Want more wrestling news, rumors, and results? Be sure to visit PWInsider.com and PWInsiderXtra.com.
WWE released their corporate number this morning. Here are some interesting news bits from the release, with thoughts from me, for those of you that don’t want to read the whole thing.
*Network segment revenue reached a record of $131.0 million on a trailing 12-month basis that exceeded the Company’s annual pay-per-view revenue in every calendar year through 2014. During the quarter, Network segment revenue increased 57% on a pro-forma basis (excluding the timing impact of WrestleMania in the second quarter 2014)1. Supporting the growth in revenue, WWE Network had 1,156,000 paid subscribers at quarter end, and averaged approximately 1,216,000 paid subscribers during the quarter, representing an 83% increase from the prior year quarter and a 31% increase from the first quarter 2015 average.2 During the quarter, the Company premiered more than 75 hours of original content on WWE Network, increased the network’s comprehensive video-on-demand library to more than 3,300 hours, and continued to broaden its global distribution. From inception through June 30, 2015, WWE Network attracted more than 2.0 million unique subscribers with approximately 61% of these subscribers active as of that date.
That is very impressive on a few fronts. One, they generated more revenue from the Network in a 12 month period than they ever did from PPV. Wall Street will love that because it shows the Network was the right way to go.
The average paid subscribers of 1,156,000 shows that WWE can keep fans engaged once WrestleMania is over. That had been a concern of Wall Street as well.
*Beast in the East, a live event special produced in Japan on July 4th, has become the network’s most watched program to date (excluding pay-per-views).
I have said since day one that WWE needs to have more actual wrestling on the Network. This proves it. It’s time to give us more WWE. I still think recording the Friday night house show and airing it on Saturday nights is a great idea.
*For the remainder of 2015, the Company expects to add approximately 180 hours of original content to the network’s featured programming. Exciting original programming coming to the network includes a reality series following the stars of NXT as they strive to make WWE’s main roster, a new series Table for 3 that gives viewers a seat at the table with our Superstars and Divas, a studio show highlighting current events in the world of WWE and beyond, and new episodes of WWE 24, The WWE List, and Stone Cold Podcast, as well as teasers of Camp WWE, an animated adult series premiering in 2016. In addition, the Company plans to expand WWE Network’s robust video-on-demand library, which currently has more than 3,300 hours of content. Themed programming collections to be added to this library include The Raw Attitude Era Part 2: Austin/McMahon, WCW Nitro: Accelerating the War, and The 20th Anniversary of Monday Nitro.
Content is king. More live wrestling is the best thing that they can do, but the new Table for 3 show could be interesting. We may be able to get a deeper look into the talents, as we have with The Miz on Tough Talk.
*The Company continues to develop plans for geographic expansion to India, China, Germany, Japan, and Thailand.
This has to happen. India and China are the two most populated countries in the world. Japan and Germany are huge wrestling countries. Expansion in those three places should help grow the Network significantly.
*For the first six months of the year, live events are $26.4M vs. 40.3M in 2014.
This can be attributed to the timing of WrestleMania, as it was in quarter one last year. No problem here.
*Television Revenue: $52.1M in 2015 vs. $43.8 in 2014.
Between Tough Enough and the escalation of rights fees for Raw and Smackdown, the company did very well here.
*Subscribers: As of June 30, they had 1,227,000, with 939,000 in the US and 217,000 in the rest of the world.
Finally they are getting international growth. At the end of December 2014, the number was only 44,000. Wall Street will like this number.
*The company did 264,000 PPV buys in quarter two.
Despite the Network being so cheap, people are still buying PPVs, which is incremental income. WWE had based most projections concerning the Network on no PPV revenue. They got $3.5M in quarter two alone.
WWE is up $2.42 in pre-market trading, so at least early on Wall Street likes the filing. If you got up early to see if you would need to sell your WWE stock today, it looks like you won’t have that problem.
WWE will have a conference all at 11 a.m. to discuss today’s numbers. That should be a pretty fun call for them to host. We will have full coverage of it here on the site.
If you enjoy PWInsider.com you can check out the AD-FREE PWInsider Elite section, which features exclusive audio updates, news, our critically acclaimed podcasts, interviews and more by clicking here!
Bang On Casino
