flyonthewall2983 Posted February 20, 2014 Report Share Posted February 20, 2014 It should be considered that the WWE product now isn't what it was when Spike had them before. USA has tame but inoffensive original programming, Modern Family and NCIS reruns. Spike has edited-for-TV R-rated action movies, reality shows about manly pursuits and those awful cop car-chase footage shows. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WingedEagle Posted February 20, 2014 Report Share Posted February 20, 2014 Whatever the reality is, it looks like they're doing a pretty good job spinning the TV bidding and potential upside of the network. Stock was up 7.5% today. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdw Posted February 21, 2014 Report Share Posted February 21, 2014 Whatever the reality is, it looks like they're doing a pretty good job spinning the TV bidding and potential upside of the network. Stock was up 7.5% today. Â Yep... that's people buying that it's got a shot at the Network doing business and TV Rights going up. It's not really a matter of people thinking it's undervalued at current revenue, but at an increased revenue. This also isn't a new trend. The price has been going up quite a bit since October or so. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdw Posted February 21, 2014 Report Share Posted February 21, 2014 I haven't read the latest WON, but what I can say is WWE is so undervalued relative to the ratings it draws that it'd be hard to believe it wouldn't get a massive TV rights increase just because they're already so underpaid.   David's post kind of points to why they're not insanely undervalued:  - Ad rates for WWE programming are low (Raw has the lowest ad rate per viewer on the USA Network).  Part of that is because Raw draw 5M viewers a week, so it has a lot of viewers to divide revenue by. Looking at just USA's primetime line up:  Mon: Raw (3 hours) Tue: Law & Order SVU (1) + Modern Family (2) Wed: Modern Family (1) + Psych (1) + Movie Thu: Law & Order SVU (3) Fri: Law & Order SVU (1) + Modern Family (2) Sat: Law & Order SVU (3) Sun: Law & Order SVU (1) + Modern Family (2)  Uh... it's not a good sign that the advertising money per viewer is considerably higher for what is largely Re-Runs. Just 4 hours a week are non-reruns: Raw and Pysch.  That does change a bit over the year, as these are the "new" shows they air: Psych (last season currently airing) Royal Pains (6th season in June) White Collar (just finished 5th season - renewal a question) Covert Affairs (5th season later this year) Suits (3.2 season starting in Mar-Apr / 4th season ordered) Graceland (2nd season later this year)  They've got three additional series on deck:  Benched Playing House Sirens  Obviously none of these shows gives them 3 hours a week, 52 weeks a year of content that's drawing 5M viewers, not even accounting for SmackDown. But wrestling's advertising money has long been a talked about problem. Vince is working hard to get across that the WWE is like "sports" where people still want to watch it "live" (i.e. not on the DVD skipping the ads). But people don't seem to be buying that as a great value, especially if they can't turn around and make a ton of ad money off it.  Is the WWE undervalued in terms of the Viewers it draws? Sure, long has been relative to what other things draw. But people in the TV business know how much they can make off that viewership. Those people have done seemingly insane stuff like pay $200M a year for the NHL (NBC & NBC Sports Network). That draws a test patern rating compared to the WWE, and probably a shitty Demo rating relative to the WWE. But it doesn't look like Comcast offered up $200M a year to Vince, because if they did he would have jumped at it in a second.  John Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WingedEagle Posted February 21, 2014 Report Share Posted February 21, 2014 Yeah, its been on a rocket for the last 5-6 months and up something over 150% in the last year. At least I didn't miss out on the entire run. Question is how long this love lasts if the network doesn't put up boffo numbers to start. I think the "free" trial week will be key to that as it'll force people to actively cancel their accounts, but still allow the company to deliver a healthy number of subs. Pull that off and they can likely ride quite a bit of momentum for another quarter or 2. Â If not, we'll see how convincingly they can sell the growth story without early support. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JonnyBart Posted February 21, 2014 Report Share Posted February 21, 2014 To networks, the ratings are prestige more than anything. Â The real meat is in the ad revenue that a show can produce. It's why WWE has a lower contract than the other sports, because advertisers don't pay big money (relatively) for wrestling. Â That problem has existed for a while and I don't see it going away. FS1 is a possible outlier because they may want WWE to help build their struggling network. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdw Posted February 21, 2014 Report Share Posted February 21, 2014 To networks, the ratings are prestige more than anything. Â The real meat is in the ad revenue that a show can produce. It's why WWE has a lower contract than the other sports, because advertisers don't pay big money (relatively) for wrestling. Â That problem has existed for a while and I don't see it going away. FS1 is a possible outlier because they may want WWE to help build their struggling network. Â They won't be going to FS1. Have you tracked how often UFC's events are running up against overruns on the shows that air before them? Vince flat out doesn't want to have his show pushed back because some Big 12 hoops game goes long. Or whatever sporting events Fox grabs over time (such as the Big 10 contract being one of the last big ones left out there after the NBA gets done soon). For Vince to allow his programing on FS1, he'd have to get a guarantee that Fox would never schedule a sporting event in the time slot prior to Raw that has a chance of over-running the time slot. Take the Duke-UNC game last night. Event without Overtime, the game bled past the hour. Late in the game there was a very strong chance of OT, which would have pushed it miles into the next slot. Â Vince hates that. He wasn't a fixed slot. He doesn't even want that Dog Show pre-emption anymore, which is a big reason why it's not on USA anymore: they were faced with the choice between Vince or one of their other valueable ratings draw. They chose Vince. Â Raw's the key one, but one also suspects that in the coming deal that Vince & Co. are going to want to put more effort into getting SD's viewerships at a good ratio to Raw's. The ability to have both Raw and SD strong adds value (i.e. $$$) to future contracts. So SD getting bumped around by sporting events is also something Vince wouldn't want. Â For FS1 (or NBCSN) to get the WWE, they'd have to either (i) promise no risky live sports in the slot prior, or (ii) throw Silly Money at Vince that he couldn't turn down. Akin to the silly money that NBC threw at the NHL. The NHL knew it was bad for exposure of the sport, but it also was so much more than what ESPN was willing to go to that they couldn't resist taking the cash. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jmare007 Posted March 8, 2014 Report Share Posted March 8, 2014 Source: Bloomberg  WWE Chief Financial Officer George Barrios revealed to Bloomberg in a telephone interview that WWE will announce their new television deal at the end of April or the beginning of May.  While Barrios would only state that the company was in talks with "with multiple parties," Bloomberg reveals that WWE has held talks with AMC, Viacom, Time Warner and FOX. The story noted that a renewal with NBCUniversal is also a possibility.  Of course, Viacom is the parent company of Spike TV, which airs TNA programming. While Viacom does own many channels, if Viacom were to strike a deal with WWE, they would almost certainly be on Spike TV leaving TNA without a home. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flyonthewall2983 Posted March 8, 2014 Report Share Posted March 8, 2014 Crazy as it sounds, I could see AMC getting Raw and Smackdown. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Timbo Slice Posted March 8, 2014 Report Share Posted March 8, 2014 For the money that WWE is looking for, there are very few platforms out there that could give them that. If they already have an agreement in place, you wonder if it was decided once they disclosed the numbers for the Network. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bierschwale Posted March 9, 2014 Report Share Posted March 9, 2014 AMC would mean Cablevision, which of course means MSG. That's kind of perfect, isn't it? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt D Posted March 9, 2014 Report Share Posted March 9, 2014 I don't know a ton about the nuts and bolts of this but it's interesting to me that a deal was apparently made relatively shortly after the negotiating period began. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing either. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
goodhelmet Posted March 9, 2014 Report Share Posted March 9, 2014 What are you talking about, Matt? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Timbo Slice Posted March 9, 2014 Report Share Posted March 9, 2014 Well, the renewal period had just ended with Comcast, which meant that someone was sitting there waiting with an offer. So someone was doing their homework on this. That's not a bad thing. The bad part would be if WWE settled on it just because it wasn't from Comcast. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt D Posted March 9, 2014 Report Share Posted March 9, 2014 Tim mostly hit on what I was going for though I was also thinking that the bad thing would have been that either the offers weren't coming in or that they were universally low. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flyonthewall2983 Posted March 9, 2014 Report Share Posted March 9, 2014 Now that I think about it, AMC would actually be the best choice for them. McMahon doesn't want to be trumped by other live programming like sporting events or award shows. I think the only live programming AMC has ever done were the chat shows following The Walking Dead and Breaking Bad. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Timbo Slice Posted March 9, 2014 Report Share Posted March 9, 2014 From what I remember with the reports, Comcast lowballed what Vince was looking for because they had so much leverage considering they were about to close the Time Warner merger. I think someone went above and beyond that for what Vince was looking for. They wouldn't settle that early or else they'd just go back to what Comcast offered. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt D Posted March 9, 2014 Report Share Posted March 9, 2014 Do you think the figures discussed (NASCAR money) was realistically what they were looking for or just put out there as a smokescreen? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Timbo Slice Posted March 9, 2014 Report Share Posted March 9, 2014 NASCAR money is way too much considering the advertising revenue that NASCAR brings in. That might be what they're looking for, but they're gonna have to settle for less. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt Farmer Posted March 9, 2014 Report Share Posted March 9, 2014 WWE does not want to move away from USA, these negotiations are just a ploy (and a smart one) to get USA/NBC to shell out more money. Â For WWE to move to a weaker network it would have to bring in revenue to make up for the loss in revenue for their other streams. Viewers, and a lot of them are extremely important to WWE. We've seen how being on a weaker network has affected UFC, they have had trouble creating new stars, and their PPV revenue is way down. For WWE going to a Fox Sports would cut into a huge chunk of their viewers, and that would cause less being spent on merch, house shows and even Network subscribers. People talk about how loyal the "WWE Universe" is but that is not the case. When WWE moved from USA to Spike they lost a lot of viewers and the product was much hotter than then now. A network switch can greatly hurt them in viewership. Of course if their offered 300 mil a year that would nulify their problems. (Short term) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sek69 Posted March 9, 2014 Report Share Posted March 9, 2014 Yeah, they would probably like to move Smackdown to a better network/timeslot but I don't see Raw moving from USA unless some other network backs a truck full of money into Vince's driveway. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Loss Posted March 9, 2014 Report Share Posted March 9, 2014 Are you guys saying a deal has been made, we just don't know who with or what the terms were yet? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Timbo Slice Posted March 9, 2014 Report Share Posted March 9, 2014 What I'm saying, though, is that because of the leverage Comcast has in the negotiations and with the fact they just bought Time Warner, they aren't going to be as quick to come back to WWE. Yes, WWE is getting some major cable ratings, but for the money those ratings get them, they have to come with ad revenues that are requisite with the money they're looking for. Ad revenue is directly affected by ratings, with WWE being an anomaly of sorts because they have a narrow margin of advertising they work with. The reason why WWE came back to USA in the first place was because it was struggling, and then after WWE got signed, NBC Universal bought USA. That gave them some more wiggle room, and when the rights came back up for discussion, USA was happy to renew. Now with Comcast calling the shots, Comcast isn't going to be so quick to give them the money. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Timbo Slice Posted March 9, 2014 Report Share Posted March 9, 2014 Are you guys saying a deal has been made, we just don't know who with or what the terms were yet? WWE has said they are announcing a TV deal near the end of April or beginning of May. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Loss Posted March 9, 2014 Report Share Posted March 9, 2014 Does that mean they are expecting to have a deal by that time, or that they already have one and they are just keeping the specifics quiet until then? Or do we know? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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