Impact of Covid 19 on the WWE
Join Date: May 2013
Posts: 1,712
How long can WWE go with holding events without fans before they are in serious trouble as a company? I’m not sure putting large groups of people together will be allowed under state law until there is a vaccine. So WWE could be looking at performing in front no fans for a year or more. Can the WWE survive that?
Join Date: May 2012
Posts: 21,495
Short answer's yes they can survive a year as they are now.
They're still getting money from networks and the only thing they're giving up is Saudi money and attendance money. Da Meltz reported that WWE has over $500 million in cash atm so there's really no worry for them. If things stay the way they are now and assuming they sell no merch, they will still clear $120m in profit this year.
The more complex question is asking if wrestling can survive a year like this. Ratings getting worse and worse now. Will those fans come back? Will people want to go to shows at all in the future? Wrestling may very well be too niche to survive.
Join Date: Jan 2008
Posts: 9,774
Long term the harsh answer is this might be good for WWE. They can get through this with their TV deals and then might be the only game in town again. But I also agree with isolated that I could see this damaging the entire industry so badly that general enthusiasm for wrestling practically disappears down to a tiny niche-within-a-niche. It's really hard to say.
Join Date: Jan 2008
Posts: 40,161
I think there will be pretty huge fork-in-the-road moments for WWE/Wrestling when the fans are allowed back. There's nothing they can do to keep fans watching these empty arena shows, they're brutally painful (although some of it is just exposing how bad WWE writing has been for a long time now), but imo there will be major short-term excitement for all sorts of things when the world returns to normal, and WWE will see a spike in audience when that happens. If they introduce storylines/characters with potential, this very well could be good for them.
