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Stephanie McMahon On the Calculated Risk Of the WWE Network At First, Says It Was Originally Going to Be On Traditional TV
Stephanie McMahon was a guest recently on the CMO Moves Podcast and discussed the risk that WWE originally took with the WWE Network, noting that it was originally going to be a traditional TV channel. The Network is a staple of WWE’s offering at this point, and it’s easy to forget early on how many people predicted that it would fail. McMahon talked about the early days of the planning process and how they knew they were risking cannibalizing their PPV revenue stream, which at the time was one of their biggest incomes, and added that the company was “pretty far down the pipe” on talks for making the Network a traditional television network.
You can see highlights from McMahon’s comments as well as the full podcast below:
On taking the chance on the Network compared to the money from PPVs: “On PPV, fans were paying north of $65 when you could watch it for $9.99 on WWE Network. So it was a tremendous value proposition for us…we’re currently around — and of course, there’s a lot of churn — but we’re around two million subscribers. And when you think about the fact that we intentionally cannibalized our own PPV business, it was a huge risk, particularly at that time. It was a really big, calculated risk and that’s what we believe in: taking calculated risks. It was based on research.”
On the original plans for the Network: “We were actually pretty far down the pipe with a linear deal. But they wanted to lock up our rights for 10 years, and we saw this opportunity. So we did some more research, found that our fans were five times more likely to watch online video than at that time, just in America, than the American norm. And we decided we had a real opportunity and that’s why we went for it. And it was hugely profitable for us, to more than double what we were doing on pay-per-view.”
If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit the CMO Moves Podcast with a h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription.
