As you can imagine, a big factor behind Jinder Mahal’s unlikely WWE Championship victory is the company’s initiative to make headway in India. While company officials do not expect a big uptick in television ratings or merchandise sales. In fact, WWE Shop just released the first Jinder Mahal “Modern Day Maharaja” t-shirt.
The real upside with pushing the company’s first Indian WWE Champion is with WWE Network subscriptions in the Indian market. WWE has a strong social media presence in India and will leverage the new champion to push Network subs there. We won’t really know if the plan was effective until August, when WWE releases the next round of quarter financial results (and network subs). WWE does not break down ‘International’ subscriptions by country, but an uptick in International subscriptions would suggest it was a good business decision.
Jinder Mahal will continue to work with Randy Orton in the coming months. As announced on SmackDown, the two will battle for the WWE Championship at next month’s Money in the Bank pay-per-view. In case you missed it on SmackDown, here’s Jinder Mahal’s Punjabi Celebration:
Finally, because you can never get too much Jinder, WWE released this photo of Jinder Mahal’s new championship title side plates.
