WWE enjoyed a mixture of increases and declines in business for April. The Wrestling Observer reports on the key areas, web merchandise was up, live attendance was down, ratings were up and web traffic was massively higher. Domestic live attendance is an important area for WWE, so the decline isn't what they wanted to see. It has dropped from 8,800 paid per a show to 6,700, a 23.9% decline. However, this is partly because WWE ran bigger locations last April, it isn't as if people just didn't turn up. Likewise the international attendance drop off of 62%, 6,600 paid per show down to 2,500, isn't too worrying because this year's European tour actually took place in May. Raw in April averaged a 3.29 rating, 4.56 million viewers. That's up from 3.16 rating and 4.35 million viewers last April. This has to be pleasing to WWE, posting a 4.1% ratings increase with a 4.8% audience growth. Smackdown in contrast had minimal growth, 2.68 million viewers up to 2.72 million viewers. DVD shipments are down significantly, largely due to the WWE Network. Sales of 423,000 last year are now running at 191,000, a decline of 54%. WWE merchandise in contrast is up, going from 867 orders per a day to an average of 1,200. That's a pleasing increase of 38.4% in merchandise. The biggest success has to be the WWE website traffic, the company smashed every record in company history, 31.9 million unique visitors compared to 18.3 million unique visitors last April. It isn't as if the 74% increase is going to do that much for business, but it proves that interest in WWE is hot right now. In accounting for it you'd expect the mainstream interest in Undertaker's loss and sign-ups for the WWE Network to be the reason for the growth, but even with that considered, this is still a pretty staggering achievement. Reading these results overall, you can fell encouraged about WWE's position right now. They have more eyes on the TV shows and website than this period last year. They are selling more merchandise than this period last year. It isn't as if we are in an Austin level growth period, but we aren't in a bad loss period either. WWE can be optimistic about the results but their biggest concern right now should be the WWE Network and making that grow in subscribers. That area will long term be key to so many areas of WWE business, they've really bet considerable investment on it and need to improve subscriptions from around the 667,000 mark to above a million.
