3. Grow Demand
Historically WWE had three huge PPVs which generated a lot of excitement: Royal Rumble (January), SummerSlam (August) and Wrestlemania (late March/early April). This year both Wrestlemania 30 and SummerSlam 2014 (8/17/14) will fall in the six-month window for initial subscribers. That's a problem. It leaves the September through December time period looking especially weak. WWE needs to shore up their domestic subscriptions. Internationally, the hope would be that new global WWE Network subscriptions will grow and "mask" those domestic WWE Network declines. That way WWE will still report a growing bottom-line number of WWE Network subscribers. Still, thats just a short-term solution. What will WWE have up their sleeve in one years time when the service is at steady state and theyre not launching WWE Network in giant new markets? (And it should be noted that some larger markets, especially in non-English speaking countries like Germany are still TBD for WWE Network.) The promise of the WWE Network is delivering new and archival WWE content directly to customers via their on-demand and live streaming service. The major hook (thus far) has been the PPV archives and the new live PPVs - all for just $10/month. However, what will WWE do when the outlook for PPVs looks dim (July-December) and the lure of access to archived PPV isnt enough to keep subscribers hanging around? Every parent has seen their child grow bored with a toy. Hopefully, WWE is currently gathering meaningful insights and greater understanding about what WWE Network subscribers are most interested in. There's no silver bullet. After all, its a segmented audience many subscribe for the new PPV content, some long for nostalgic archival footage (especially from rival promotional libraries) and there are certainly those which are most drawn to new content (series like
Legends House or newly produced shows such as
Countdown). Being able to accurate target customers is going to be a crucial step for growing demand for the WWE Network. When customers cancel, WWE will be able to individually email them with "come back!" offers - appropriately targeting (especially when the right content is available) will make an enormous difference. WWE appears to be rolling out content in weekly and monthly packs. It's a strategy to hook viewers to sticking around for another round. Not having
everything available at once was no accident. Along with close-captioning and creating bookmarking and ensure proper distribution rights, WWE wants to ensure that each additional content addition can be marketed as a "big deal". In terms of pre-produced content, it's safe to presume at some point (when? when!) theyll be adding large libraries such as weekly Raw/Nitro episodes. Or I expect they'll add titles from their Home Entertainment releases for on-demand streaming. However, I expect well won't see these taken out of the archives and unveiled until a strategic moment. The most likely timing is when WWE is angling to retain a large portion of subscribers (August/September/October). In fact, WWE CFO George Barrios mentioned last week that the Monday Night Wars docu-series would be starting in the Fall. Sadly theres no magic popularity knob that WWE can just turn which would instantly make their product hot. At this time its unknown what rebroadcast rights WWE was able to successfully renegotiate when they signed the latest NBCU deal. So we remain in the dark about whether WWE Network Subscribers will begin seeing Raw & Smackdown replays (in some form) available on the WWE Network starting in October 2014 within a tight broadcast window. Perhaps WWE go in the direction of more live content (outside of the monthly PPVs) should that prove to have a special allure for subscribers. In that case its possible well see more live content being produced for the Network programming more in line with the NXT Live specials. In theory, there may even be the desire to create some international-centric programming (something like the
Insurrection or
One Night Only UK-only PPVs of the past) which would coincide with the international WWE Network rollout. Time will tell. Until new subscriber numbers are released its going to be difficult to judge how effective WWE marketing efforts such as refer-a-friend and free week trials were. Yet, the fact that Monday Night Raw has quietly stopped mentioning the $50 in WWE Merchandise giftcard program suggests initial interest may have made little difference. Lastly, consumer Education still plays a humongous role in adoption of the WWE Network. We still don't know much about the nearly 400,000 US homes that ordered Wrestlemania as a traditional PPV instead of using the WWE Network. Does this suggest there's a large group of users that were unfamiliar, unwilling or unable to adopt a streaming technology? Was it just risk-adverse fans doubling up? Will the decision by DirecTV and Dish Network to no longer support WWE PPVs result in quicker conversions or just loss of fans? Or will the changing marketplace leave some consumer uninterested in trying the WWE Network service? Again, time will tell.