Kemo
04-04-2016, 10:46 PM
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Today, WWE held a conference call and sent out a press release revealing the WWE Network subscription numbers as of today to reflect the interest in WrestleMania 32. Here’s the breakdown of today’s numbers and how they relate to the post-WrestleMania numbers last year:
1,824,000 total subscribers worldwide (up 39% from 1,315,000 last year, though there were no free subscriptions in that period)
1,454,000 paid subscribers worldwide (up 11% from 1,315,000 last year, with the same caveats applying to this and every other comparison)
370,000 free subscribers worldwide
1,390,000 total domestic subscribers (up 24% from 1,123,000 last year)
1,109,000 domestic paid subscribers (down 1% from 1,123,000 last year)
281,000 domestic free subscribers
434,000 total international subscribers (up 126% from 192,000 last year)
345,000 international paid subscribers (up 80% from 192,000 last year)
89,000 international free subscribers
While the decline in domestic paid subscribers is not great on the surface, you have to remember that they decided to allow free trials during WrestleMania with a specific goal in mind. The hope is that it would bring in a ton of trials, the new subscribers wouldn’t cancel (doesn’t matter if they loved the service or just forgot), and then keep their subscription going. If “churn” (subscriber loss) is minimal, then this is a huge success. If the numbers just go back to where they were, then that’s a big problem.
Meanwhile, the press release has quotes from Vince McMahon…
History was made last night with both a record-setting crowd at AT&T Stadium and more households than ever before watching WrestleMania on WWE Network. WWE Network continues to drive transformative growth for our company.
…and WWE Chief Strategy & Financial Officer George Barrios:
Results today further demonstrate the power of our brand, illustrate our potential to drive long-term growth and provide evidence that we are effectively executing our multi-platform content strategy.
There were also notes about how:
“Video views reached 65 million across social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Vine, and YouTube), representing an 87% increase over last year.”
“WrestleMania garnered a record 10.9 million social media fan engagements4, up 19% from the prior year.” They define those engagements as “the cumulative fan response to WWE content measured by the number of ‘likes’, ‘follows’, ‘shares’, ‘mentions’, and ‘retweets’ across social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram and Tumblr.”
On the conference call, which used this presentation (http://ir.corporate.wwe.com/Cache/1001209012.PDF?Y=&O=PDF&D=&fid=1001209012&T=&iid=4121687) (PDF) as a reference point, there wasn’t much addition information…or at least substantive information. Barrios did say that WWE Network is now available everywhere on the planet other than China, with their China strategy coming in “[the] next several months, hopefully.”
While WWE stock was rising leading up to the announcement ((Previous close was $17.71/share, open was $17.71, and high was $18.86), it dropped sharply thereafter. The stock bottomed out at $15.90 before rebounding slightly to $16.56, which is the price per share as of this writing.
Today, WWE held a conference call and sent out a press release revealing the WWE Network subscription numbers as of today to reflect the interest in WrestleMania 32. Here’s the breakdown of today’s numbers and how they relate to the post-WrestleMania numbers last year:
1,824,000 total subscribers worldwide (up 39% from 1,315,000 last year, though there were no free subscriptions in that period)
1,454,000 paid subscribers worldwide (up 11% from 1,315,000 last year, with the same caveats applying to this and every other comparison)
370,000 free subscribers worldwide
1,390,000 total domestic subscribers (up 24% from 1,123,000 last year)
1,109,000 domestic paid subscribers (down 1% from 1,123,000 last year)
281,000 domestic free subscribers
434,000 total international subscribers (up 126% from 192,000 last year)
345,000 international paid subscribers (up 80% from 192,000 last year)
89,000 international free subscribers
While the decline in domestic paid subscribers is not great on the surface, you have to remember that they decided to allow free trials during WrestleMania with a specific goal in mind. The hope is that it would bring in a ton of trials, the new subscribers wouldn’t cancel (doesn’t matter if they loved the service or just forgot), and then keep their subscription going. If “churn” (subscriber loss) is minimal, then this is a huge success. If the numbers just go back to where they were, then that’s a big problem.
Meanwhile, the press release has quotes from Vince McMahon…
History was made last night with both a record-setting crowd at AT&T Stadium and more households than ever before watching WrestleMania on WWE Network. WWE Network continues to drive transformative growth for our company.
…and WWE Chief Strategy & Financial Officer George Barrios:
Results today further demonstrate the power of our brand, illustrate our potential to drive long-term growth and provide evidence that we are effectively executing our multi-platform content strategy.
There were also notes about how:
“Video views reached 65 million across social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Vine, and YouTube), representing an 87% increase over last year.”
“WrestleMania garnered a record 10.9 million social media fan engagements4, up 19% from the prior year.” They define those engagements as “the cumulative fan response to WWE content measured by the number of ‘likes’, ‘follows’, ‘shares’, ‘mentions’, and ‘retweets’ across social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram and Tumblr.”
On the conference call, which used this presentation (http://ir.corporate.wwe.com/Cache/1001209012.PDF?Y=&O=PDF&D=&fid=1001209012&T=&iid=4121687) (PDF) as a reference point, there wasn’t much addition information…or at least substantive information. Barrios did say that WWE Network is now available everywhere on the planet other than China, with their China strategy coming in “[the] next several months, hopefully.”
While WWE stock was rising leading up to the announcement ((Previous close was $17.71/share, open was $17.71, and high was $18.86), it dropped sharply thereafter. The stock bottomed out at $15.90 before rebounding slightly to $16.56, which is the price per share as of this writing.