I was part of the paid crowd. It was quite the experience.
It was through a local casting company, so when I went to the meeting point before the show the company coordinated, I expected to see attractive looking people they could put in the background. You know, get their moneys worth.
Instead, it was basically just wrestling fans who I am sure if they had sent out an alert saying "FREE TAPINGS", they'd have gladly attended without the $50. The guy coordinating it told us to be loud but not offensive with our chants and asked if anyone had any WWE merchandise. Oh, and also please do not mention on any social media that we were paying paid to be there. They made us sign NDAs that no one read before signing. I hope I didn't sign my kidneys away brehs.
The show itself was pretty boring, and I find myself enjoying the TV show more often than not when I watch at home so I'm no hater.
The tapings have no flow, it's a 6 minute match, then a 5-10 minute break, and then another. Very few angles and whatever was done backstage wasn't shown to us.
I had hoped it would feel like an old Raw taping, where it's just live to tape and at least feels like a TV show. Jeremy Borash had the toughest job of the night, trying to get the crowd excited. He must have said "WERE GONNA BE ON TV!!!" 15 times as they taped spots to come out of commercials and have a "hyped" crowd.
They mixed it up with One Night Only matches but provided no context for them expect Borash saying "this is for Pay Per View!". None of the matches were especially strong, but I also can't blame the guys considering they are being asked to wrestle 6 nights in a row.
Despite the paid crowd, there were still a whole lot of empty seats as the tapings started, but it filled up a bit by the mid-way point. The venue is in a trendy-ish part of town with a movie theatre and some restaurants near by so I suspect they just got those people coming out of those things and encouraged them to come in. Some of the faces of people definitely indicated they were amazed by the concept of pro wrestling. Most of these people didn't stay long. Very family heavy as well, but they didn't stick around long either.
Oh, and they said they'd send us an e-Transfer of our $50, but I have yet to see anything.
I left feeling pretty sad about the state of this company and the fate of these wrestlers. If a lot of them aren't second guessing their decision to work for this place after this week then I dunno what to say.
@ Not mentioning on social media that they paid people when they posted the ad on social media (Facebook) 
. They didn't even look them over when we handed them back, they just seemed happy people were there.
