WWE Hall of Famer and AEW announcer Jim Ross talked about the ideal length for pay-per-view wrestling events on his Grilling JR podcast.
“Somebody asked me that question on Sunday because the discussion was, are we serving too much barbecue? It’s hard for me to even equate that answer because I believe that…it’s a tough question. I believe that a pay-per-view should be three hours. Plenty of time. If you can’t conduct your business in three hours, you need to reevaluate your plan. At least, that’s my take on it. Those four and five-hour pay-per-views are daunting, to say the least. Somebody said, ‘Well, when you guys were down at WCW back in the day, how long were your pay-per-views?’ I said, ‘They were two hours and 50 minutes long.’ That’s a fact.
So I think somewhere more in the two-hour and 50-minute range is better, or just day three hours, for simplicity’s sake, is more my wheelhouse. Now that I’m getting older, my attention span has been affected, so I think three hours is a nice starting point for a pay-per-view. That’s just me. You first gotta cater to your audience, and I think when you get past three, you’re gambling, and I don’t know if that’s a smart thing to do, gamble with your audience’s attention span. Because no matter what we say, the heavy shit is at the end. It’s called a main event, and I think that’s something that’s very important. You gotta cater to that audience, make sure they’re covered, make sure they like the order, and it’s just hard. It’s hard to figure that out, but I think somewhere in that three-hour range would be my preference.”
You can check out the complete podcast below:
(quote courtesy of Colin Tessier)
