4. Advertising & Cross-Marketing
The reason that WWE is paid only a fraction of the price that legitimate live sporting events like NASCAR, NHL and NBA receive is because advertising rates for WWE stink. In the jargon of advertising, WWE shows get lousy CPMs ("the advertisers' cost to deliver 1,000 viewer exposures to a commercial"). WWE needs to change the way they're fundamentally viewed by the major consumer brands. That's one of the reasons they've pursued the "PG" rating on all of their television programming. Since WWE no longer directly sells advertising, you may think that this is problem is the TV Network's (currently USA/SyFy). That's the wrong way to think about. Until WWE can convince major consumer product advertisers that their fan base's eyeballs are worth advertising for, WWE will remain cheap entertainment. It's in WWE's interest to reform that opinion and craft evidence that they make a difference. It would be good to see a greater internal focus within WWE where they combine advertising experience and Nielsen experience to create a new narrative about the potential power of the WWE Audience. One of the most interesting elements of the NBCU's "radical overhaul" of their advertising department was the decision to try and "cluster sales efforts for its broadcast and cable networks along demographic and thematic lines rather than the traditional network-centric approach." In particular WWE programming was called out alongside the entire USA/SyFy networks as one of the biggest revenue generators. If a network can figure out how to improve the rates for ads during professional wrestling, that will go a long way to proving why WWE deserves inflated television rights fees. Additionally, WWE programming has historically struggled to provide meaningful "halo" effects for the rest of the network's line-up. There's been exceptions - most notably, the enormous cross-over audience that fueled Spike's The Ultimate Fighter, and spawned the ascension of UFC - but those are few. Wrestling helps power USA's bragging rights that they're "the top network on Cable", but they need to do more. They may have to investigate how they could better integrate network programing alongside wrestling. Still, that's a strategy that can be messy, at best. For instance, back in January 1997, Turner's World Championship Wrestling tried to entice Monday Nitro audience to watch stick around and watch TNT's The New Adventures of Robin Hood! just so wrestling fans could see how Hogan versus The Giant ended.