WWE held their second-quarter 2015 earnings conference call on Thursday, July 30th, 2015 that featured George Barrios (Chief Financial Officer) and Vince McMahon (CEO & Chairman).
I listened in on the call and down below are the highlights from it.
– Vince McMahon said that they’re looking to do a show similar to HBO’s “Hard Knocks” on the WWE Network.
– Vince also stated that they’re looking to do more podcast shows on the WWE Network.
– Vince praised their Facebook program and their YouTube sharing program with other content providers.
– George Barrios then listed all the revenue numbers that were also released via press release on Thursday morning.
– Beast in the East produced the most watched program of all-time on the WWE Network other than live pay-per-view events.
– 217,000 international WWE Network subscribers.
– WWE will offer a three-month gift card for the WWE Network in retail stores soon.
– Barrios described the growth of the WWE Network as “solid.”
– Barrios mentioned that WWE has made more money in this quarter during the WWE Network era than in 2013 when they were on the PPV era. Later in the call, he stated that they’re actually 200-300k away from doing what they were doing while in the PPV era. So who knows where they’re actual at this point.
– Barrios expects the fourth quarter to be down from the third and even the current quarter (second).
– Barrios plans to get the network in about five more countries within the next 12-months.
– Barrios took some questions from callers, but mostly denied their questions by saying that he would not comment on the question.
– McMahon said that they’re looking at all kinds of programming for the WWE Network. “Anything that they (fans) want to see” we’re looking into.
– McMahon said that the reason that SummerSlam is going to four hours compared to previous years three-hours is because they’re ‘going to have so much great content featured at the event.’
– McMahon praised Triple H for what he’s done with NXT and the talent that they current.
– McMahon ended the call by responding to a question about Hulk Hogan by saying that he (Hoga) has no material effect on them.
That wraps up the call.
