After the successful debut of Wrestlemania 30 on WWE’s Digital Network last week, WWE announced today taht the event did a record 1 million U.S. household reach along with PPV buys for the event.
STAMFORD, Conn., April 15, 2014 – WWE® (NYSE: WWE) today announced that WrestleMania 30 reached a record 1 million households in the U.S. alone on WWE Network and pay-per-view combined, the first time WrestleMania has eclipsed this mark domestically. With more than 667,000 WWE Network subscribers in the U.S. and nearly 400,000 domestic pay-per-view buying homes for WrestleMania 30, WWE is confident that it will reach its goal of 1 million subscribers by the end of 2014.
WWE Network launched on February 24 in the U.S. and successfully streamed six hours of live coverage of WrestleMania 30 on Sunday, April 6. Additionally, more than 7.1 million hours of video content was viewed on WWE Network during WrestleMania Week from Tuesday, April 1 through Tuesday, April 8.
WWE Network will be rolled out in Canada, the U.K., Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Hong Kong and the Nordics in late 2014/early 2015.
Payout Perspective:
If you add up the WWE Network subscribers (667,000) plus the number of Wrestlemania PPV buys (400,000), the total reach for the event results in 1.067M domestic households that purchased the event. The PPV price for a Wrestlemania event is $59.95. It’s no coincidence that the 6-month WWE Network subscription price is $9.99 with a 6 month commitment, which is $59.94, or roughly the exact same price as the Wrestlemania PPV. By doing so, the WWE can announce that they domestically sold 1.067M PPV buys for the event, which is an impressive number. Once you add up international PPV buys, and in the future, international WWE Network subscribers, the number could substantially grow.
All the work that the WWE is doing in terms of their digital network co-inciding with the PPV model is interesting to watch. Dish and a few other cable/dish PPV carriers have not been too thrilled about the WWE’s decision to start their own digital network and offer their PPV’s as well. At this point in time, it was a big win for the WWE to keep the cable and satellite companies still offering the event as a PPV. The UFC and boxing promoters will be watching this venture closely as they observe whether WWE’s new business model is sustainable. A big part of that if WWE’s hope that they can increase their WWE Network subscription base from 667,000 to 1 million by the end of the year.
I don’t see how the WWE can claim 1 million buys. Those subs are for 6 months. You cant really apply 6 months of fees to an even in a single month. Because those months have PPV’s also. You are stealing money from them to boost WM 30. That’s very misleading and makes WM look better than it did and makes the other events look worse.
There is no way to know for sure and there is no formula that is going to balance the right perportion of subs that WM is responsible for. But the best start is counting the $10 for this month that come from the 667,000 subs. Add that to the PPV revenue and WM 30 grossed $30 Million dollars. It did the equivalent of 620,000 PPV buys.
The good news for the WWE is the current sub rate means it puts the next 5 PPVs at equivalent of 220,000 PPV buys. Because they don’t have to split this with PPV provider. They would have to do 220K buys to match the 667k subscribers. Depending on how many more subs WWE gets going into these PPV’s and how people buy the PPV. These events are going to blow away anything they were doing before the network. The only downside is they took a big hit on WM. But I think it will gain subs and by the time the sub runs out it is almost time to buy the next WM. That Wm will likely add more subs and I doubt WWE will lose many throughout the year. By next WM I believe they will be well over 1 million subs.