George Barrios on WWE Network Tier Plans, No Immediate Plans for 4K, No Packages With Amazon Prime or Apple TV

– The Verge recently spoke to WWE Co-President George Barrios, who discussed plans for the WWE Network moving to a tiered system and what fans can expect from it. According to the article, the free tier version will be comparable to the free-to-watch videos that are usually available on WWE.com. The regular tier will be the standard WWE Network experience, and it will still include live pay-per-views, on-demand streaming, and original content. Below are some highlights.

Barrios on the premium tier: “We think there’s also an opportunity to super-serve our most passionate Network subscribers with a premium tier that’ll bring together more content for them, more features for them, and also integrating some of our other non-video services like our commerce — potentially integrating something like free shipping, bringing together our digital ticketing efforts in there. It becomes the one place to experience everything WWE.”

Barrios on why 4K won’t be happening anytime soon: “4K, I think that will be driven more by the penetration of 4K devices and then 4K consumption. It seems like a century ago, but when we moved to HD 10 years ago or so, we waited until about 25 or 30 percent of the big screens in the homes were HD-capable. I think similarly, both from a broadband standpoint (5G driving some of it) as well as the big screen penetration of 4K, when we go 4K kind of will be driven by that. To your point, we’ve experimented with it, but I wouldn’t expect a significant amount of video content in 4K this year certainly.”

George Barrios on WWE Network not being available a subscription package channel through Apple TV, Roku, or Amazon: “It becomes a tradeoff of economics, access to data, things of that nature. To be honest with you, it’s not something that we get a lot of commentary on from our audience, from our fans. It’s something we think about. At this point though, that mix of economics and the data is just not something we felt comfortable with.”