WWE Released their 4th quarter 2015 earnings report today. For those who don’t wish to pour through endless jargon and statistics, here are the core details (all statements are quoted or paraphrased for clarity directly from the report):
Network segment revenue increased 50% from the prior year quarter. Driving the growth inrevenue, WWE Network had 1,217,000 paid subscribers at quarter end, up 49% and averaged approximately 1,237,000 paid subscribers during the quarter, representing a 72% increase from the prior year quarter.
My Thoughts: While it is true that subscriber numbers increased significantly from this time last year, the quarter’s end total was down 1% from Q3 2015.
Network segment generated revenue of $159.4 million and OIBDA1 of $48.4 million that nearly doubled the average annual revenue of the Company’s pay-per-view business before network launch.
My Thoughts: Obviously, with the very slight decrease in subscribers, revenue is marginally down from the previous quarter, but nothing serious.
The WWE expects to add more than 300 hours of original content to the network’s featured programming in 2016 and 1000 hours of archive (classic) content during 2016.
My Thoughts: The 300 hours will include all original content including weekly series and live specials and spreads out among the quarters to be a similar amount to last year. For those wondering, the 1000 hours of archived content is also in-line with last year, indicating that content drops will not slow down.
For the first quarter 2016, WWE projects average paid subscribers of 1,280,000 (+/- 2%), representing an approximate year-over-year increase of 38%
My Thoughts: Just to clarify, the number given here is not the expected high point for WrestleMania, but rather the average total spread out over the quarter. It seems safe to assume that WWE expects to pass their watermark of 1.3 million active subscribers for WrestleMania 32, especially due to expanding into some major markets.
So, there we have it, a look at the more interesting statistics surrounding the WWE Network! While nothing huge was announced in this press release, big reveals tend to be saved for the conference call later today. The WWE Network Chronicle will rapidly break any big news that comes from that, so stay tuned!