant injury in Brie Bella’s broken scapula. Longer builds can produce better-developed programmes, but they can equally allow feuds to sag if there is not enough story to fill the space.

It also leaves a sizeable window in the wider wrestling calendar. AEW has WrestleDream scheduled for October 17 in Orlando, a week after Money in the Bank, meaning the autumn stretch that would usually be crowded with WWE PLE content is comparatively open. How WWE uses ten weeks of television without a marquee event to point at will say a good deal about the depth of its current storylines.

Via WWE