WWE Q1 2016 – WWE makes big reporting shift, eliminates PPV buys and monthly biz reports

In the Fourth Quarter 2015 earnings release, WWE stopped releasing official PPV buy figures for individual events.

Now, WWE is completely doing away with reporting individual PPV figures in their monthly business reports.

WWE financial executive George Barrios announced during the quarterly conference call on Tuesday that WWE’s traditional “Key Performance Indicators” report will go from monthly to quarterly.

As part of the change, WWE released a completely new business report on their corporate website that omits any PPV buys information.

WWE also removed DVD sales tracking from the business report, reflecting PPV and Home Video being consumed by the WWE Network to the point where WWE is no longer focusing on those metrics.

It’s the point where Barrios acted like he did not understand a question about WrestleMania 32’s domestic PPV buys. Asked again what the domestic buys were to get a sense of total audience that watched WM32, Barrios answered by citing the ten-year history of WM drawing 900,000 to 1.2 million total buys, which is obviously out the window with the Network cannibalizing PPV business.

As for the monthly-now-quarterly business report, WWE will be releasing data that includes:

• TV Ratings (showing that, yes, WWE’s TV ratings are down, but so are USA Network and the overall cable industry).
• Media Consumption (video views)
• Social Media engagement
• WWE Network subscribers
• Live Event Attendance (one holdover from the monthly reports)