Black Widow
04-28-2008, 04:37 PM
For most of 2007, the reputation of World Wrestling Entertainment seemed to be in tatters, its ratings and share price staggering after a suicide-murder involving one of its biggest stars.
This week, W.W.E. managed something that Katie Couric and CBS couldn’t: host all three presidential candidates on its prime-time broadcast.
Each candidate taped a special message for last Monday’s episode of “W.W.E. Raw,” the company’s longtime wrestling extravaganza on USA Networks. In their best mock-wrestler voices, Hillary Rodham Clinton renamed herself Hill-Rod, John McCain renamed his fans the McCainiacs, and Barack Obama played off the familiar tag line of a W.W.E. star, the Rock: “Do you smell what Barack is cooking?”
After the messages from the real candidates, the show staged a match between political look-alikes (with a Bill Clinton stand-in as an underhanded manager).
Monday’s show drew 4.97 million viewers, according to Nielsen, just a little under its 2008 average of 5.19 million. But the candidates were able to reach 1.45 million male viewers ages 18 to 34, just above the show’s average this year.
Those numbers represent a business turnaround for the W.W.E. in the year after the death of one of its star wrestlers, Christopher Benoit.
Chris McCumber, executive vice president for marketing at the USA Networks, said “W.W.E. Raw” was the network’s “Monday Night Football,” “except for us it’s better because there’s no off-season. It’s 52 weeks a year and it’s live.”
A spokesman for the Obama campaign said it did the W.W.E. taping “for the same reason we taped a segment with Rachael Ray — this campaign has been about reaching out to new voters and getting them involved in politics, so it’s important to reach as broad an audience as possible.”
W.W.E.’s quick recovery is the result of many steps the company has taken, including expanding overseas and online, where its digital revenues grew 47 percent last year in part because of a mobile content deal with AT&T Mobile. W.W.E. was also able to react quickly, turning the issue of steroids to its advantage, even as the public grew increasingly weary of steroid scandals and corporate foot-dragging in other sports, like baseball and bicycling.
“The Benoit thing was a tragedy,” said Alan Gould, an analyst for Natixis Bleichroeder, a New York-based research firm. “But I don’t see that changing the fan base or the economics or the long-term value of this franchise.”
“W.W.E. Raw,” the flagship broadcast, marked its 15th anniversary last December. Also in December, W.W.E. signed a new contract keeping “Raw” on USA through 2010. The company has two other TV franchises: “SmackDown” on CW (moving to MyNetworkTV in the fall) and “ECW” on Sci-Fi.
The turnaround was completed by a company that — while public — is still very much a family-run enterprise. In 1982, Vince McMahon, a promoter and announcer, took over his father’s wrestling business, and with his wife, Linda, began to build the World Wrestling Federation into a national brand (the company changed its name — and initials — after losing a legal battle with the World Wildlife Fund).
Mr. McMahon, who still plays the part of the corporate overlord on some of the company’s broadcasts, is chairman of the company and his wife is chief executive.
Mr. McMahon was in the midst of a wrestling drama — in the story line, he was faking his own death in a terrorism-related plot — when he received word on June 25, 2007 that Mr. Benoit, 40, one of W.W.E.’s most popular wrestlers, had died, along with his wife and their 7-year-old son. Acting on that news — and that was all the organization knew —W.W.E. canceled its sold-out show in Corpus Christi, Tex., and instead showed a three-hour tribute to Mr. Benoit, whom the McMahons said they knew as a wonderful father and a mild-mannered veteran of the ring.
A day later the gruesome details emerged: Mr. Benoit had murdered his wife and son, placed bibles on their corpses, then hanged himself in the family’s home in suburban Atlanta. The police also found steroids — long a public relations liability for W.W.E. — in the wrestler’s home.
The company quickly went on a public relations blitz. Mr. McMahon broke character, appearing on news and cable television, to highlight W.W.E.’s steroid policy, which the company then bolstered with the suspension of at least 10 performers over the new few months.
Still, Mr. Benoit’s death had an immediate impact. In the month after the murders, ratings for two of the company’s television programs fell. By mid-August, W.W.E. shares had dropped by more than 15 percent. And some even worried that Mr. McMahon’s company would lose sponsors.
That did not happen. Ratings gradually improved and sponsors — Unilever, Bayer, Procter & Gamble, Electronic Arts, Warner, Paramount, Universal, Sega and the Army National Guard — remained committed.
The company had dealt with steroid scandals previously. In the 1990s, George T. Zahorian, a doctor in Pennsylvania convicted of steroid distribution testified that he had sold anabolic steroids to stars like Hulk Hogan, as well as to Mr. McMahon. The company was widely criticized, and Mr. McMahon was later indicted, but eventually acquitted, on charges of steroid distribution.
The company, then still called the W.W.F., took a hard line, implementing an independent drug-testing program, catching and suspending dozens of wrestlers, even big names like the Ultimate Warrior and Davey Boy Smith.
Then in November 2005, Eddie Guerrero, 38, one of W.W.E.’s top stars, died of heart failure, which some said might have been caused by years of drug abuse.
In the aftermath of Mr. Guerrero’s death, Mr. McMahon imposed a stricter drug policy, which mandated that performers be tested randomly at least four times a year. Whether that policy is keeping performance enhancing drugs out of the ring remains a point of contention.
Nonetheless, investors appear to have shed most of their concerns. Fans wear company-branded gear, attend live events, purchase DVDs, read wrestling magazines, receive updates and videos on their mobile phones, download ring tones and go to the W.W.E. Web site, which attracted more than 16 million individual visitors a month during the most recent quarter.
All have helped fuel W.W.E.’s revenues, which increased by about 21 percent, to $485.7 million in the 2007 fiscal year. During the same period, profits increased by roughly 7 percent, or $3.5 million, to $50 million. And in February, the W.W.E. announced it was increasing its quarterly dividend by 50 percent to 36 cents (largely benefiting the McMahons, who own 66 percent of the shares).
Jim Cramer, host of CNBC’s “Mad Money,” said in a March episode of his program that Wall Street ignores the company “because I think they’re snobs.”
“They don’t watch W.W.E. Maybe they look down on you when you watch it. Too bad for them.”
Awash in cash, W.W.E. is investing globally. It currently shows programs in 23 languages in more than 130 countries, and is now concentrating on expansion in Latin America, China, India, Australia and Japan.
“Here’s the formula we’ve been using very successfully,” said Linda McMahon, the chief executive “We first introduce our product into the marketplace via the television show. Once we’ve introduced our talent and our story lines via television, then we follow with live events and licensing and merchandising.”
Such success abroad has come at an opportune time for W.W.E, which still faces considerable challenges at home. While the presidential candidates’ appearance on “W.W.E. Monday Night Raw” may attest to wrestling’s cultural significance in the United States, the show’s television ratings are down slightly year over year and it lost viewers in the 18-to-34 age group. Analysts say W.W.E. lacks the charismatic and marketable stars it once had.
Until recently, its domestic pay-per-view revenues had been declining, in part because of competition from the Ultimate Fighting Championship, the leading brand in mixed martial arts.
But Dana White, president of the U.F.C., said: “People have been trying to count the W.W.E. out for years.” “They’re a powerhouse.”
As long as the company remains a powerhouse, more politicians may have to come calling. When asked about Mr. McCain’s involvement in the program, his campaign spokesman Tucker Bounds gave this statement:
“McCainiacs are freedom-loving people that believe our country is strengthened by personal empowerment and individualism. So reaching out to W.W.E. fans made sense, and it appears to be a successful relationship worth building on.”
nytimes.com
This week, W.W.E. managed something that Katie Couric and CBS couldn’t: host all three presidential candidates on its prime-time broadcast.
Each candidate taped a special message for last Monday’s episode of “W.W.E. Raw,” the company’s longtime wrestling extravaganza on USA Networks. In their best mock-wrestler voices, Hillary Rodham Clinton renamed herself Hill-Rod, John McCain renamed his fans the McCainiacs, and Barack Obama played off the familiar tag line of a W.W.E. star, the Rock: “Do you smell what Barack is cooking?”
After the messages from the real candidates, the show staged a match between political look-alikes (with a Bill Clinton stand-in as an underhanded manager).
Monday’s show drew 4.97 million viewers, according to Nielsen, just a little under its 2008 average of 5.19 million. But the candidates were able to reach 1.45 million male viewers ages 18 to 34, just above the show’s average this year.
Those numbers represent a business turnaround for the W.W.E. in the year after the death of one of its star wrestlers, Christopher Benoit.
Chris McCumber, executive vice president for marketing at the USA Networks, said “W.W.E. Raw” was the network’s “Monday Night Football,” “except for us it’s better because there’s no off-season. It’s 52 weeks a year and it’s live.”
A spokesman for the Obama campaign said it did the W.W.E. taping “for the same reason we taped a segment with Rachael Ray — this campaign has been about reaching out to new voters and getting them involved in politics, so it’s important to reach as broad an audience as possible.”
W.W.E.’s quick recovery is the result of many steps the company has taken, including expanding overseas and online, where its digital revenues grew 47 percent last year in part because of a mobile content deal with AT&T Mobile. W.W.E. was also able to react quickly, turning the issue of steroids to its advantage, even as the public grew increasingly weary of steroid scandals and corporate foot-dragging in other sports, like baseball and bicycling.
“The Benoit thing was a tragedy,” said Alan Gould, an analyst for Natixis Bleichroeder, a New York-based research firm. “But I don’t see that changing the fan base or the economics or the long-term value of this franchise.”
“W.W.E. Raw,” the flagship broadcast, marked its 15th anniversary last December. Also in December, W.W.E. signed a new contract keeping “Raw” on USA through 2010. The company has two other TV franchises: “SmackDown” on CW (moving to MyNetworkTV in the fall) and “ECW” on Sci-Fi.
The turnaround was completed by a company that — while public — is still very much a family-run enterprise. In 1982, Vince McMahon, a promoter and announcer, took over his father’s wrestling business, and with his wife, Linda, began to build the World Wrestling Federation into a national brand (the company changed its name — and initials — after losing a legal battle with the World Wildlife Fund).
Mr. McMahon, who still plays the part of the corporate overlord on some of the company’s broadcasts, is chairman of the company and his wife is chief executive.
Mr. McMahon was in the midst of a wrestling drama — in the story line, he was faking his own death in a terrorism-related plot — when he received word on June 25, 2007 that Mr. Benoit, 40, one of W.W.E.’s most popular wrestlers, had died, along with his wife and their 7-year-old son. Acting on that news — and that was all the organization knew —W.W.E. canceled its sold-out show in Corpus Christi, Tex., and instead showed a three-hour tribute to Mr. Benoit, whom the McMahons said they knew as a wonderful father and a mild-mannered veteran of the ring.
A day later the gruesome details emerged: Mr. Benoit had murdered his wife and son, placed bibles on their corpses, then hanged himself in the family’s home in suburban Atlanta. The police also found steroids — long a public relations liability for W.W.E. — in the wrestler’s home.
The company quickly went on a public relations blitz. Mr. McMahon broke character, appearing on news and cable television, to highlight W.W.E.’s steroid policy, which the company then bolstered with the suspension of at least 10 performers over the new few months.
Still, Mr. Benoit’s death had an immediate impact. In the month after the murders, ratings for two of the company’s television programs fell. By mid-August, W.W.E. shares had dropped by more than 15 percent. And some even worried that Mr. McMahon’s company would lose sponsors.
That did not happen. Ratings gradually improved and sponsors — Unilever, Bayer, Procter & Gamble, Electronic Arts, Warner, Paramount, Universal, Sega and the Army National Guard — remained committed.
The company had dealt with steroid scandals previously. In the 1990s, George T. Zahorian, a doctor in Pennsylvania convicted of steroid distribution testified that he had sold anabolic steroids to stars like Hulk Hogan, as well as to Mr. McMahon. The company was widely criticized, and Mr. McMahon was later indicted, but eventually acquitted, on charges of steroid distribution.
The company, then still called the W.W.F., took a hard line, implementing an independent drug-testing program, catching and suspending dozens of wrestlers, even big names like the Ultimate Warrior and Davey Boy Smith.
Then in November 2005, Eddie Guerrero, 38, one of W.W.E.’s top stars, died of heart failure, which some said might have been caused by years of drug abuse.
In the aftermath of Mr. Guerrero’s death, Mr. McMahon imposed a stricter drug policy, which mandated that performers be tested randomly at least four times a year. Whether that policy is keeping performance enhancing drugs out of the ring remains a point of contention.
Nonetheless, investors appear to have shed most of their concerns. Fans wear company-branded gear, attend live events, purchase DVDs, read wrestling magazines, receive updates and videos on their mobile phones, download ring tones and go to the W.W.E. Web site, which attracted more than 16 million individual visitors a month during the most recent quarter.
All have helped fuel W.W.E.’s revenues, which increased by about 21 percent, to $485.7 million in the 2007 fiscal year. During the same period, profits increased by roughly 7 percent, or $3.5 million, to $50 million. And in February, the W.W.E. announced it was increasing its quarterly dividend by 50 percent to 36 cents (largely benefiting the McMahons, who own 66 percent of the shares).
Jim Cramer, host of CNBC’s “Mad Money,” said in a March episode of his program that Wall Street ignores the company “because I think they’re snobs.”
“They don’t watch W.W.E. Maybe they look down on you when you watch it. Too bad for them.”
Awash in cash, W.W.E. is investing globally. It currently shows programs in 23 languages in more than 130 countries, and is now concentrating on expansion in Latin America, China, India, Australia and Japan.
“Here’s the formula we’ve been using very successfully,” said Linda McMahon, the chief executive “We first introduce our product into the marketplace via the television show. Once we’ve introduced our talent and our story lines via television, then we follow with live events and licensing and merchandising.”
Such success abroad has come at an opportune time for W.W.E, which still faces considerable challenges at home. While the presidential candidates’ appearance on “W.W.E. Monday Night Raw” may attest to wrestling’s cultural significance in the United States, the show’s television ratings are down slightly year over year and it lost viewers in the 18-to-34 age group. Analysts say W.W.E. lacks the charismatic and marketable stars it once had.
Until recently, its domestic pay-per-view revenues had been declining, in part because of competition from the Ultimate Fighting Championship, the leading brand in mixed martial arts.
But Dana White, president of the U.F.C., said: “People have been trying to count the W.W.E. out for years.” “They’re a powerhouse.”
As long as the company remains a powerhouse, more politicians may have to come calling. When asked about Mr. McCain’s involvement in the program, his campaign spokesman Tucker Bounds gave this statement:
“McCainiacs are freedom-loving people that believe our country is strengthened by personal empowerment and individualism. So reaching out to W.W.E. fans made sense, and it appears to be a successful relationship worth building on.”
nytimes.com