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WWE looks abroad for growth
By
NICK TYLWALK -- SLAM! Wrestling
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The solution to the WWE's current difficulties lies
overseas.
That was the gist of the message delivered Tuesday
morning by CEO Linda McMahon and CFO Phil Livingston
during the company's quarterly conference call. Faced
with a quarter of declining pay-per-view buys, TV
ratings and domestic live event ticket sales, WWE
management plans to tap even more into the
increasingly profitable foreign market.
International revenue accounted for 22 percent of the
company's overall income versus just 12 percent for
the same period a year ago, thanks to a European tour
that featured the first ever live Raw broadcast from
England. With the overseas market so hot, it came as
no surprise that McMahon announced plans for a similar
tour next April and as many as 50 live events outside
North America in 2005.
Aside from "resting" the domestic market to increase
demand, WWE executives plan to look at their U.S.
tours in a new light thanks to lessons they've learned
elsewhere.
"We will be flying into more hub markets and driving
to those adjacent markets, scheduling promotions with
our retailers around those events much along the model
that we've used internationally," McMahon said.
Addressing some recent WWE television experiments,
McMahon credited the new Tough Enough segments on
Smackdown for increasing the ratings for the quarter
hours in which they aired. The company's first
interactive weeknight pay-per-view, Raw's Taboo
Tuesday, was a mixed bag. Four million votes came in
online to help shape the card, but only 174,000 buys
means viewers may have been occupied with something
else when the show actually aired.
"Taboo Tuesday competed for viewers aginst the sixth
game of the Yankees-Red Sox playoff series, and
achieved buys that were below our expectations,"
McMahon admitted. "But I thought they were very
respectable given the competition."
WWE executives also have high hopes for their
fledgling movie business. Livingston revealed that
prinicpal photography on their first two feature films
-- including the John Cena vehicle The Marine -- will
wrap in December, with expected theatrical releases in
the fall of 2005. McMahon stated that the company has
more scripts under consideration and could handle
producing four movies a year.
When asked about a launch date for the
much-anticipated WWE 24/7, an on-demand subscription
video service that would utilize the company's 75,000
hours of wrestling footage, McMahon would only say
that it would be "soon." The company has received good
response from soft launches and expects to announce
more about which cable systems will carry the service
in the near future.
One additional highlight of the conference call came
when Livingston announced that a deal had finally been
reached to close the book on the WWE's ambitious but
ultimately unprofitable presence in New York's Times
Square. The property that opened to much fanfare in
2000 as WWF New York has been closed since 2003, a
melancholy reminder that wrestling's popularity isn't
wat it was just a few years ago.
"We had a minor celebration here at the company when
we [closed the deal]," said Livingston. "Our annual
lease on the property was almost three million dolars
a year, so offloading the liability was a positive for sure."
