Vince McMahon, George Barrios and Michael Weitz hosted a post-WrestleMania 31 conference call today from WWE headquarters in Stamford. Below are some highlights:
* Weitz kicks off the call and mentions WrestleMania 31 being a success. He goes over the call and hands it over to Vince.
* Vince says WrestleMania 31 was a big success and touts the attendance. Vince also touts the social media activity, mainly over 140 worldwide trends. He says WrestleMania was a big contributor to WWE Network growth and says they have now surpassed 1.3 million subscribers. Talks about the new programming coming to the WWE Network and says the Divas Search will be successful. He calls the new Camp WWE show with Seth Green “South Park with WWE” with WWE stars as children off to camp.
* Barrios takes over and also touts the new WWE Network programming coming soon, saying the Diva Search will span the globe to find the next talent. He noted that they had 201,000 trial subscribers in February and 77% of those converted into paid subscribers for March. He touted the 1.3 million subscribers and said their longterm goal is 3-4 million. They’re going to be adding another 1,000 hours of on-demand footage soon.
* It’s time for the Q&A. The first caller gives Vince props for having Ronda Rousey on WrestleMania, bringing up WWE using more mainstream names and asks if that means more cost. Vince said their budgets haven’t changed but the success of the Network and being ahead of everyone else helps them land bigger names to work with. For the second time in the call they mentioned other brands starting their own networks because of WWE’s success.
* Barrios wouldn’t reveal the number of users who had the free month in November that are still paid subscribers. Barrios is confident about the new shows they announced being successful.
* Barrios talked about China and India eventually becoming big markets for the company and the Network. He feels next year will be big for them in India.
* They may look into different price points in the future but they’re happy with the $9.99 price right now.
* They started talking with Tapout three years ago and are excited for the partnership. We’ll see more Tapout promotion on WWE TV as they get closer to putting the products in stores, which should be next year.
* The international subscription numbers will be released in the quarterly report.
* They had no problems with WrestleMania 31 streaming and the new WrestleMania Experience campaign with Facebook was a success.
* Regarding frustrations over the WrestleMania build-up, Vince acknowledged WWE will always have its doubters and said the build to WrestleMania was more of a last minute thing but that’s how WWE does it sometimes. Vince said WrestleMania always tops itself.
* Vince said they do target Males 18-34 but they have programming that targets all demographics and some of the new programming is designed to do just that.
* Vince gave props to their marketing abilities when talking about Sting. Vince said they brought Sting from obscurity to a major WWE attraction.
* They’re about fully distributed in Canada.
