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Of note, the 2014 Royal Rumble appears to have garnered in the area of 440-450,000 buys worldwide. That would be down from the 2013 Rumble PPV, which drew 579,000 buys. In 2012, the Rumble moved 578,000 buys.
Most interesting is the 2014 Elimination Chamber PPV, which was the final "traditionally distributed" PPV before the WWE Network launched the next day. The PPV, which was not carried by Dish Network due to the WWE launching their own Network, looks to have garnered in the area of 190,000-210,000 buys worldwide. The 2013 edition of the PPV garnered 241,000 buys. In 2012, The Chamber brought in 194,000 buys.
Obviously, these won't be the final PPV numbers but it does give us an indication that the loss of Dish and the ability to eventually watch the replay as part of the WWE Network took a bite out of the Chamber's PPV buys.
Another factor in each PPV being down from the previous year is that they did not feature the top draw of the 2013 events, The Rock, who was challenging for (and later on, defending) the WWE championship.
On the DVD front, the best selling DVD release for the most recent quarter was the Bill Goldberg compilation, which moved 99,000 copies. It actually outsold the WWE 50 documentary, which moved 86,000 copies. The Legends of Mid-South (the first attempt at monetizing that library) moved 64,000 copies. The Triple H: Thy Kingdom Come DVD documentary moved the same amount. The ECW Unreleased: Volume 2 set moved 62,000 copies.
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