Last week, TKO head Mark Shapiro spoke at the 51st Annual J.P. Morgan Global Technology, Media and Communications Conference. During his talk, he indicated that WWE would be doing less live events in the future.
Shapiro indicated that they would be doing less “house shows” which are the untelevised WWE touring events which helped grow the brand. Shapiro’s belief that these “low-margin” events are no longer needed to grow the brand. While Shapiro would still like to see the brand grow, he believes that there are other ways to do it. The “house shows” were a staple of Vince McMahon’s tenure to draw fans to watch the televised events and PPVs.
Payout Perspective:
Obviously, you could have seen this one coming. With the WWE brand as hot as it’s been and commanding huge site fees for holding Premium Live Events in different cities, the need to travel as much as it did in the past is no longer needed. This will likely hurt smaller cities and venues that have been a part of a tour. This will hurt from a personal perspective for fans that await the WWE to come to their town. But from the business of TKO, it will mean bigger revenues in the end with fans wanting to pay for PLEs through subscription or traveling to a big event in other cities.
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