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WWE TV Rights Deal


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Many of you will be aware that the TV rights deals to RAW, Smackdown, Total Divas etc. will be coming up for grabs with a decision scheduled for March 4th. (unless they reach a deal to stay on USA for RAW which has to be made by Feb 15th)

 

Potential suitors include Disney, Viacom and Discovery.

 

The Variety article that has been doing the rounds over the last day or so was clearly penned by WWE P.R so anything in that should be taken with a pinch of salt.

 

Where do people see the products ending up and also do you think that they'll increase the rights fee's significantly in line with other sports / companies ?

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Surely they aren't going to end up on Disney? That would stifle them completely in terms of what style of product they can put out, even beyond the limitations they currently set for themselves.

Disney most likely equates to ESPN or A&E to be honest. RAW won't be following Fantasia any time soon.

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Ah, wasn't aware Disney owned sport networks. The UK situation is quite interesting actually, I can see BT Sport making a huge play for these rights, they seem determined to blow Sky Sports out of the water with any popular content at the minute. I'm hoping they go the way of Sentanta and ESPN, because Sky are by far the best at producing sports programming. The football coverage on BT is appalling.

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Ah, wasn't aware Disney owned sport networks. The UK situation is quite interesting actually, I can see BT Sport making a huge play for these rights, they seem determined to blow Sky Sports out of the water with any popular content at the minute. I'm hoping they go the way of Sentanta and ESPN, because Sky are by far the best at producing sports programming. The football coverage on BT is appalling.

The deal isn't up in the UK. They'd be stupid to leave Sky anyway if it was, unless it was to move to a free to air channel, which isn't likely.

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I don't see Raw moving off USA unless there is a complete change in leadership there. The biggest change in all this will probably be Smackdown moving to a better network (and off of Fridays).

 

I would be shocked if Main Event/Superstars/NXT landed anywhere better, why would they pay for shows that are clearly C level at best unless WWE packaged them with Raw or Smackdown.

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BT Sport have the Champions League rights now, and their channel is free to the millions of people with their internet access. They are big players. If the UCL can move to BT Sport, it wouldn't be that stupid for the WWE to do so, especially if they were offered silly money, which is possible. When is the Sky deal up?

To clarify, BT Sport have rights to the Champions League FROM 2015. AND their channel is free to people who have BT Internet, which according to the market share is 31.5% of the UK Broadband market.

 

They are, like others all after new content to fill up schedules, but I just cannot see them leaving Sky at this stage of the game, especially with the links they have with Sky to Sky Box Office. BT would have to come in a huge offer to turn WWE's head.

 

The deal between WWE and Sky is up in about 12 months. The two have been partners for over 25 years now. I just can't see WWE completely walking away from Sky. I could however, see them dish out certain programming to other channels, but not the whole caboodle, which is what BT would require.

 

Plus with WWE doing more "original" programming such as Total Divas and the enigma that is Legends House, neither would be a fit on BT Sports, but would be totally fine on Sky Living or Sky One.

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Surely they aren't going to end up on Disney? That would stifle them completely in terms of what style of product they can put out, even beyond the limitations they currently set for themselves.

Disney most likely equates to ESPN or A&E to be honest. RAW won't be following Fantasia any time soon.

 

The WWE won't be on ESPN or ESPN2. MNF alone kills off Raw being on ESPN, and it's unlikely they want to counter program Raw over onto to ESPN2 from Sep-Dec. Even in the non-MNF part of the year, Vince absolutely hated "pre-emptions" during their first run with USA. ESPN's content is regularly over-running time slots.

 

The rest of Disney via Wiki:

 

ABC

ABC Family

ESPN

- ESPN

- ESPN2

- ESPNews

- ESPN Classic

- ESPNU

A+E Networks (50%)

- A&E

- Bio

- Crime & Investigation Network

- History

- H2

- Lifetime

- LMN

- Lifetime Real Women

- Military History

Disney Channel

Disney Junior

Disney XD

 

Okay... toss out the Disney ones at the bottom: the WWE isn't going on them. Then toss out the "L's", as the WWE isn't going on a chick station.

 

Bio and Crime don't look like a fit... even setting aside the SyFy connection, which is something that the WWE probably would have preferred never to have happened but were stuck with it. Same for History and H2.

 

ESPN's are out.

 

They're not going to be on ABC.

 

We're left with:

 

ABC Family

A&E

 

Really hard to see Vince wanting it on ABC Family.

 

Which leaves:

 

A&E

 

A&E has pretty radically transformed themselves into The Stupid Network. Perhaps Vince, or A&E, thinks the WWE will fit right in. :)

 

Anyway... Disney is an odd fit as no one channel of their makes a lot of sense. Perhaps there's a plan to rebrand one of the low level ones, but I'm not sure how much Vince wants to go through that again after the last time he left USA to help someone do that.

 

John

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Looking at the other major players named:

 

* Discovery Communications

 

An odd fit. One would also expect Vince to demand to be on either Discovery Channel or TLC given the number of households those two are on, and their "Basic" nature. Animal Planet is in the same boat, but can't see Vince wanting that one. Also... historically Discovery's business model doesn't include splashing the type of cash that it would take to get the WWE. They've tended to develop cheap-o shows, with ones that become "hits" pushed and run into the ground, and ones that don't to well tossed overboard. The failures never cost all that much to lose the business much money.

 

* Viacom

 

Things didn't work out well last time. :) Anyway... that seems pretty much like it would be Spike. Not sure that the WWE wants another round on MTV. CMT is hardly where they want to go. Can't see them on the Nicks. Looks pretty Spike-centric as a landing spot.

 

* Fox

 

FS1 creates the same issues as ESPN: "live" sports going long running into the WWE's timeslot. One would assume then the FX side of the house would be the ticket, of which the main FX is the only viable one right now with the others really midcard channels at best right now. The WWE bring in viewers... not sure if it's how Fox wants FX to be seen.

 

* Comcast

 

Remains the best fit because of USA. Finding spots for the other programing is the problem, and it's questionable if Comcast wants to add SmackDown to Raw on USA rather than tossing it on a weaker Comcast channel.

 

When you look around... there again might not be as much demand for the WWE programing as Vince would like us to think. Not that it's "unwanted", but that it's an odd fit in so many places. My choice? A&E would be a hoot, with the WWE fitting in and having to do some really stupid cross promotional stuff. :)

 

John

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It seems like we're focusing too much on just the number of viewers WWE programming gets. Yes, it would help improve the rankings in the top 25 for a number of networks, but how many of them actually care about that? Isn't it also important to look at the kind of viewers Raw provides?

 

If WWE is going to compare itself to sports, I think it's important to see if their audience is actually similar to the sports audience that is desired so much:

 

1. They're passionate enough that they'll switch providers if they can't watch it because their current provider no longer shows the channel that airs it.

 

- I can't find it in the Observer archives for some reason (*MOOKIE ALERT*), but in the past year or so, Dave talked about a survey that showed that while wrestling fans tend to be fans of several sports, they're more passionate about those sports than wrestling. That could be a sign that wrestling fans might not leave in droves if their current provider won't let them watch Raw.

 

2. They have money to spend.

 

- According to a survey done in July by the market research firm Scarborough, "The median income of a WWE fan household is $35,229. The median of a U.S. sport fan is $50,667." (http://www.f4wonline.com/component/content/article/110-wrestling-observer-newsletter/31076-may-6-2013-wrestling-observer-newsletter-biggest-money-show-in-pro-wrestling-history-breakdown-boxing-vs-wrestling-and-mma-weird-night-of-fights-at-ufc-169-akiyama-wins-champion-carnival-tons-more) Ad money for wrestling isn't very good.

 

I could be missing a couple other things I can't think of at the moment, but the point is that no matter how much WWE may say that they're like sports programming, it's not necessarily a fair comparison.

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We all think the WWE = Sports Rights Fee was laughable when the WWE first started rolling it out. I think we've shot it down a few times.

 

We also all have long said that the WWE's 4M viewers are of less value than other types of content (such as Sports) having 4M viewers.

 

My walk through the NASCAR numbers in another thread wasn't to make the WWE look good. It was to point out that the WWE was full of shit in how they were presenting NASCAR numbers i.e. under reporting them.

 

I guess the way I would put it...

 

If one game of the EPL each week averaged in the US the viewers Raw averages, and another game averaged what SmackDown does, we'd be talking about a TV contract paying $400M a year... maybe $500M, instead of the $80M overpay that NBC made. Whereas the WWE isn't going to get remotely close to $400M or $500M.

 

The flip side: those viewers are of value to USA. If they weren't, they never would have taken the WWE back nor pay them decent money for the show.

 

John

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On the BT Sport stuff, depsite what anarchistxx said, I've actually been pretty impressed with them so far this season, even if I've mainly only watched James Richardson's European Football show and a couple of EPL games here and there. (I can't be arsed with Life's a Pitch or Kelly and Baker or Balding's show -- only so many hours in the week -- but do think they make a decent fist of putting out a good schedule). On a side note, even Match of the Day have stepped up their game a bit this year, the level of punditry and analysis is slowly getting better everywhere I think ... influence of Gary Neville.

 

Anyway, my very thin hope remains that BT Sport back some emergent British wrestling promotion, whether or not under the WoS banner. Probably won't happen, but would be so cool if it did. Think the country is actually ready for it. I'd watch it!

 

As regards, the WWE stateside situation ... is there any chance that Vince would still resent Disney for their relationship with WCW? How many companies aside from THQ who were "WCW companies" has Vince worked with since 2001? Not saying he hasn't, just genuinely curious to know.

 

Can anyone see RAW leaving USA at this point though? Why would they do that?

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On the BT Sport stuff, depsite what anarchistxx said, I've actually been pretty impressed with them so far this season, even if I've mainly only watched James Richardson's European Football show and a couple of EPL games here and there.

The BT Sport UFC coverage isn't the best; they are using some UK studio gimmick during shows.

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1. They're passionate enough that they'll switch providers if they can't watch it because their current provider no longer shows the channel that airs it.

 

- I can't find it in the Observer archives for some reason (*MOOKIE ALERT*), but in the past year or so, Dave talked about a survey that showed that while wrestling fans tend to be fans of several sports, they're more passionate about those sports than wrestling. That could be a sign that wrestling fans might not leave in droves if their current provider won't let them watch Raw.

Was it the the Scarborough market research report on combat sports from the 5/6/13 issue?

 

A combat sports survey of pro boxing, UFC and WWE, done by Scarborough, a leading market research firm, showed that more Americans still say they are fans of pro boxing more than UFC or WWE. The most interesting thing is that when it comes to audience interest, peak television ratings contradict what the survey showed.

 

The survey, reported in the new Sports Business Journal, showed that 16.6 million Americans would say they were avid pro boxing fans, 16 million would say they were fans of UFC and 11.62 million would say they were WWE fans. That figure is a lot more believable than the 47 million households and 108 million total people have are either current fans, or lapsed fans that the WWE survey they went with for network projections stated.

 

What's notable about this is, in 2012, the largest audience to watch a WWE broadcast was 6.04 million viewers for Raw 1,000, peaking at 6.93 million viewers for the John Cena vs. C.M. Punk television main event which included a run-in by The Rock, who Punk laid out to set up their matches months later. The largest audience to watch a UFC broadcast was about 4.7 million viewers, although the single most watched match, Rashad Evans vs. Phil Davis, drew approximately 6.4 million viewers. The most-watched boxing match of the year on television, which was the Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. vs. Marco Antonio Rubio fight, did 1.9 million viewers. It should be pointed out that figure was drawn on HBO, which has 29 million U.S. home clearances, as opposed to 99 million or so who have access to USA and 110 million who get FOX. Based on percentage of available viewers, the Chavez vs. Rubio fight would in theory do 6.5 million viewers (it would actually do less because the people who get HBO are far more likely than the general public to be boxing fans), or in the same ballpark as the WWE and UFC peaks.

 

In addition, a survey of senior level sports industry executives felt WWE currently had the most marketable stars of the three groups, with 38% to 32% for UFC and 6% for boxing. 24% declined to answer the question.

 

The largest audience in the United States of 2012 to watch a PPV for WWE was WrestleMania, which did 719,000 viewers through all of North America. The largest audience in North America to watch a UFC PPV last year was about 925,000 for Anderson Silva vs. Chael Sonnen. The largest to watch a boxing PPV was Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Miguel Cotto with 1,500,000.

 

Essentially, pro wrestling fans are far more likely to watch their product weekly on television as compared to UFC and boxing fans, who are more drawn to the biggest matches. WWE is able to get a significant percentage of its audience to buy one PPV per year, some to buy two others, but most skip the rest. The biggest change in the WWE is the inability for big matches to be difference makers, which is different from the entire history of the business. Matches like Cena vs. Punk after the Punk interview that caused such a stir in 2011, led to no real difference in ratings or arena business. The first match probably did make a difference between 100,000 and 146,000 buys in North America, it paled when it came to the difference made in buys by Georges St-Pierre vs. Nick Diaz in March of this year.

 

UFC fans will inflate numbers, often greatly, for the big fight, whether it's big names or promoted by big talking, and it doesn't matter when in the year the fight takes place. But as a general rule, UFC fans, even for a weak PPV show, are significantly more likely to buy a PPV than WWE fans. For a big show, they are even more likely.

 

For WWE, the name of the show is far more important than the card. No matter when the show took place, with the same build up, GSP vs. Diaz was doing roughly the same business. Rock vs. Cena "Once in a lifetime" may not have gotten 200,000 domestic buys in the wrong month with the wrong show name as evidenced by Cena vs. the returning Brock Lesnar doing 159,000 and the second Rock vs. Punk with Rock defending the WWE title on a "B" show doing 160,000.

 

But being associated with WrestleMania probably quadrupled its value. In that sense, UFC is closer to boxing than pro wrestling, but ironically, so was pro wrestling until probably the last decade. It's a good thing because when things are bad or stale, wrestling doesn't fall below a certain level when it comes to all aspects of business.

 

And during periods, as has been the case up until last year, with the lack of new talent in top positions, wrestling main events on big shows have had an easy time getting stale.

 

Boxing was able to pull the biggest peak numbers, but could only do decently on PPV four times a year. UFC was able to top 400,000 eight times and even its worst shows handily beat all but WWE's best and all but the top tier of boxing shows.

 

What the stats also show is that WWE greatly trails UFC and boxing when it comes to popularity with adult males, even though it kills both in those same demographics on television. However, WWE does have more adult women fans than UFC, but not as many as boxing.

 

The UFC is strongly dominant now in the 18-29 age group, with nearly twice the amount of fans as WWE. This is the first generation of the fan base that grew up with UFC as a television entity. It's ahead of boxing and WWE with adults until the age of 45, when it falls off greatly, and boxing is way out in front with older fans. A key is that even though WWE talks of multi-generational interest and people grew up with pro wrestling, even at 45-64 years old, where you have an audience that didn't grow up with UFC, with that age group WWE is lagging so badly that it's now behind UFC. A 50 year old in 2013 wouldn't have seen UFC on television until they were in their early 40s as the earliest, which is a not an age when you start moving to new sports. It's more a sign of pro wrestling losing ground with an age group it was traditionally popular with and would have grown up with. WWE only surpasses UFC once you get near the age of 65.

 

WWE also comes off way behind when it comes to education of its audience as 65.6% of the WWE adult viewers never attended college, as compared to 54.8% for boxing and 51.5% for UFC. The national average is 44.2% More UFC fans attended college than WWE, almost doubling the number, and ahead of boxing. However, more boxing fans graduated college and did post-graduate work. That may be misleading because UFC has far more fans than boxing in the 18-23 age group who would be far less likely to have a four-year degree simply based on their age, and similarly, the younger UFC audience will have a larger percentage simply not old enough to have a degree and be doing post-graduate work. WWE fans were way behind when it came to graduating college and doing any post-graduate work.

 

Even though WWE's Hispanic demos on television blow away that of UFC and boxing, more Hispanics said they were UFC fans than WWE fans. However, by leaps and bounds, boxing is the combat sport of choice with the Hispanic audience as well as the black audience. UFC has grown considerably with Hispanics but is still trailing with blacks. That's notable in a sense because UFC really only has one Hispanic star, while loaded with black stars. UFC really only had the key to the black community in a big way once, which was the Rampage Jackson vs. Rashad Evans build-up, which was hardcore 1970s pro wrestling.

 

When it comes to household income, it's similar to that of education. If you consider a household income of $35,000 or less as poverty, 29.6% of the WWE fans live in that type of household has compared to 18.4% of UFC fans and 22.3% of boxing fans. Among sports fans in general, it's 16.5%, so UFC from that standpoint has an audience the most similar to the average U.S. sports audience once you get up to the $250,000 annual income range. Once you get past the $250,000 mark, that audience is still more likely to be fans of boxing. But UFC has a huge lead over the other two among people with incomes between $75,000 and $249,000, or middle and upper middle class.

 

The median income of a boxing fan (as in half are above and half are below) household is $39,444. The median income of a UFC fan household is $47,238. The median income of a WWE fan household is $35,229. The median of a U.S. sport fan is $50,667. That, plus the ability to target a mostly younger male audience, explains why UFC has become the most valuable television property of the three even though in ratings, WWE blows them away. UFC has better advertisers and its flagship events charge far more for commercial time than the more viewed WWE shows. FOX's deal with UFC is worth more than every WWE deal with four different networks combined.

 

Interestingly, UFC and pro wrestling fans are more likely to have children than the average sports fan. The single guy or woman living alone is far less likely to be a UFC fan.

 

The ten strongest boxing metropolitan area markets per capita were Harlingen-McAllen, TX (172,250 fans), El Paso (108,200 fans), Fresno (182,400 fans), Bakersfield (67,100), San Antonio (264,100), Los Angeles (1,543,700), Memphis (171,300), Las Vegas (181,900), Albuquerque (154,000), and Honolulu (95,100).

 

For UFC, the strongest per capita markets are Honolulu (131,200), Bakersfield (56,100), El Paso (83,000), Fresno (138,000), Mobile (123,000), Memphis (154,900), Albany, NY (115,800), Colorado Springs (72,800), Las Vegas (150,300) and Jacksonville (134,100).

 

For WWE, the strongest per capita markets are Little Rock (146,800), Harlingen-McAllen, TX (93,100), Memphis (169,500), New Orleans (146,400), San Antonio (179,300), Birmingham (138,100), Mobile (101,300), St. Louis (218,900), El Paso (58,800) and Chattanooga (60,300).

 

In looking at the cities, when it comes to boxing, every market where boxing is strongest with the exception of Honolulu, which has historically always been a strong fighting city, is a strong Hispanic market except for Memphis.

 

For UFC, you've got the traditionally huge Honolulu (because of B.J. Penn) and Las Vegas markets, and a few Hispanic markets. Yet, for PPV buys, Las Vegas and Honolulu are always strong. Seattle, big for PPV and television, didn't crack the top ten in the survey.

 

For WWE, it's hard to really see a pattern. Harlingen, also big for boxing, is a big Hispanic market and WWE's best house show markets per capita are those in South Texas. The Alabama cities are a surprise, while Memphis and St. Louis are traditional per capita pro wrestling hotbeds, which even three decades after the peak of the territorial system, are probably the beneficiary of the cities cultures spawned at first from a previous generation.

 

The UFC's numbers among Hispanics and blacks, particularly the latter, would surprise people who attend live events. Aside from shows in Anaheim, more with Cain Velasquez, but even without him, you don't usually see a large number of Hispanics at UFC live events. But even those at Showtime told me a few years back that the Hispanic audience for Strikeforce shows had passed those of boxing (although that wouldn't be the case now since Showtime boxing has underwent a major resurgence of late).

 

Boxing still has difficulties selling large amounts of tickets to the public, except for the biggest monster events. When you take away the casino markets, big boxing events in cities like New York and Los Angeles with major names don't sell tickets even close to the level of a major WWE event or if a UFC show came to those markets.

 

For UFC, and this is probably ticket price related, the high price may be keeping the minority fans from buying tickets. But they also have a 45-64 fan base, while much smaller than their younger base, but you really don't see them represented all that much when it comes to live ticket buyers, while you do at a boxing show. With WWE, it's the same thing, as you don't see a lot of people over 40 at the shows, even though half of its television viewers are over that age.

 

Where WWE does the best job of the three is monetizing its fan base, even more impressive since they appear to have less disposable income. They keep ticket prices lower (except for WrestleMania) and do more to encourage fan participation (boxing is way behind the times on that, UFC reaches out to its fan base well but WWE tries to constantly involve and play to its fans). They are way ahead of the game when it comes to merchandising, producing a wide variety of television and having multiple revenue streams.

 

WWE and UFC are both well ahead of boxing when it comes to creating stars. WWE has the big advantage in this category over the other two, because the top positions aren't determined by anything but marketability, whereas in boxing and MMA there is a facet of athletic ability that can't be worked around. While there are always going to be exceptions, the WWE's talent as a general rule has a longer window of opportunity. WWE also has a big edge in the ability to create memorable moments, whereas the other two are at the mercy of reality, which will give memorable moments, but just not always what the promoter wishes for.

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That wasn't it, though I just found it:

 

"An ESPN poll looking at sports fans, and they included both MMA and pro wrestling as separate categories, noted that avid fans, by a great degree, spend more money and time on sports during bad economic times than good. It’s the opposite for casual fans or light fans, who have less interest in sports during times like now. I know there is a feeling that wrestling fans are predominately not sports fans, because wrestling is entertainment. However, in a poll of people who claim they are avid fans of pro wrestling, on average, if you ask them how many other sports they follow closely, the number averages 7.8. By contrast, if you ask avid fans of the NFL, they average 5.4. If you ask MMA fans they would average to being avid fans of 6.9 other sports. As it turns out, avid pro wrestling fans are in general fans of more different sports than NFL, Baseball, and NBA fans. In fact, the more popular the sport is, the less likely avid fans follow more different sports. The only major sports whose avid fans are likely to follow fewer sports than MMA fans are the NFL, Figure Skating, Baseball College, Football, NCAA basketball and the NBA. Pro wrestling fans in that sense are closer to boxing fans. Another interesting note is that when asked, 67% of people who said they were avid MMA fans, when asked what their favorite sport to follow was, said either football, baseball or basketball, and not MMA. 62% of pro wrestling fans when asked their favorite sport to follow, said football, baseball or basketball."

 

(http://www.f4wonline.com/component/content/article/21794-august-24-wrestling-observer-newsletter-g-1-climax-tourney-winner-sinclair-roh-tapings-mania-profit-margins-shawn-tompkins-death-heath-slater-trouble-more-)

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  • 1 month later...

Two things to add to this (hope it's okay I'm bumping an old thread since we're coming up on the 2/15 deadline):

 

WWE has signed a new 5-year television deal to continue their relationship with the "UK pay TV giant" BSkyB.

 

Recent WWE TV Rights Coverage:

Some of the important nuggets of information to consider:
  • As Dave Meltzer noted in his report, "timing is everything". Right now Live Sports are receiving record renewal rates, especially with combined with long term exclusivity. Additionally, a new competitor in the marketplace (BT Sports) likely drove up the bidding before WWE renewed with their longtime partner.
  • This represents a significant increase for WWE. In fact, the Hollywood Report storysuggested that, "value is believed to be about three times that of the previous five-year agreement". That's a really key figure because that's in the range of what Vince McMahon has been promising shareholders during the monthly conference calls.
  • Unlike the previous deal (signed in late 2009 just months before it started in January 2010), this renewal moved all 12 PPVs to Sky Box Office (essentially to a pay-per-view channel akin to the setup in the US). Previously, some PPVs aired as "special events" for free on Sky. It's believed that this move would pave the way for the subscription over-the-top WWE Network to be available in the UK with the monthly PPV programming being broadcast there.
This brings up the question of what will WWE be doing with the current domestic negotiations with NBCUniversal. (I recommend re-reading some the previous coverage on this blog with last month's "Can we predict WWE TV Rights Fees for 2015?")

 

The latest rumor I've heard is that WWE is looking for about "$280M" in their negotiations (2/3/14 Wrestling Observer). What isn't clear is the length of the deal or how they'd want to structure that money. However, I would submit the following graph:

 

domestic_wwe_tv_rights_5_yr_deal.png

Today, Domestic TV Rights are clipping around at about 10% growth year-over-year. (2013 is estimated based on 3 quarters of information and 2014 is completely projected.) Keep in mind that Total Divas! on E! has been a lucrative program and it's questionable whether that project would continue indefinitely.

 

Assuming a similar deal to BSkyB at 5 years (which is plausible), if WWE wanted to hit $280M by the end of the contract (which begins in the end of 2014), that would represent about a 19% growth year-over-year (twice as high). If they wanted to average $280M over the five years, that would average about 31% growth year-over-year. While those are hefty numbers, considering the high values being thrown for other sports packages, it's possible they'd go for it. It would lock up WWE before the exclusive negotiation period and it would continue the relationship that WWE has with the company. And it's in the range of the change (at least in terms of year-over-year growth) that would be in line with what happened in the BSkyB negotiation -- triple where they are today.

 

-Chris Harrington (@mookieghana)

 

Addendum: 1/31/2014

 

We do know from WWE's annual reports:

 

WWE revenue details

Jan-Dec 2012: $34,001,000 (UK); total Europe/Middle East/Africa: $70,720,000; int'l TV rights = $50.6M; int'l Live Events = $31.6M

Jan-Dec 2011: $33,178,000 (UK); total Europe/Middle East/Africa: $76,165,000; int'l TV rights = $51.2M; int'l Live Events = $39.8M

Jan-Dec 2010: $33,932,000 (UK); total Europe/Middle East/Africa: $80,263,000; int'l TV rights = $45.4M; int'l Live Events = $39.9M

Jan-Dec 2009: $36,516,000 (UK); total Europe/Middle East/Africa: $82,508,000; int'l TV rights = $39.1M; int'l Live Events = $41.0M

Jan-Dec 2008: $47,301,000 (UK); int'l TV rights = $37.2M; int'l Live Events = $41.7M

Jan-Dec 2007: $45,068,000 (UK); int'l TV rights = $32.8M; int'l Live Events = $37.4M

(8 month transition period) May-Dec 2006: $21,812,000 (UK); int'l TV rights = $20.7M; int'l Live Events = $15.7M

May 05-Apr 06: $34,788,000 (UK); int'l TV rights = $28.5M; int'l Live Events = $28.3M

 

For the purposes of these numbers, int'l is basically "not US or Canada or PR" since they count that with "North America" but they do break out Mexico as int'l (as part of Latin America). They've begun splitting out UK revenues since it's their "largest international market".

 

I tried to see if I could figure out what UK TV Rights fees were, but without spending more time drilling into counting tours and whatnot, I wasn't confident in what I could extract from the numbers above.

My take on BSkyB was that putting all the PPVs on Sky Box Office meant that WWE Network could show them because that sounds like a similar arrangement to what WWE does in the US, but perhaps I'm misunderstanding that. If nothing else, it seems like surprising that Sky would triple their rates (Hollywood reporter) without getting PPV exclusivity, but at this phase I think WWE is playing from a position of strength.

 

Latest NY Post Article: WWE/NBCU May Split Up.

 

There's the cryptic sentence, "It’s not clear where the price tag stands, but reports have suggested the last deal was priced at $140 million, and the WWE had been looking for a leap up that gives it a similar premium accorded to sports rights." I'm not clear on what that $140M represents (could that include some Digital Media money for Hulu rights?) because we know Domestic TV Rights is less than $110M.

 

A few days ago I spoke with an investment banker who tracks media stocks. (He reached out to me after reading some of my blogs.) His take was that WWE (based on advertising/cpms) was worth no more than 145 million to NBCU, especially since WWE viewers never stick around to watch other shows (i.e. little/no halo effect). (I tried to explain how WWE fed Ultimate Fighter back in the Spike days.) I mentioned the $280M number that Dave wrote about in the observer and the analyst I spoke with was surprised and quite skeptical that WWE would get near those numbers. He believed that if WWE/NBCU passes the exclusive negotiation period without an announcement it's a bad sign for WWE.

 

Personally, I still think WWE will end up with WWE on NBCU (similar to not jumping ships in the UK) but I have to admit that $140M would majorly underperform what Vince has promised investors. (that's up about 35M, probably more since the 106M current deal includes a bunch of total divas money).

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The number Dave is tossing around is $280M a *year* in the US? The WWE is crackers if they think they're getting that.

 

John

Honestly, it isn't clear. He just said something very vague like "WWE is looking for $280M". We know Vince said he wanted to double or triple rights, which I could be the math that leads to 2.5 x $110M = $275M.

 

However, in my scenarios I looked at "average $280M/yr" and "hit $280M after 5 years", the latter of which I thought was possible while the former seemed zany.

 

Dave's take on last night's Raw review/mailbag was that it'll come down to number of bidders and that if they go past 2/15 without accepting NBCU's exclusive offer, it's not looking good for WWE to stay on NBCU. I would be shocked if Raw moves; I could see Smackdown flipping to another entity. However, I only have baseless conjecture to go off of, so really the sky's the limit for what may and will and should and won't and could happen.

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BSkyB runs a very successful 'On Demand' service, which is simple, quick and reliable to use. Is there any suggestion that the WWE Network could appear via Sky themselves? That would be a fantastic deal for both parties - Sky have the infrastructure, WWE would get that reach of the existing consumer base and presumably a fair amount of free advertising. They already have deals to handle 'On Demand' libraries for ITV, BBC and other major content providers.

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