Welcome to a special look at Wrestlemania XXX which took place at the Superdome in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Ultimate Warrior passes away
Perhaps the news of the death of Jim Hellwig (aka The Ultimate Warrior) has overshadowed the post-Wrestlemania news. Hellwig was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame, made an appearance at Wrestlemania, signed a deal to be an “ambassador” for the WWE and appeared on television on the company’s signature show, Monday Night Raw. News broke late Tuesday night that he passed away in Arizona.
The Ultimate Warrior’s passing was picked up by mainstream news outlets as well as the UFC which sent out its condolences. UFC fighters also chimed in to offer their sympathies.
Similar to the passing of Randy Savage, the outpouring of condolences for the death of The Ultimate Warrior likely brought back fond memories of a person’s childhood for many that grew up watching him.
Attendance and gate
According to a WWE press release, it was a sellout with a gate of $10.9 million with 75,167 in attendance. Sunday’s event landed 5th in all-time Wrestlemania attendance.
For those in attendance, it may have been easier for fans to obtain unauthorized WWE merchandise as a Louisiana District Court denied the WWE’s motion to stop and confiscate bootleg merchandise from being sold in the area. An order like this is usually allowed as a way to protect the intellectual property of the company. However, the court decided it could not legally give the WWE this broad authority without identifying these potential infringers more specifically.
Don’t bet on pro wrestling
While we won’t necessarily get into the storylines from the night, it should be noted that The Undertaker’s win streak of 21 consecutive wins at Wrestlemania was broken by former UFC Heavyweight champion Brock Lesnar. While this was scripted, a gambling web site lost money on the fight as it expected that the WWE would not let the Undertaker lose. Fox Sports reported that the odds ranged from 14 to 1 and 8 to 1 for Lesnar to prevail. The maximum bet was $100 although some people were allowed to bet “as much as $500 on Lesnar.”
UFC hypes Lesnar
Not only was Brock Lesnar a part of Wrestlemania, but the UFC took advantage of the hype of the event by having the Rock (below), Jim Ross and Steve Austin talk about the former UFC Heavyweight champion. All of the videos were “Fight Pass Exclusives.”
WWE stock takes a hit
The day after Wrestlemania, the WWE announced its subscribers for the network. To the dismay of investors, it announced it had slightly over 667,000 subscribers which were below Wall Street expectations. While the WWE believes it will hit 1 million by the end of the year (the break-even point for the network), the stock fell almost 20% on Monday. At the end of trading Thursday, it is down to $21.12.
The WWE received a lot of mainstream hype for the 30th edition of the biggest professional wrestling event of the year. Most of this was focused on the new network and how it would fare airing such a heavily watched event. To its credit, the video stream had no noticeable hiccups which were a good sign for the future of the product. The question will be whether the negotiations for its rights deal will be affected in any way.
Payout Take: Although the stock is taking a drop, the broader takeaway from the event was that it did not suffer any tech issues which was a major concern considering the amount of problems it had when it first launched in late February. At least this shows that the product holds up. The next big test for the company is a rights fee deal which is anticipated to occur sometime late April/early May.
What I don’t understand is why the stock dropped so much. Yes the Network numbers are not what was expected. BUT that doesn’t mean WWE lost anything. That only means more people are still buying the PPV than expected. I understand a small drop based on the networks slower start. But what if they sold 500-700K PPV’s as well as have almost 700K subscribers? If so it would be a huge success for WWE imo.