There's a new Monday Night Wars on about Goldberg that I might check out.

Awesome , they talked through the notorious Regal shoot.

Nice. I'm at the Austin episode right now so may be able to get caught up today before HIAC.

Just got an e-mail indicating that you can cancel anytime at the $9.99/month number. So people who were hesitant about signing up for 6 months can get cheap PPVs (legally) when they feel like it without committing $60. Just an FYI.

And WWE just announced that new subscribers can have November for free.

Wouldn't feel right watching it without paying

Nice

Think that's a real good move.

It's weird how much urgency they're operating under with changes to the Network, and you seen none of that in the booking. If you're in panic mode, why is Brock not on TV/SS for instance?

I'm sure they've thought about the ev of this move and the answer to that is why he's not at each ppv or on tv more often.

6 month commitment is now done. Wonder how many people just buy the network between Rumble and Mania now.

That's optimistic, more than likely people will just buy the rumble for 9.99 then mania for 9.99 and be done with it.

Hadn't seen the numbers posted here yet but the new subscription numbers were made public yesterday. They went up from 700k to 731k despite going mostly international but here's an interesting article from the New York Post:

It is titled, “The WWE gets ready to crumble.”
If they could get there **** together, they could get back the majority of those 255k. Me included.

I'm not a marketing genius, but it feels like WWE made the network too cheap and now they are in a bit of trouble because they can't increase the price or it will cause a huge backlash. It's good for us because it forces them to provide a better product. It's easy to say all of this now but I think the general consensus on here when the network first came out was something like $20/mo could have easily been offered as the pricing point.

I was reading their Q2 financial report a couple days ago, and on page 17 it indicates that their income is basically planned to be negative for all of 2014 regardless of the number of subscribers they get.

For 2015 potential performance, they will be in the red at 500k subscribers, but making a profit at 1MM subscribers. I'm guessing those are end of year numbers, and that is probably all going to change now that you aren't committed for 6 months.

Here is the document btw if anyone wanted to see what I was looking at, and I could be interpreting it wrong as well. http://corporate.wwe.com/news/2014/2...2_Earnings.pdf

One important thing to point out is that it seemed like they had high hopes at the end of Q2 with respect to 2015, because their scale for performance based on average subscribers goes like this:

2014: 500k, 575k, 650k, 825k, 1MM
2015: 500k, 1MM, 1.5MM, 2MM, 2.5MM.

Now it seems like all of those numbers are completely out of reach except for the 1MM mark.

Also if anyone could find the document for Q3 let me know, i wanted to look at it but I couldn't find it (maybe it isn't posted online yet?)

EDIT: Found the Quarter 3 pdf: http://ir.corporate.wwe.com/Cache/15...T=&iid=4121687

it looks like their 2015 predictions didn't change, at least with respect to operating income.

Interpolating on their 2015 performance incomes, it looks like they are expecting to break even if they can sustain 750k subscribers by the end of 2015. After that point I'm assuming they will start turning so big profits. How this compares to their old profits coming from the $60 PPV model, im not sure.

Keep saying I'd pay twice what we do for the Network. Thought the whole 9.99 thing was such a bad idea because it locks them into that price.

So Vince just announced on Smackdown that for new subscribers the month of November is free. Wonder what the catch is.

Same catch as any other free trial, I assume you have to set it to auto-renew for that and they hope that people forget to cancel.

They are also down over 100k PPV buys per PPV compared to last year (e.g. 2013 Summerslam 300k buys 2014 150k). I wonder how much revenue they projected they would lose due to people who would have paid 40-60 bucks getting the PPV and more for 10.

They need to sell the product, not the price. $10/mo is nothing if you get people to want the product. They probably did hose themselves though, they might've had about the same sub #'s @ 20/month. (something AIDS like a hogan v cena debate tell dads they can prove hogan was better than cena for just 10 bucks)

A bunch of people would just pay 50/ppv b/c that's how they always got a ppv instead of $10/month then have to use some technological dohickey they don't understand. (also esp those that are only interested in the big ppv's) Historical content is cool but the vast majority of people only tune in for new things.

shame, I really liked the network idea; but they just don't have the fanbase to support a low price point. ppv model to get $ from lol olds still was best.

dunno about old raws/smackdowns I know a lot say they want it, but it's hard for me to believe they actually would watch them. Probably should just do a handful of the best ones to start and see what happens than pure chronological order.

This is how they started when it first launched. The best 10 or whatever eps. Some from 96, 98, 00, you get the idea.

I just signed up for free November and lol at there being no new ECW content. 96-00 ECW is one of the best eras in wrestling history and they stop at mid 95.

How is this hard to believe? I would certainly grind the hell out of them. Im not interested as much in watching one offs without any context.

Right
This is one of the things they try their best to cover in the aepodcast and it always seems to come up short because unlike today, back then there was a ton of content between ppvs

This is one of the most pathetic things I've ever read:

Vince should be ashamed of himself.

It's funny but why is it bad? Every episode on SM is full of fake pops, this was just a funny way of exploiting a taped crowd. I doubt DB would care that his Big Show get well message was a farce.

I know SD is full of fake pops but eliciting a real one under false pretenses to get over a failing product is just low. "Exploiting" people like that isn't right. Duping people by lying is just pathetic.

On the plus side, maybe Bryan getting surgery was just a ruse to pull off this elaborate scheme and Bryan will be number 37 in the Rumble.

Yeah that's kinda ****ed up. What are the going to do next, show videos of animal abuse when they want an emotional response from the audience?