WWE released their financial earnings for the first quarter of 2015 on Thursday morning. January through April earnings were included and was released to the public this morning via press release. Vince McMahon, George Barrios and one other WWE executive hosted an earnings call this morning, which I listened to. Down below are the highlights from the call.
– Vince McMahon said that with Keeping up with the Kardashians being on hiatus, helped viewership for Total Divas. He went on to say that Total Divas was the E! Network’s most watched show on the network for this quarter.
– Vince said that live events were up by 4% and social media numbers were up by 9%. Vince also stated that he believes SmackDown moving to the USA Network from SYFY will increase viewership.
– The WWE Network has increased by 500,000 viewers since December or Q4.
– WWE will not be updating the Network’s subscriber number until next Quarter (Q2).
– George Barrios said that live events revenue was up due to WrestleMania 31.
– George Barrios announced that traditional pay-per-view made them $9 million dollars. WrestleMania 31 made up 4.9 million of that cash.
– WrestleMania 31 revenue was included in the first quarter earnings instead of Q2, which is what they usually do.
– George Barrios said that PPV, WWE 2K15 and live event revenue exceeded their expectations. WWE believes it is because of WrestleMania 31.
– When asked about the WWE Network expanded to other platforms, Barrios said that WWE plans on getting the network available for more Smart TVs, tablets and any other platforms that can be reached in a timely manner as well as at a financially low rate for the company.
– George Barrios believes that the cost of the WWE Network will be down by 10% this year compared to last year’s (2014) $115 million dollars.
– Vince Mcmahon was asked if he is open to changing the price of the WWE Network month-to-month or PPV-to PPV. Vince said he’s open to it if it is a big event (WrestleMania or SummerSlam).However, he would like to keep the price of the network ($9.99) the same each month.
– George Barrios said that they did 15,000 PPV buys for WrestleMania 31 in Canada.
This wrapped up the call.
