There were a lot of last-minute changes related to Sting’s WWE debut at last night’s Survivor Series pay-per-view, according to a report at PWInsider.com. Earlier in the weekend, WWE was planning to air some sort of “Sting is coming” promo, but clearly the decision was made to give him a much larger role on the show.
Up until the day of the show, Sting was scripted to appear either before or immediately after the Divas elimination match. Only a few people knew that Sting would be interfering in the Team Authority vs. Team Cena main event.
Sting’s debut at Survivor Series was done not only as a tie-in with the WWE 2K15 video game, but also as part of WWE’s larger Survivor Series strategy, which was to entice the new WWE Network subscribers into staying on board for December and beyond as paying customers.
WWE took other steps to hype the WWE Network for December, including the announced Bray Wyatt vs. Dean Ambrose TLC match as well as the live Steve Austin podcast with Vince McMahon, which airs next Monday after RAW.