WWE Still Hoping To Reach 3-4 Million Network Subscriptions?, News On WWE TV Contracts, More

Stephanie McMahon and WWE Chief Financial Officer George A. Barrios participated in a presentation at the 17th Annual Needham Growth Conference for investors in New York City earlier today. You can check out the presentation here, and you can listen to the webcast at this link. Here are a few notes from the presentation:

* Television rights fees have grown from $78 million in 2004 to $171 million as of September 2014.

* Live event revenue has risen from $62 million in 2004 to $114 million as of September 2014.

* Television agreements were renegotiated in the U.S., U.K., India, Canada, Mexico, Thailand and UAE. It was noted that all of their television agreements run through at least 2018. Annual revenue from WWE's seven key TV deals is expected to increase by more than $100 million from 2014 by 2018.

* Their social media success was heavily pushed.

* It was noted that RAW averages 4.6 million viewers a week, while SmackDown averages 3.0 million. The USA Network average is 2.4 million.

* They once again noted that of their top 16 global markets, 51% of the homes in those markets have "affinity for WWE." That is 23 million passionate fans, 75 million casual fans and 61 million lapsed fans. On a side note, a similar poll for the U.S. market caused the company to grossly overestimate how many domestic network subscriptions they would get.

* In addition to launching the Network in the U.K. and Ireland, they are looking to launch the Network in Italy, UAE, Germany, Japan, India, China, Thailand and Malaysia in the next couple of years.

* They stated that there are 98 million WWE broadband homes in the world. With a potential network adoption rate of 3% - 4%, the number of potential network subscribers is 3 - 4 million.