Stephanie McMahon Attributes 20% Increase In WWE Audience To This Angle

It's no secret that the return of Bray Wyatt had a great deal of hype from fans of wrestling. However, according to WWE co-CEO Stephanie McMahon during a recent talk at the Wells Fargo 2022 TMT Summit, that storyline resulted in a significant boost in the company's audience.

"We were bringing back one of our biggest stars named Bray Wyatt," McMahon said. "We used a multimedia approach and hired a horror writer to come in and really help us craft this narrative so our fans were engaged." McMahon talked about one of the mysterious "White Rabbit" QR codes that led fans to a series of numbers that could've been interpreted either as a date or a time code: "0923." The co-CEO revealed that on the following episode of "WWE SmackDown," viewership around 9:23 p.m. shot up by 20%.

"It's strategies like that that really do work," McMahon continued. "The audience today is different. They're growing, they're evolving. Some people want to have a laid-back experience, and that's great, but a lot of people really want to engage deeply, and have fun, and have misleads and misdirections."

Wyatt made his return at Extreme Rules in October following weeks of build-up both on WWE television and online. Fans were absorbed by the "White Rabbit" teases, which can be credited to WWE's new Director of Longtime Creative Rob Fee — the horror writer McMahon alluded to. Since being brought back into the fold, Wyatt has been engaged in a feud against LA Knight, though Wyatt has yet to compete in an actual match. The storyline has seen Wyatt struggling with the different aspects of his personality, including his old persona known as The Fiend. It's unclear just where the story is headed next, but fans are sure to be in for a wild ride.