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THE UPDATED WWE NETWORK SUBSCRIBER NUMBER, THE NETWORK WILL BE WORLD WIDE NEXT MONTH, ONE COUNTRY WILL GET IT ON THEIR CABLE, WWE NETWORK COMING TO SMART TVS AND MORE

By Dave Scherer on 2014-07-31 08:56:43

WWE just released their second quarter earnings, which are posted her on the site.  It should be noted that Wall Street is reacting positively to the numbers early on.

The WWE stock is currently up 40 cents to $12.49 before the market opens this morning.  It was down 38 cents yesterday.

Here are some important notes from the filing.

*The WWE Network: It had 667,000 subscribers on April 7.  They added 161,000 subscribers over the period, but lost 128,000.  The net difference is +33,000, taking the current count to 700,000 subscribers.

*They also announced that the world-wide roll out of the Network will take place on August 12, meaning that SummerSlam will be available to the entire world via The WWE Network.  From the release: "The Company plans to make the U.S. version of WWE Networkavailable on an over-the-top basis starting August 12th in over 170 countries and territories, including Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Singapore, Mexico, Spain and the Nordics, among others. The network is expected to be live in the U.K. by October 2014. Plans for the network in Italy, UAE, Germany, Japan, India, China, Thailand and Malaysia will be communicated at a later date."

*Also, WWE will continue the pricing point of $9.99 a month in the US if you commit for 6 months.  For those that don't want to commit, you can buy one month of the Network for $19.99.

*The WWE Network is launching on several smart TVs and Blu-ray players in mid-August.

*The company had speculated that they would have a loss between $15 and $18 million for the quarter, so coming in under that at $14.5M should be viewed positively on Wall Street.

*The WWE announced a long term content deal with Rogers Communications in Canada, where it will be an a la carte channel via traditional cable television.  They also renewed their cable deal in Canada for TV rights.

*WWE improved its Business Outlook for 2015 by $30M. That will make Wall Street happy. They announced that part of how they will do that is a 7% reduction in staffing, which is very unfortunate for those that will lose their jobs.

*WrestleMania 30 did 690,000 buys this year vs. 1,039,000 last year
*Extreme Rules did 108,000 buys this year vs. 231,000 last year.
*Payback did 67,000 buys vs. 186,000 last year.
*Money In The Bank did 122,000 buys vs. no PPV last year.

*The news there is that they still sold a decent amount of traditional PPV in the quarter, though that should lessen greatly with the world-wide launch of The Network.

Those were the big items from the release.  We will have full coverage of WWE's conference call later today.

 

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