In advance of Vince McMahon and WWE management's investor conference call on Thursday, after WWE announces its second quarter numbers, Variety posted a stinging piece today on WWE's massive loss of audience over the second quarter of this year vs. the same period in 2018. They referenced the company's statement during the first quarter investor conference call where they blamed the ratings drop for the first three months of 2019 on “superstar absences" by noting that pretty much everyone who was missing then was back for quarter two, yet the audience still dropped. They ponder how Vince will explain losing viewers this time and note that, "The company’s TV partners, NBCUniversal and Fox, are also reportedly getting anxious about the state of the WWE" given that they will pay a combined $470M a year for Raw and Smackdown starting in October. They noted what we have been saying here for a while now, that the Raw audience was down around 20 percent year to year, while Smackdown is off about 17%. They also noted, that WWE's biggest problem is in the creative. Hopefully a mainstream outlet like Variety can get through to Vince that the main problem with WWE right now comes from the guy he looks at in the mirror.
The WWE stock, which was trading near $100 before they announced the first quarter numbers and then dropped signficantly, is currently trading at $69.90 It will be very interesting to see what happens when the company reports on Thursday. The stock run up was largely based off of the new TV deals so if WWE has a bad quarter, it's very possible that the stock will drop even lower. It's expected that they will announce on Thursday that they have brought Paul Heyman and Eric Bischoff in to fix the problems. Some are wondering if the callers that get through will really press Vince on whether he will give them a legitimate chance to do so or whether he will keep overseeing things.
The piece from Variety is here.. https://variety.com/2019/tv/opinion/vince-mcmahon-wwe-woes-1203273548/amp/
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