A new industry report details how, despite declines across the board, WWE was in a better financial standpoint in 2019 than any time in its history. Brandon Thurston of WrestleNomics has published a report looking at the wrestling industry over the past year. The report notes that while WWE’s audience and several other metrics have dropped, their new TV rights contracts for Raw and SmackDown have made the company stronger from a financial standpoint than any point in its history; including the mid-1980s and the Attitude Era.
The report notes that the drop in overall viewers for Raw (14.4%) and SmackDown (7.88%) exceeds the average drop among the top 100 broadcast and cable shows of 6%. In fact, Raw was down 35% in 2019 from its 2015 numbers, while SmackDown was down a total of 8%. Raw’s numbers are well ahead of the 14% drop by those same top 100 broadcast and cable metrics. It is worth noting that the demo ratings drop was higher in both metrics at 16.47% for Raw and and 8.26% year to year for Raw and SmackDown, respectively; they are down 35.82% (Raw) and actually up 5.84% (SmackDown) from 2015.
Audience isn’t the only place that WWE has seen declines. The company’s WWE Network subscribers fell for the first time last year, both in terms of domestic and overseas subscribers, and live event attendance was down to the point that, per Thurston, quarters that did not include WrestleMania are money losers. Online merchandise, Google searches, and YouTube views are down, while social media growth on Facebook and Twitter have slowed.
Despite all of this, the company’s lucrative television deals for Raw and Smackdown have given the company an enormous boost. Raw and Smackdown’s deals were worth $265 million and $205 million in 2019, with NXT reportedly worth $30 million to the company. WWE also received $100 million from its deal for Saudi Arabian events, $20 million from YouTube ad revenue and $16.9 million from WrestleMania tickets.
In addition, Thurston notes that metrics for AVOD (Advertising Video on Demand) services like YouTube have become “more generous” to WWE, and the company’s AVOD viewing did increase from 2019 despite the fact that the specific YouTube viewers were down as mentioned, from 10 billion in 2018 to 9 billion in 2019.
