WWE Investors Have Eye on Network, Box Office

Try telling a hardcore fan that WrestleMania 29 at MetLife Stadium on Sunday won’t be the biggest event in World Wrestling Entertainment this year and you might meet some resistance.

But investors and analysts watching the WWE’s stock, which closed at $8.75 per share yesterday, have their eyes set on cable subscribers and the box office.

While fans thrive on the WWE’s live matches, investors would love to see the company turn more than 100,000 hours of old content into gold.

In late 2011, the Stamford, Conn.-based company announced plans to create the WWE Network which would air live event replays, the franchise’s weekly Raw and SmackDown matches, reality shows that follow the franchise’s bombastic characters and children’s programming.

The plan then was to debut the network in 2012, but it never happened.

WWE chairman and CEO Vince McMahon addressed the matter head-on during the company’s 2012 fourth quarter earnings call in February.

"Although we did not announce the launch of a domestic television network during the year, we believe, now more than ever, that we can realize the full value of our intellectual property using a variety of approaches in our global markets," he said. "Our confidence is based on the rising value of content and the tremendous global appeal of our brands."

Of the 4 million people who bought WWE matches on pay-per-view last year, 1.2 million opted for the WrestleMania 28 broadcast from Miami. Although that broke the company’s pay-per-view records, it seems unlikely the number of viewers who pay to watch the matches from home will surge back to 2005 levels.

"If you go back to 2005, that was the peak for the company. They did 6 million pay-per-view buys that year," said Bradley Safalow, an analyst at PAA Research based in New York. "Some of the decline in pay-per-view is a function of ongoing trends in the media space. Some of it has to do with the company’s own creative arc in terms of relative popularity."

Although John Saboor, the WWE’s senior vice president of special events, has said otherwise, Safalow doubts this weekend’s event will top last year’s Miami event in terms of pay-per-view buys...More?

source: nj.com