WWE announces most successful business period in history

Vince135792003

Vince had a good start to the year:

World Wrestling Entertainment announced this morning its most successful business period ever, with the first three months of 2008, featuring Wrestlemania 24 and the Royal Rumble, grossing $162.6 million and turning a $19.5 million after tax profit.

It was well above the same period last year, but Wrestlemania was last year figured into the second quarter.

Wrestlemania 24 is estimated at doing 1,058,000 buys.

Dave Meltzer

Imagine what they could do in a boom era now that they seem to have nailed running their business as efficiently as they ever have.

orestes

Vince135792003 wrote: »

Vince had a good start to the year:



Imagine what they could do in a boom era now that they seem to have nailed running their business as efficiently as they ever have.

Bloody hell, and that's with the around par product they are putting out these days? Could you imagine how much business they would do if they were doing Attitude era quality shows?

Vince135792003

orestes wrote: »

Bloody hell, and that's with the around par product they are putting out these days? Could you imagine how much business they would do if they were doing Attitude era quality shows?

Yeah it's a weird one to judge though. I'm not disagreeing with you because well I said the same thing in my first post!

You can look at it in a number of ways though. For example, if Attitude version 2 came along it could alienate alot of the parents and kids who now watch who make up a sizable portion of the people watching now I think.

Over the last few years, WWE have toned the show down and it's clearly being targeted much more to kids with Rey and Cena being 2 big players in this. And then you have the kids website upcoming and the kids magazine.


I think WWE's success has been it's ability to make money out of younger, newer fans while at the same time not alienating a larger portion of older fans and making money off them too.

What I mean is, if you're 10, you can probably buy about 50 different merchandise items related to John Cena. Meanwhile if you're 20+ they have a range of things that appeal to you aswell like old dvd's, WWE 24/7, the Hall of Fame, going to see Wrestlemania etc..

Also, their expansion internationally has just been a massive success too.

To me this is the "McDonalds era" of WWE in that they can produce average tv year in year out in the eyes of many while at the same time maximise profit from it.

Mr.Nice Guy

Interesting though that they didn't top last year's Wrestlemania buyrate.

Vince135792003

It was a big number to top.

I'm not surprised they didn't. They really did a great job in 2007 of promoting Wrestlemania. This year felt a little lackluster to me (although obviously not that lackluster considering they topped one million buys!).

In saying that there numbers are up for the Royal Rumble and No Way Out (about 150 thousand buys more in comparison to last year) so it really evens itself out.


If you want to make another comparison, Wrestlemania this year did 740,000 domestic American ppv buys while Brock Lesnar's debut in the UFC did about 600,000.

A present for business geeks!:http://corporate.wwe.com/news/documents/1Q2008PressRelease.pdf

I dunno about you guys, but generally speaking, I've thought that so far, 2008 has been a very good year for WWE (Im not talking financially).

Kane-N-Nite

Deleted User wrote: »

I dunno about you guys, but generally speaking, I've thought that so far, 2008 has been a very good year for WWE (Im not talking financially).

& Its only going to get better with WrestleMania XXV looming in the distance....

Vince135792003

Deleted User wrote: »

I dunno about you guys, but generally speaking, I've thought that so far, 2008 has been a very good year for WWE .

Well tell me a year that you didn't think was good so we can compare and I'll get back to you.

To me it's been pretty much like every other year from about 2003 onwards. In other words it's been solid. Some good, some bad and some in between.

rovert

**** CSR! Yeah!

Its a pity the wrestling is Sh!t .

Everybody watch TNA , or Poresu .