WWE Network impressions

[PP]

What should I watch? the Daniel Bryan WM story was pretty solid.

[LiquidLarry2GhostWF]

It looks more and more like they'll never hit that 1 mil American buyers goal. The talk of WM being dropped or the price going up only means a decrease in customers, and eventually revenue. If you raise the price 20%, but lose 15% of your customers in the process of cannibalizing your DVD sales and PPV buys, you're still taking a step backwards. I still say they need to cut a deal in China. If I'm in their shoes, I'd pay a premium to get in that door....

They need a real uptick in total eyes on the product to reach 1M...Asking 25% of your audience to pay $10/mo AND having the appropriate hardware to use said product is asking way too much.

[EmpireWF]

They're starting a 4 part series on Warrior starting this week

[Guest]

What should I watch? the Daniel Bryan WM story was pretty solid.

I've been going through the past NXT's

[Tyused]

I need another free trial before deciding to purchase. Honestly I don't want the new wrestling, but the old ppvs and shows were amazing

[PP]

I need another free trial before deciding to purchase. Honestly I don't want the new wrestling, but the old ppvs and shows were amazing

what is so hard? you want all the old shit? its all there.

[Tyused]

what is so hard? you want all the old shit? its all there.

I'm not sure I wanna pay $10/month for something I may not use often enough. Also a lot of the stuff will probably end up on a torrent site shortly

[LiquidLarry2GhostWF]

I'm not sure I wanna pay $10/month for something I may not use often enough. Also a lot of the stuff will probably end up on a torrent site shortly

Most everything is already out there on torrent...but the WWEN will make torrenting most WWE material as well as their deep library of tapes obsolete. The guys that MAKE those torrents will just be using WWEN.

[Guest]

I'm not sure I wanna pay $10/month for something I may not use often enough. Also a lot of the stuff will probably end up on a torrent site shortly

You've got all of the old PPVs right now, plus whatever shows/documentaries they want to put out going in depth into those eras. You win with the $10 a month either way.

After all, it's only $10 a month.........if you like any era of wrestling, it's worth every penny. You spend at least $10 to feed yourself at a decent restaurant, you spend $60 for one video game, so why not $60 for unlimited views of something you enjoy?

[Tyused]

May just stick with this torrent...

WWE Complete PPV Pack 1 of 2 1984-2000 DVDRip XviD

[EmpireWF]

The Warrior documentary that aired last night is worth going out of your way to check out. Hour long, covered his career and had plenty of footage shot during WM week behind the scenes. Seeing Vince bring up growth hormone (talking about 1992) was something else. They even brought up Hogan's deposition conducted after the Self Destruction DVD and showed a couple clips from that.

HHH noted about Warrior being back for only a few days around guys he hadn't seen in 10-20 years meant a lot to Warrior because both he and guys who talked shit forever were burying hatchets left and right.

[NAHSTE]

I am enjoying this WWE original content. Specifically this one program which features these twins, "the Bellas" going to a waterpark.

[Warner2BruceTD]

They need a real uptick in total eyes on the product to reach 1M...Asking 25% of your audience to pay $10/mo AND having the appropriate hardware to use said product is asking way too much.

The 1M thing isn't even a real thing and has sort of taken on a life of its own.

First, it was "we expect to average 1M subscribers per month in 2014". Then the goalpost was moved to "We expect to have 1M subscribers by the end of 2014".

But the fact of the matter is, Chris Harrington & Dave Meltzer crunched the numbers, and the real break even (break even...not even profitable) due to revenue splits with ROKU, etc plus start up costs was really closer to 1.3 million. And now that Dish & DirecTV have stopped carrying PPV's, the new break even is 1.7 million based on estimated lost PPV revenue added to the pot.

Meltzer was saying that if InDemand drops the PPV's, that will effectively kill PPV for them for good, which will push the break even even higher. They were expecting a slow crawl to the elimination of PPV revenue. Instead, they're getting hit upside the head with a brick.

Even with the higher than expected 400k Mania PPV buys (which could end up settling lower, as the early estimates the last two years proved to be high and ended up adjusted down), they lost money on moving Mania to the Network. Yeah, they knew that would happen, but the break even on this thing keeps getting bigger - and the #1 selling point (by far) is in the rear view.

My gut tells me that people like Tyused who signed up for old content will not come back after the novelty wears off, and the modern product is not even close to being hot enough to get them to nearly 2M subs.

I'm not ready to call The Network a failure, because I figured it would be a crawl and not a sprint. But the 667k subs is looking worse and worse. They may have been 2-5 years too early rolling this out. Clearly it's the future, but the future isn't now.

[Guest]

The 1M thing isn't even a real thing and has sort of taken on a life of its own.

First, it was "we expect to average 1M subscribers per month in 2014". Then the goalpost was moved to "We expect to have 1M subscribers by the end of 2014".

But the fact of the matter is, Chris Harrington & Dave Meltzer crunched the numbers, and the real break even (break even...not even profitable) due to revenue splits with ROKU, etc plus start up costs was really closer to 1.3 million. And now that Dish & DirecTV have stopped carrying PPV's, the new break even is 1.7 million based on estimated lost PPV revenue added to the pot.

Meltzer was saying that if InDemand drops the PPV's, that will effectively kill PPV for them for good, which will push the break even even higher. They were expecting a slow crawl to the elimination of PPV revenue. Instead, they're getting hit upside the head with a brick.

Even with the higher than expected 400k Mania PPV buys (which could end up settling lower, as the early estimates the last two years proved to be high and ended up adjusted down), they lost money on moving Mania to the Network. Yeah, they knew that would happen, but the break even on this thing keeps getting bigger - and the #1 selling point (by far) is in the rear view.

My gut tells me that people like Tyused who signed up for old content will not come back after the novelty wears off, and the modern product is not even close to being hot enough to get them to nearly 2M subs.

I'm not ready to call The Network a failure, because I figured it would be a crawl and not a sprint. But the 667k subs is looking worse and worse. They may have been 2-5 years too early rolling this out. Clearly it's the future, but the future isn't now.

I hate to be the guy who goes straight to the end point, but if the future isn't now, how long will they bleed money before calling it quits on the Network?

[LiquidLarry2GhostWF]

The 1M thing isn't even a real thing and has sort of taken on a life of its own.

First, it was "we expect to average 1M subscribers per month in 2014". Then the goalpost was moved to "We expect to have 1M subscribers by the end of 2014".

But the fact of the matter is, Chris Harrington & Dave Meltzer crunched the numbers, and the real break even (break even...not even profitable) due to revenue splits with ROKU, etc plus start up costs was really closer to 1.3 million. And now that Dish & DirecTV have stopped carrying PPV's, the new break even is 1.7 million based on estimated lost PPV revenue added to the pot.

Meltzer was saying that if InDemand drops the PPV's, that will effectively kill PPV for them for good, which will push the break even even higher. They were expecting a slow crawl to the elimination of PPV revenue. Instead, they're getting hit upside the head with a brick.

Even with the higher than expected 400k Mania PPV buys (which could end up settling lower, as the early estimates the last two years proved to be high and ended up adjusted down), they lost money on moving Mania to the Network. Yeah, they knew that would happen, but the break even on this thing keeps getting bigger - and the #1 selling point (by far) is in the rear view.

My gut tells me that people like Tyused who signed up for old content will not come back after the novelty wears off, and the modern product is not even close to being hot enough to get them to nearly 2M subs.

I'm not ready to call The Network a failure, because I figured it would be a crawl and not a sprint. But the 667k subs is looking worse and worse. They may have been 2-5 years too early rolling this out. Clearly it's the future, but the future isn't now.

This is just more telling that the figures are incredibly unrealistic for "break even" point. Now they are supposed to get 45% of their audience to spend $10/mo and have the appropriate hardware?

Just so unrealistic.