WWE 2015 Business Partner Summit

WWE held their 2015 Business Partner Summit presentation on Saturday, March 28.

The show's hosts were Triple H & Stephanie McMahon. They were introduced with a graphic noting they were "The Authority". Throughout the show, Paul Levesque was always referred to as "Triple H" as opposed to his real name under his corporate role as Executive Vice President, Talent, Live Events & Creative.

The event opens with HHH & Stephanie explaining that WWE has five core pillars:

1. Pro-Social
2. Fan Engagement
3. Multicultural
4. Innovation
5. Family Friendly

(It's interesting that these are WWE's five pillars, but I can't even find a single thing on their corporate website listing them.)

Throughout the event, WWE awarded six partners - one representing each pillar and one to the overall business partner of the year. The winners were:

Award #1: Pro-Social = Special Olympics
Award #2: Fan Engagement = General Mills Totino's "Show Us Your Superstar"
Award #3: MultiCultural Partner of the Year: Ad Council - Impact of Fatherhood
Award #4: Innovation - Award #4: Rogers
Award #5: Family Friendly : Kraft Capri-Sun
BUSINESS PARTNER OF THE YEAR AWARD: WARNER BROS.

Some of the awards involved unique winning envelope presenters including Scooby Doo, a Mountie, Titus O'Neil and a giant pizza roll that looked like a Pop-tart.

In between the awards, various WWE executives presented their divisional pitches.

First up was Michelle Wilson and George Barrios.

They said that 2014 was a "a year for the record books". Obviously, their big point to sell was how great the WWE Network was.

WWE NETWORK

They talked about how WWE was the "first major franchise to take their video content direct to consumers with both live programming as well as a massive video-on-demand library." They also love to insinuate that the spate of new OTT (over-the-top) services launching soon are just "following suit" (CBS, HBO, Nick).

"That's right, We were first. More important than being first was why we did it. Innovation is in our blood." - George Barrios

Barrios characterized it as WWE was willing to take their pay-per-view business ("a 30-year staple of WWE") and "evolve it into a significant global growth".

WWE achieved one million subscribers in just 11 months while Major League Baseball took 7 years. (It's worth noting that MLB Advanced Media was founded in June 2000 so it was really at the forefront of sports internet subscription services. I imagine HBO Online is going to shatter WWE's record for subscriber acquisition when it launches. George was also sure to mention that he loves Major League Baseball, which I'm sure it just music to Vince's ears.)

Barrios noted that the WWE Network is "available in 177 countries." His tagline is "From Canada to Cambodia, U.K. to Uganda, Mexico to Malta."

They promoted their subscriber satisfaction and weekly viewership at 90%. Luckily, there was no mention of the outlandish WWE Affinity studies for once.

There was this claim: "WrestleMania 30 was watched by a Record One Million US Households. That was the first time that WrestleMania ever eclipsed this milestone domestically."

They're talking about a Press Release that was sent out on April 15, 2014.

A few things to note:

• They're combining traditional pay-per-view and WWE Network subscriptions. 
• There were many WWE Network subscribers who were signed up for the domestic service, but actually lived overseas.
• Several WrestleMania have achieved more than a million traditional PPV buys (at much higher costs) worldwide. WWE Network was available for only $9.99 and only garned 667,287 subscriptions for WrestleMania 30.
• WrestleMania 31 had 1.315M WWE Network subscribers.

In discussing programming on the WWE Network, the shows highlighted were the Monday Night Wars, Countdown, the Stone Cold Podcast, NXT and Slam City.

WWE repeated their "more households watching the PPVs" talking point with their example with Night of Champions. See the materials from the Q3 2014 Conference Call for more information.

As for new features on the WWE Network, Barrios highlighted adding "Resume Play" and "Watchlist" features.

What's left to come on the WWE Network? Three things were promised:
A. Recommendations
B. Playlists
C. Social Integration
Barrios also mentioned the possibility of adding a "gaming module", whatever that really means.

WWE is also launching eight new series which was discussed on their 3/30 press release.

For Barrios & Wilson, the biggest financial win in 2014 was renegotiation of the domestic and international television contracts. Interestingly the exact phrase used was "nearly doubled the value of our content globally." That's certainly an improvement, but it falls short of the "three times" multipler from the BSkyB deal (as reported by the Hollywood Reporter).

(For more on the 2014 Television deals, see my article "Key Takeaways from the WWE's 2014 Annual Report".)

Special attention was paid to Total Divas. I was a bit surprised by the claim that "three million women watched every week in the US". (That's obviously a skewed statistic that involves adding in all of the people who watch the show and reruns for a few minutes over the course of several days.)

As for Mobile gaming, WWE launched WWE Supercard "(most successful WWE casual
game ever launched") and WWE Immortals.

In Canada,

That brings us to social and digital media. 446 million social followers. 16 million WWE App downloads. 3.5 Billion YouTube views. Big numbers, if even they don't explain what they're doing with it. (This section also provided a moment where Michelle Wilson corrects Barrios, who said "3.5 Million views". Barrios retorts that she never listens to him so he was just testing her.)

Domestic TV

WWE is embracing the NBCUniversal Brand Positioning: ""For the Hero in all of US."

They are also "very excited that Tough Enough will be returning to USA Network in June."  There will be an all new format with live weekly content and unprecedented role for social media.

India/ China

Targeted Mobile Products suitable for markets like India
Continue "go to market strategies suited for those countries" - plan to allow fans to engage with the show all week long.

New Ventures

Constantly looking at growth opportunity and innovative ways to partner with you
We recently joint venture with Authentic Brand Group (ABG) to  relaunch TapouT (Apperal
Phunware - award winning mobile platform app developer that helps fans engage & monetize users on devices.

Relaunch TapouT in 2016.

Creating Virtual Reality Content.

 Looking at new live content.

Building new verticals in the digital space. Partnerships.
We keep our audience engaged through many platforms including Studios.
Fans get excited when they go see a film and spot the WWE logo in the credits.
HHH mentions that his youngest daughter wants to marry John Cena because of the Scooby Doo film.

B. MICHAEL LUISI

Michael Luisi thanks "Stephanie & Triple H". (No Paul here, I Guess!)
Started w/ 2 picture deal with Lion Gate in 2012. Success became a tag team that is 9 pictures strong. (His words.)

TARGET? Action & Horror films. African American & Hispanic audiences. Multicultural.
Pictures w/ Fox. Marine: still going strong with fourth installment in April.

Partnership with Warner Bros. has grown five fold. (Christmas Bounty, Scooby Doo WM, Flintsone, Stone Age and new Scooby Doo movie in 2016).
2014 was "our most successful year ever". (Let's remember they only made $500k OIBDA in 2014.)

2015 Slate:
Instead, The Miz interrupts.

#1: Killing Hasslehoff (Hasslehoff, Ken Jeong, Hulk Hogan)
#2: PlumHouse/Universal - Aaron Eckhard (Mark Henry cameo)
#3: The Marrine 4: Moving Target (The Miz, Summer Rae)
Michael Luisi yells at the screen. SIGH.

Flintstones & WWE "Stone Age" SmackDown.

DVD is in the giftbags.

End of Luisi presentation.

C. CASEY COLLINS

EVP Consumer Products: Casey Collins

Good Morning Partners
WWE Consumer Products long history of success across multiple products.
Innovative Products that put smiles on people's faces.
Share that innovation with you.
Always been a leader in Video Games. We took a deep dive in the gaming space to develop a long-term strategy. Best in class game publishers & developers.
Partners in 2K - console game partner.
Next generation of video games has arrived. WWE 2k15 ushered in

A whole new era of video games.

"Research clearly showed that our fans over-index in playing games on their mobile devices."

Knowing this, we quickly moved to deliver a variety of high-quality options: WWE Supercard (hard-hitting, larger than life action to your mobile device in a brand-new card action game), new partnership with WB Interactive Entertainment & Neverworld WWE Immortals (action-packed mobile experience, 8 million installs). Reviews have been great. Whole new WWE franchise.

Home Entertainment

Important category: 325 DVD titles since 2001. WrestleMania as the "#1 Sports Home Video" title.
New partnership with Warner Bros. Home Entertainment "clear category leader today"
Powerful retail distribution - expand physical & digital distribution to connect with our fans.

Blue-chip partners include Mattel: worldwide leader of mfgr of toys.

2014 was another "Stellar" year.



WWE was once again top selling brand: Star Wars, Spider-Man, Batman.
New line? Create a Superstar line.

StackDown brings WWE into the "construction aisle" which is the "fastest growing segment of the toy business". Build, Customize any environment associated with any superstar.

We're taken more of a "collection approach" to our superstar merchandise.
Core merchandise who is our core website visitor: who is 18 to 34 year old male.

Best example: WrestleMania Superstore at the San Jose
Convention Center. "12,500 Square Feet; Largest Collection of WWE Merchandise under one Roof."

New WWE EuroShop: 27 countries/Authentic

Merchandise/Localization/Amazon
Buy authentic WWE products. Continued growth in Europe.
Localized language & currency capabilities.

WWESHOPEXPRESS

WWE Shop Express: Brand new way to incorporate technology into arena business. Skip long lines and buy merchandise from their seats.
wweshopexpress.com
Fast, Easy, Convenient.

Talks about ABG/TapouT partnership.

Exciting new fitness brand.
Coming in 2016
Relaunching in 2016 - Hardbody Fitness Brand. Training & agonizing preparation
Fitness Apparel Space

Ends his presentation.


D. GERRIT MEIER

Each one takes a global view for their businesses and allign with regional opportunities
When all parts are working together, that's when they unleash the full potential of the WWE.

Role of WWE International is to embrace Global Diversity.
Bridge cultural and economic and poltiical differences.

Show apprecation for the unique priviledge to be part of their lives.

OPPORTUNITY
INNOVATION
PARTNERSHIP

Transformational Growth.

Our business outside of the US will become the largest engine for the growth over the next 3 years.

8 international offices: Dubai, London, Mexico, Mumbai, Munich, Shanghai, Singapore, Tokyo and additional resources in Brazil & Korea.

WWE is always relatable- everywhere to everyone.

Rogers media exemplifies this best.

ProSieben in Germany launched on MaxDome
WWE embraces & reflects your culture

Give example: 150 Activations in 11 days. (WHAT?)

"WWE transcends many boundaries that many other brands cannot."

We can work with you to grow our business in any way you can imagine.
Why is this important? Fan engagement.

More than a website, more than any event, it's a pro-social event.

PARTNER WITH US.
INNOVATE WITH US.
GROW WITH US.

We took it to the next level with many of you as our partners.

Let's keep it going.
(Former Spotify exec.)

STEPH & HHH
Social Media give sour fans a voice, evne when they're not at the arena.we use all of these platforms to deliver a creative experience to our fans.

4.2 Billion YouTube views in the past 12 months (#1 Sports Channel beating NBA, NFL, ESPN, NBA, MLB). Steph milks it for applause.

More likes on FaceBook than NIKE, NFL, ESPN (or NFL teams combined)

"Average 23 Global Trends per Monday Night"

Drive fans and keep them involved.

WWE Performance Center

"I love that campaign. Makes me want to talk about my Baby.... the WWE Performance Center." - HHH

Performance Center / Revolutionary Talent Development Program
State of the art facility that serves as a breeding ground for next generation of Superstars.
Encompasses all fassets of what we do. One of the world's best rehab centers. Various inhouse studios allow talent to perfect their characters.
Strength & Conditioning Facility. Better, stronger, faster strong, healthier.

Athletes from around the world including Rugby and Indian Kadabbi.

In 2014, over 300 candidates from 9 countries tried out. 27 were signed to developmental contracts with a chance to pursue their dreams.

Performance Center

Events (NXT)
Content Creation (Totino's)
Home Videos (HHH Workout Video)
Video Games & Live Specials
Pro-social activations

WWE is poised to create some of the most elite Superstars & Divas of all time with.
Find 60-100 wrestlers. 17 coaches and medical staff.
NXT is the WWE show featuring future of the WWE now. Shot with our partners at Full Sail University. Real world approach to learning. Full Sail provides the facility and the students. NXT also serves as an innovation lab for WWE production and partner integration.

NXT is Broadcast in over 100 countries. NXT is an "alternative brand". First live special on the WWE Network. NXT social media, E:60 behind the scenes special, new merchandise for NXT stars. Only using social media for promotion, NXT successfully promoted three events outside of FL. NXT stars have taken over Raw & SmackDown (Adam Rose, Emma, Rusev)

"Witness the Now, Witness the Evolution & Revolution of WWE, Witness NXT."

Tomorrow night at WrestleMania, every single match on that card will have a performer from the Performance Center & NXT (except one match).

Tomorrow night our next speaker will go toe-to-toe with the evil Russian Character Rusev.

Cena comes out.

"I love this weekend. I love everything about this weekend. I love everything that this weekend embodies."

John Cena has to thank George Barrios especially because he apparently forgot to do so last year.

WWE is making a conscious effort to increase distribution in China. Cena speaks Chinese.

"Last year, I stood up here in a different rainbow coordinated  outfit - thank you Licensees.. and I issued a challenge and  asked that we could do what we do best which is run. Bring us  new, exciting, out-of-the-box. Thank you, I'm very impressed."

WWE has used all of WWE's brand pillars and assets to increase  their business... Scooby Doo shows up.

BUSINESS PARTNER OF THE YEAR AWARD: WARNER BROS.

(They love WB so much compared to how toxic the relationship with Cinedigm got at the end.)

Dr. Ring Tatsumi Fujinami Wrestlenomics

With the news that Tatsumi Fujinami will be inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame, now is a great time to look at some wrestlenomics for this pro-wrestling legend.

With a career that spans 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s, and 10s, few men demonstrated the longevity, influence or skill of Tatsumi Fujinami.

CageMatch has record of well over 3,500 matches which is certainly not even the entirety of his career.

He's wrestled with and against everyone from Antonio Inoki, Riki Choshu and Masahiro Chono to Fujiwara, Dick Murdoch, Bad News Allen, Gran Hamada and Andre the Giant. As you crunch his stats, an astounding range of names shows up - Barry Windham, Atlantis, Funaki, Harry Smith, Scott Norton, Vader, Hulk Hogan, Bill Eadie, Liger, Mistico, Sid Vicious, Nailz, Dynamite Kid, Tenzan, Tenyru, Ebessan and Iron Sheik. He's wrestled many people in the same family including the Guerreros (Chavo Sr, Mando, Hector, Eddy as Black Tiger), the Poffos (Randy, Lanny, Angelo) and the Smiths (Harry Smith, Davey Boy Smith).

He's a legend of New Japan Wrestling.

• Between 1972-75 he had at least 516 NJPW matches.
• Between 1978-94 he had at least 2,229 NJPW matches
• Between 1996-2002 ahe had at least 409 matches and he returned in 2005 for 26 more NJPW matches.

Since 2006, he's been especially active in Dradition Pro_Wrestling and Real Japan Pro Wrestling along with Legend the Pro-Wrestling as well as stints in Inoki Genome Federation, Dramatic Dream Team and the occasional appearance for New Japan, Dragon Japan, All Japan, Toryumon Mexico, Osaka Pro, ZERO1, KAGEKI, FREEDOMS, WRESTLE-1, SMASH, Michinoku Pro and more.

Fujinami Record against Opponents

He's also a prolific tag-team wrestler.

If you subscribe to NJ World, I recommend you check out some of the links to some of Fujinami's best matches from the 1980s courtesy of the DVDVR Best of the 1980s New Japan list.

Who do you think will do the induction?

WWE CFO George Barrios at the Deutsche Bank 23rd Annual Media, Internet and Telecom Conference

@adecorativedrop

This morning, WWE CFO and Chief Strategy Officer George Barrios spoke at the Deutsche Bank 23rd Annual Media, Internet and Telecom Conference in Palm Beach Florida.

A replay of the audio webcast is available here.

In terms of ground-breaking announcements, there really wasn't any.

As usual, the program began with Barrios walking through the latest version of the Investor Presentation. As always, he highlights that WWE is a "powerful global brand" with "multiple growth drivers". In particular, here are their important achievements:

(Barrios sounded exhausted on the call. Perhaps this was because the conference was in Florida and not in the greater NYC area. Either way, he seemed off his game as evidenced by things such as when he flubbed a line about WWE mobile gaming and talked about "WWE Scorecard" instead of "WWE Supercard".)

Barrios' message is almost always the same. He sells the "big five" for WWE. Those are:

1. Powerful Global Brand
2. Strong Competitive Position
3. Content Rich Company
4. Large Addressable Market
5. Attractive Financial Profile

TV

Regarding the TV agreements, Barrios did note that the top seven deals (US/UK/India/Canada/Mexico/Thailand/UAE) represented about 130 million dollars in existing TV Rights while the remaining 30 deals represented the final 47 million in existing TV Rights. His point was that "no single remaining deal has major value". When someone asked about whether they expected to stay with the same partners or engage in competitive bidding, Barrios noted that they stayed with their same partners for largest three deals (US/U.K./India) while in the case of Mexico, they did move to a new partner with Fox Sports Latin America.

Someone asked whether launching the WWE Network had any effect on the TV negotiations. At first Barrios tried to ignore the question just saying that "deals are behind us". When pressed for further comment, he just said that he "couldn't put words in their mouths. There wasn't a lot of discussion about it."

That's an interesting perspective and one that runs counter to what CEO Vince McMahon has publicly stated. In May 2014, right after the new NBCU deal was signed, Vince said on a conference call that he was "little disappointed" and that launching the WWE Network in February before they completed the domestic TV deal "definitely had a negative impact".

WWE NETWORK

Of course, WWE is very proud of their over-the-top service. It's pretty much how and why they've started attending all of these conferences.

This was a graph they showed in the presentation, but it's a bit misleading. The 2014 numbers represent the number of paid subscribers at the end of the quarters (along with the post-WrestleMania number of 667,287). However, the 2015 number is a million subscribers (technically 1,000,648) but does not necessarily represent a "paid subscriber" number.

It's almost inevitable that Q1 2015 will average more than a million subscribers. But between a free month in February for new subscribers, the UK launch in early January (with extended-cancellation protections for "cooling-off period" and online forms), #cancelwwenetwork movements and anticipated WrestleMania swell, it's tough to know what the real number of WWE Network subscribers is.

Barrios did announce that WWE is expecting to launch WWE Network on "some new Smart TVs" this year.

WWE continues to push the narrative that the long-term goal for the WWE Network is 3-4 millions subscribers. What's their short-term goal? As usual, Barrios refused to give specifics. "We're not making any calls."

While WWE insists that they're going to announce WWE Network plans for "Italy, Germany, Japan, India, China, Thailand and Malaysia" this list of countries underlines two important points:

a) There's not many new geographies left for WWE to expand into. They already did the Domestic (February 2014), and International Launches (August 2014) and the U.K. Launch (January 2015).

b) It's highly questionable if WWE is really going to launch the WWE Netweork in a country such as China (strict censorship) or India (TV rights were quite valuable and may not want to upset their partner Ten Sports).

WWE continues to push the idea that there are hundreds of millions of households with "affinity for WWE" across the globe. This "tremendous appetite for WWE content" remains a popular talking point for the company, but a completely unproven strategy.  For instance, while WWE estimates there are 10 million WWE broadband homes in France and United Kingdom. However, France ranked #10 behind Chile, New Zealand, Ukraine, Mexico and Brazil for actual WWE Network subscribers according to an infogram that WWE produced. UK was #2. It seems that we're not really looking at apples-to-apples.

INDIA

Barrios new favorite pitch is what I've termed his "India is the Future" speech.

The new TV deal in India for WWE is the third largest for individual television rights. Barrios noted that right now the monetization from the Indian market is "nearly 100% television rights" but he believes there is a big opportunity for WWE merchandising in that country.

While India boasts a large population and robust economy, broadband penetration is relatively low. However, Barrios notes that there's increasing mobile usage which often includes unique "download to go" features for Indian YouTube where a user can essentially go to an internet cafe, download videos and watch them later on their device while they are offline. Whether that sort of solution would work for WWE Network launch is completely unknown but that seems to be part of Barrios' India pitch.

How does WWE play overseas? Barrios said that "universal themes travel pretty well. Good. Bad."

MISC

As usual, the questions from the audience weren't that tough and Barrios sidestepped many of them. He was asked about social media, and how the company is planning to monetize the segment. Instead, he talked about YouTube and how revenue from YT has grown from "few hundred thousand dollars to few million dollars". That's all well and fine, but it absolutely ignores the real questions - does all of those Twitter followers and Nielsen Trending metrics really relate to any evidence that WWE is becoming more popular?

When he was asked about the fanbase demographics in the United States, Barrios said that they have "multi-generational viewing" and that means they "re-generate their fanbase".

In terms of the expensive investment from launching the WWE Network, Barrios insisted that they "have made the pivot" and that since 2014 was the all-time record for Revenue, the company is past the inflection point.

When someone from the audience noted that, "Particularly good plots have spiked business." He wondered if "Anything may drastically increase the viewership?" Barrios just said that since they produce 52 weeks of content each year, things are going to naturally ebb & flow. Furthermore, "We have a lot talented writers.Vince is a key part of that. Paul Levesque is key part of that. They assure me it's just gonna get better."

In general, the audience didn't know that much about wrestling. Someone said, "I don't know when the Royal Rumble was. Was the one million number announced after that?" There was an odd discussion whether Barrios tried to explain that only the PPVs go directly on the Network, Raw & SmackDown show up after the VOD blackout window (typically 30 days) and the other 230 live events are not televised. Someone else tried to point out that there was only a few marque events - Royal Rumble, SummerSlam, WrestleMania, Survivor Series. (Barrios' favorite word is calling them "tentpoles".) However, Barrios shot back, "We have 12 events a year!" Obviously, this avoids the real conversation about how big of a decline in subscribers should WWE expect after WrestleMania.

In closing, enjoy the Barrios Bingo Card.

Latest Articles, Demand at $9.99 and WrestleMania

It's been a few weeks since I gave a round-up of all of the pieces I've been publishing:

• 2/5/15: "WWE Network Conjures Memories Of Internet Stock Bubbles" [Seeking Alpha]
• 2/13/15: "WWE 4th-Quarter Conference Call Announces Record Annual Revenue Numbers"[Bleacher Report]
• 2/2315: "Evaluating the WWE Network 1 Year After Its Launch" [Bleacher Report]
• 2/26/15: "Key takeaways from WWE's 2014 Annual Report" [Wrestling Observer/F4Wonline]
• 3/4/15: "Assessing Potential WWE Network Subscribership" [Voices of Wrestling]

Obviously, Wall Street's reaction to WWE potential with WWE Network subscriptions has been very positive. The stock price has shot up more than four dollars from $12.76 (2/5) to $17.15 (3/5).

$WWE

Yesterday, I looked at the "demand curve" for non-WrestleMania WWE PPVs if the price was dropped to $9.99. I used the last 13 fiscal years of data, but as a discussion with Keith Harris pointed out, if I drop FY2002 (which was the tail-end of the Attitude era), the projected demand drop from nearly 2 million to only 642,000. (Considering that WWE had over 700k paid subscribers for Q3/Q4 2014, it demonstrates just how "rough" this analysis really is.)

As for what's going to happen at WrestleMania for WWE Network subscriber levels, it's anyone's guess (and honestly, at this point that's what you're getting- a guess). On 2/20, I did an informal twitter poll  and came up with:

@mookieghana: So far, the average of responses has been 1,265,000 subs for WM. 10% buffer puts it as high as 1,391,500 subs and low as 1,138,500 subs.

Over on Seeking Alpha, Steven Borovay has been writing lots of articles about WWE. He published an article on March 2 which came up with estimates of between 1,167,848 to 1,335,048 for WWE Network subscriber count as of 3/31/15. Looks like we're both in the same ballpark. He assumes that there will be another Free promotion in May (I have my doubts) and that foreign expansion with drive additional growth (I am also skeptical unless a market like Germany or Italy adds OTT availability).

WWE certainly wants to announce as high a number as possible for 3/31 to impress the market, but it's very questionable how they intend to stem the loss of large quantities of subscribers in April/May/June. Until I see a quarter where there isn't massive churn, I am not convinced that just dropping the six-month commitment was sufficient in placating subscriber uneasiness. 

What are you thoughts? Hit me up on twitter (@mookieghana) or email (chris.harrington@gmail.com)!

The relevance of Reddit

Reddit boasts a popular and large community of wrestling fans in their SquaredCircle subreddit.

With over 65,000 "Wredditors" and several thousand "in attendance" at any moment, it's a powerful forum for sharing content or discussing information. However, it's a very volatile crowd.

In trying to understand the difference between the wants (and hates) of the community and the reaction they have to news, I came across a very interesting piece of research by Ryan Carse ("Is Professional Wrestling Coverage a Form of Journalism?"). I wrote about this last July and had Ryan on my Wrestlenomics Radio podcast that month.

Consider these graphs from his paper:

As I noted in December in a post on the Wrestling Observer/F4W message board:

I thought it was fascinating that:
a) 89% of the respondents said they were between 18 and 34 years old.
b) 96% of the respondents said they were male
c) 97% of the respondents say they read news about pro-wrestling BUT only 2% say they subscribe to the Wrestling Observer yet 71% of the respondents consider the Wrestling Observer to be reputable/very reputable (with less than 5% considering it as not reputable).
Compare that to WWE Viewer Demographics: http://indeedwrestling.blogspot.com/201 ... phics.htmlWWE only estimates 23% of their audience is in the 18-34 years old and only 65% is male.

When I realized how skewed the SquaredCircle reddit is suddenly things made a lot more sense. That's not to suggest that we're not "skewed" here either, but it helps to understand the difference between representing the average WWE viewer and the person who is posting on these boards (this board included).

I know that adecorativedrop asked the question in January at reddit, "Why do only 2% read the WON but 71% consider it reputable?" but didn't get much response short of "we're cheap" and "it gets reported at other places for free".

Vince McMahon loves to decry that "vocal minority" (mistranscribed as "local minority") is the source of rumpus such as the backlash against Roman Reigns and the #cancelwwenetwork hashtag. In same ways, he's right that there are large segments of the viewing audience which are underrepresented in places like reddit, pro wrestling message boards and so forth. Whether it's better that the tail wags the dog or vice versa remains a larger discussion.

I do think back to what Dave Meltzer wrote in the March 2, 2015 issue on the Wrestling Observer Newsletter:

Really, I’d rather somebody wrote a book from start-to-finish rather than readers who have no real understanding of book writing trying to force changes so the little sidekick who is supposed to be a bit player gets the girl and not the handsome lead who the whole book was built around.

I learned long ago that a good promoter listens to the fans, and a great promoter completely manipulates the fans. But the idea is that both make the fans want not what they tell the promoter they want, but what the promoter wants in the first place, because he has a better grasp than they do about business.

Ultimately, there's got to be a sense that WWE (namely Vince McMahon) really understands what he wants in the first place and what he accomplishes when he gets it. It's been a difficult two years as the Daniel Bryan plans have revealed the reluctance to change direction, but also the challenges poised by major rising stars (Reigns & Bryan) being injured in the middle of their big ascension.

A dribble of $WWE Stock Analysis

Here is the $WWE stock against their annual average (by calendar year). You can see how huge that crest & fall for 2014 was driven by the exceptional expectations around the domestic TV rights deal (which ultimately didn't deliver as high as WWE or analysts hoped) and the initial enthusiasm about the viability of the WWE Network.

I was curious what happens in the quarter after WWE announces their fiscal results, namely - what happens in the post-WM quarter?

It's a very mixed bag. Some years we're up. Some years we're down. (Keep in mind that this chart has been time changed so that we're looking at the period following the release of results. So, we're actually in Q3 CY 2014 right now because the Q4 CY 2014 results hasn't been released yet.)

I also took a quick look at what your index would look like if you bought $WWE stock and wanted to hold it less than a year. This doesn't include stock splits or dividends or the fancy jazz that a real analysis would include. It's just a quick look at the average price in a month, and how that compares for the next 12 months.

For this chart, I excluded 1999-2000 and all of 2014. I felt that those two periods had a lot of distortion going on with them.

I'm very surprised to see December up for every month. Maybe I screwed something up.

Row Labels	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sept	Oct	Nov	Dec	Avg
1999										24.00	22.54	16.40	20.20
2000	15.28	11.92	14.50	15.31	17.24	17.72	21.24	19.98	20.36	14.93	14.30	14.42	16.45
2001	18.91	16.03	12.75	13.30	13.21	12.61	13.76	11.74	11.61	11.35	11.95	12.74	13.32
2002	13.71	13.50	15.10	14.79	14.89	13.84	11.08	9.93	9.25	7.66	8.33	8.46	11.68
2003	8.17	8.14	7.89	8.33	9.28	10.06	9.81	9.74	10.19	10.69	11.31	12.33	9.68
2004	13.59	13.40	13.38	14.80	12.42	12.85	12.73	12.04	12.14	12.21	12.72	11.97	12.85
2005	12.31	12.37	12.30	11.59	10.53	10.41	12.00	12.29	12.94	12.68	13.06	14.61	12.25
2006	14.87	15.03	16.63	17.08	17.84	17.03	16.66	15.97	16.85	16.76	16.08	16.53	16.46
2007	16.19	16.15	15.87	16.62	17.91	17.09	16.07	14.63	14.83	15.24	15.10	14.89	15.88
2008	14.30	16.58	18.28	18.57	16.68	15.79	15.97	16.11	15.76	14.38	12.00	11.28	15.48
2009	10.46	9.47	10.55	11.31	11.62	13.02	12.94	14.24	14.16	13.81	15.34	15.69	12.76
2010	16.06	16.29	17.49	17.88	16.80	16.27	15.98	14.57	13.99	13.81	13.86	14.29	15.60
2011	13.44	12.27	12.66	11.73	10.39	9.65	9.92	9.38	9.12	9.98	9.86	9.75	10.66
2012	9.57	9.60	8.91	8.14	8.38	7.70	7.77	8.33	8.61	8.20	7.99	8.01	8.43
2013	8.19	8.53	8.66	8.91	9.29	9.87	10.82	10.10	10.04	11.37	13.66	15.04	10.38
2014	18.96	23.27	29.14	22.78	15.02	11.50	12.14	14.11	14.47	13.60	12.36	11.62	16.50
2015	11.15	12.64											11.44

It is remarkable that with the exception of 2004 and 2008, the Dec vs. Nov number was average of +4% and between -1% and +12%. 

But all of this is just someone playing with a couple numbers from Yahoo Finance with little stock financial training. I would take it with an enormous grain of salt.