WWE held their third-quarter 2015 earnings conference call on Thursday, October 29th, 2015 that featured George Barrios (Chief Financial Officer) and Vince McMahon (CEO & Chairman). Here are the highlights.
– Michael Weitz opened the call with the normal legal stuff.
– Vince McMahon would then follow up with some statements. McMahon listed how much WWE has grown financially thanks to the international market and TV rights. He said that NXT Takeover shows “do extremely” well for them on the network. He would list all of the new content coming to the WWE Network, which is listed in the press release.
– India, Germany, and China are expected to grow the numbers even more. McMahon is excited about those countries growing the subscriber count.
– McMahon is very happy about having 37 new advertisers for their TV promotions on NBC Universal.
– Other than PPV, the live special from Madison Square Garden was the most-watched program on the network. Other shows include Stone Cold Podcast and Swerved.
-WWE did $166.2 million for the quarter, which is up from $120.2 million in the same quarter in 2014.
– WWE wouldn’t give their expected WWE Network subscriber count for 2016. George Barrios did state that they expect revenue to increase further starting in 2016.
– The $9.99 price won’t be changing as they do not want to have any confusion with the price. It’s simple and to the point for their audience.
– WWE won’t be cutting back on how much content that they add to the Network. They had 85-hours worth of new content added to the network this quarter.
– Barrios said that advertising on the network is still light (experimenting with ads) and “they’ll learn” as they go when it comes to how many ads to put on the network.
– On ratings being down, Barrios said that they don’t just look at ratings, but they look at TV ratings, social media views and YouTube views as a hole. That’s how they look at ratings. They want things to be up, but they don’t look at just one thing (TV ratings), but the bigger picture. He did note that WWE’s ratings are better than anything on the USA or Syfy Network. Barrios said that they believe the content that is shown on television is great and fans are enjoying it.
– Barrios said that WWE is planning to invest “more than ever in company history” in technological investments to cover all their bases in changing markets.
– Barrios said that WWE attributes NXT with the rise to “power of social media” for the company.
That wraps up the call.
