The undercard also ensures that if the main event ends quickly fans will still feel that they received sufficient value for the price of their admission.
In professional wrestling, undercard matches usually last for five to ten minutes: the audience does not have to wait too long for the main event and the promoters often have to fulfill contractual television agreements.
Professional wrestling unofficially subdivides the undercard into uppercard, midcard and lower card matches,[4] which roughly correlate to the fame and quality of performance of the wrestlers involved.
The term occurs primarily with reference to combat sports such as boxing, professional wrestling and mixed martial arts.
Sometimes, multiple matches of equally high importance take place on a card, occasionally at intervals throughout (to sustain spectator interest for its duration), but generally at the end in succession.
[6] Mainstream American pro wrestling holds supercards at least annually and broadcasts them on pay-per-view (PPV) television.
Alternatively the second-largest, All Elite Wrestling (AEW) initially ran 4 annual PPV's over the year (Revolution, Double or Nothing, All Out and Full Gear), though added Forbidden Door as a fifth annual PPV in 2022 in collaboration with Japanese company New Japan Pro-Wrestling (NJPW) and in 2024 ran nine pay per views in total.
WWE runs three other supercards per year (Royal Rumble, SummerSlam and Survivor Series), but does not promote these at the level of WrestleMania.
Examples of non-pay-per-view supercards include Saturday Night's Main Event and Clash of the Champions.