WWE CFO George Barrios took part in a presentation at the Global Technology, Media & Telecom conference in Boston, Massachusetts this week. Below are some highlights.
– The “Monday Night War” series will debut on the WWE Network “in the fall.”
– If WWE loses their PPV revenue stream completely, they will need 1.3-1.4 million subscribers to the WWE Network to offset the losses that would generate. They believe they can reach 2-4 million subscribers globally within 2-3 years.
– The company is monitoring the quality of the WWE Network “by the second” due to some early rough patches.
– On March 30th, the company had “about” 500,000 subscribers for the WWE Network, but by WrestleMania XXX on April 7th, they reached the 667,000 subscriber number that became public. The company will continue to announce subscription numbers at every quarterly call.
– Apple earns 30 percent of the profits generated through every subscription that comes through them. The same type of deal exists for other platforms, such as Roku.
– They have discussed running advertisements on the WWE Network, but have not yet made a decision as to whether or not they officially intend to go that route.
– WWE does not maintain credit cards on file from WWE Network subscriptions, they have other partners who process that material.