10 Questions WWE Shareholders Should Be Asking Vince McMahon
9. Why Will Fans Pay Extra For Something They Are Tiring Of?
The big news from last week's release of the 2019 financial report is the mooted "strategic alternative" to the WWE Network.
This was expanded upon by Vince himself in the conference call, in which he indicated that such an alternative - in the form of an outside OTT provider purchasing PPV rights - may be in place as early as Q1. This, to a shareholder, must feel counterintuitive. Say, for example, that WWE sells the rights to Peacock, ESPN, Netflix, wherever - any streaming service that charges a fixed monthly price. Even if the pay-per-views are available at no extra cost, there remains an additional financial demand on fans between the new carrier and their existing Network subscription.
The numbers confirm that fans are reluctant to pay for pay-per-views as part of that subscription now. The count has decreased by 10% to 1.42 million in a development consistent with WWE's popularity woes. All metrics indicate that fans aren't willing to pay as much money, much less more, for WWE content, which situates the company in the same, uneasy space it has inhabited for a while now: unpopular, diluted, but absolved temporarily by vast sums of corporate cash.
Re-elevating bargain content into the premium is a tough, tough sell, particularly since the content creator is traditionally very slow to, if not entirely incapable of, changing or improving the content.
The WWE Network has failed.
Ask fans to pay more money for something they deem disposable.
??????
Profit?