WWE will reportedly lose more money in a calendar year than any wrestling promotion in history except for WCW 2000, according to the Wrestling Observer. The company will lose somewhere in the range of $46-52 million this year. WCW lost $62 million in 2000. WWE’s projections had them breaking even based on their expectations for their TV deal. They had projected to lose $23-26 million. Needless to say, they are not going to break even since they did not get the revenue they needed from their NBCU deal. If you are wondering if WWE will be going out of business any time soon, don’t bet on it. The company is still going to be in good shape for years to come.
WWE’s internal projections was 1 million subscribers by WrestleMania but the public prediction was to reach that number by the end of the year. They set that goal as a way to impress their investors since they expected to announce a far better number around WrestleMania. Now the fear is that the “ramp rate” has died down and that new subscribers are just trickling in and most of the fans that the fans that haven’t ordered the network will likely never order it since most fans that didn’t order WrestleMania would not be likely to order just for a “B” show like Payback.
One thing to note is that WWE has quietly dropped the referral program that they were pushing on Raw a couple of weeks ago. That would seem to indicate that the program was not doing to well which does not bode well for the network numbers.
