10 Biggest WWE News Items Of 2014

1. The Highs And Lows Of WWE Network

It's hard to fully capture all of the things that happened with WWE Network this year. Prior to 2014, it was something that WWE had hyped up for over two years. Then they launched it in February of this year. Most people loved the fact that it was $9.99 per month, that the quality of the streams were pretty good and that they had a vast wrestling library. Above all that, PPV events are included in the price. It's a great value for what we're paying. The negative aspect is that WWE has lost hundreds of millions of dollars. They've had to cut production costs and they fired a lot of employees too. Several on screen employees were released while a few dozen office workers were sent packing too. WWE even remembered that JTG worked there and he was fired too. Then there's the price plan. The $9.99 per month price is still there, but they have changed things up so much that it's hard to keep track of it all. At the start they wanted people to commit to six months at that rate. Once their numbers came out, they did all kinds of changes like getting rid of the commitment. In November, they did a "free, free, free" campaign for one month so new subscribers could get it without spending anything. Clearance has been another major issue. It originally launched only in America although there are ways to get it if you live outside of the US. Later in the year, they launched in Canada as well as other countries. However, it's still not in United Kingdom (their second biggest market) although it's expected to launch over there soon, hopefully before the Royal Rumble. There have also been issues in terms of how WWE markets the WWE Network, confusion among consumers in terms of what devices can be used to actually watch it and if you only watch Raw then you might think that WWE Network is a heel because of how much they annoy us with it. We get it. You have a Network. Give us a better on screen product and we might be more willing to get it. For any hardcore wrestling fan the WWE Network is an awesome service at an affordable price. However, it's become a money loser and a headache for WWE employees because they haven't reached 800,000 paid subscribers yet, so there's a lot of uncertainty in the company. WWE Network is not going away. They will keep pushing it hard until they make a profit out of it, but there's no guarantee that day will come either. It was a big risk to even launch WWE Network. Since it's representative of the entire company, it's fair to say that its launch as well as the success and failures of it has been the biggest WWE story in 2014. It's been a down year for WWE on the business side and the creative end hasn't been much better.