Why WWE 2019 Draft two became a huge failure?

Bengaluru, October 16: In the past week's episode of Monday Night Raw and Friday Night SmackDown, we witnessed the WWE Draft 2019 edition 2 which split the rosters for good and demolished the Wild Card Rule as well.

The draft also appears to be great news for young superstars who will now get more TV time and may also get involved in some significant storylines.

But then when you realize that the next two PPV events, Crown Jewel and Survivor Series cards will feature only cross-brand matches, you will realize foolishness of the timing of the WWE Draft.

The creative team of the company worked hard to host this two-day event after FOX had demanded to bring legit sports-feel to the draft so that it resembles NFL procedures. So, the WWE set up war rooms with USA and FOX officials allowed to pick superstars of their choice. But at the end of the day, there was not many surprises in-store that would have made the fans happy.

Most of the draft picks were predicted as WWE already hosted a Superstar Shakeup, earlier this year. Spoilers were out on the internet to make the Draft look unnecessary. Even some of the choices were a complete farce as it forced the company to continue trading even after the Raw & SmackDown drafts were over.

Alexa Bliss and Nikki Cross were sent back to SmackDown from Raw as per the latest update from the company's social media. Plus, the main reason to host the WWE Draft was to increase viewership, but that failed miserably.

As announced by @WWE COO @TripleH on @WWE Backstage, @AlexaBliss_WWE & @NikkiCrossWWE have been traded to @WWE Friday Night SmackDown.

In exchange #RAW will get future draft pick considerations. pic.twitter.com/DiZGFbloyy

— WWE on FOX (@WWEonFOX) October 16, 2019

Dave Meltzer explained about this on Wrestling Observer Radio and said the WWE decided on a Draft to improve the ratings.

"The rosters they were originally going to go with - because there weren't a lot of changes - the rosters that they were originally going to go with on Raw and SmackDown, those were the rosters after WrestleMania. They weren't going to do another Draft, then I guess they felt for whatever reason that they needed this secondary draft thing for ratings for the second week of SmackDown."

WWE hosted a season premiere week from September 30th to October 4th which increased the viewership. Vince McMahon and his team wanted to schedule the Draft the following week just to retain more viewership from the premiere week. But sadly, a significant drop was observed and it indicates the Draft failed to gauge interest among the fans.

The October 4th episode of SmackDown drew 3.9 million viewers whereas the Draft edition had approximate 2.8 million numbers despite Dish and Sling networks fixing their issues with FOX.

The huge decrease was followed up on Raw, as well which saw an average of 2.287 million viewers, according to Showbuzz Daily. (down by 2.36% from last week's 2.334 million viewers)

With FOX wanting 3 million viewers on average on weekly basis, WWE will now have to come up with backup plans to recover from the disastrous Draft as well as a flop Hell in a Cell PPV.