Ryback Claims That WWE Is Messing Up With Its Free Trial System in Place for the WWE Network

– During a recent installment of his Conversations With the Big Guy podcast, former WWE Superstar Ryback discussed why he thinks WWE’s subscription model for the WWE Network is a problem. Below are some highlights (transcript via WrestlingInc.com).

Ryback on how he doesn’t pay for the WWE Network: “I have the WWE Network. It’s $9.99 a month. I don’t pay for it; they give out this free subscription for all the talent when they were there. I’ve asked for them to revoke it but they won’t. I never asked them personally, like calling [Head of Talent Relations] Mark Carrano and personally asked him or anything, but I was talking to my buddy and we were talking about WWE and how they are a publicly traded company. We were going over their numbers and the WWE says that they have wanted to get in the 3 million range, but they’ve been stuck on 1.3, 1.4 subscription range.”

Ryback on how WWE offers free trials for the Network: “Here’s the thing; I want them to succeed because I have a lot of friends that work there. I am doing fine, I’m doing great without them, but they have major flaws in their system where they do the free month. If you sign up by entering your email address you get a free month, but part of the problem is that they sign up with an email, get the free month and then cancel when they don’t pay, and then afterwards they will enter a new email and get a free subscription again by creating a new email. It isn’t hard at all to do and get another free month. They are f***ing themselves over by not having a better system in place that prevents this when remembering credit card information or names.”

Ryback on how many free subscriptions the Network might give away: “Also, I’m curious how many free subscriptions they give away when they count towards their quarterly stock reports. They always send me royalties as Ryan Reeves and have failed to mention that I legally changed my name to Ryback, which makes me laugh, so I went on there and changed my name to Ryback and updated my email and all that. I went to see if I can cancel my account, so I went on my personal computer because I couldn’t see anything on my phone app, but I wasn’t able to cancel it,” Ryback said. “I went online to search how to cancel the WWE app, but the stuff that it showed me what to do to cancel it didn’t show on my subscription because it is a complimentary access. I wonder if they give that number up by how many of the 1.4 million subscribers are complimentary access. It just made me think as I was talking with my buddy and I told him that I wasn’t able to cancel my subscription and he wondered the same thing as to whether or not anyone else is able to cancel their subscriptions. The email thing is a huge problem for them on the WWE Network so they have to– from a business standpoint – have to find a better filter in that email subscription.”