WWE Network Has Done More Harm Than Good Right Now

WWE Network intended for WWE to gain more profit. As it stands right now, though, it’s causing the company to fire lots of people to save money.

The WWE Network was expensive to start up in the first place. It was an estimated $40 million gamble. Before its release, everyone was optimistic about WWE’s future. The WWE Network was set to be a huge success and gain lots of revenue per year. There were also big promises of landing a huge TV deal that would also bring in more money for WWE.

Fast forward four months and WWE is making a ton of budget cuts. WWE Network subscribers are slowly crawling to the 1 million mark. Many people thought getting 1 million subscribers would have been easy, but it looks like an uphill battle now. Also, the TV deal was over-hyped and WWE only got a small increase from NBC Universal. WWE did not double or triple its TV deal fees like they promised to investors late last year.

Because of all the false promises and overestimating wrestling’s popularity these days, WWE has had to make a ton of budgets cuts. I feel WWE miscalculated the many fans that were willing to pay for the WWE Network. They thought a number of older fans would be willing to pay for all the old archival content. Right now, I don’t think casual fans are paying for WWE Network yet. The only subscribers they have now are the loyal fans who have still stuck around. Only 4-5 million USA viewers watch Raw each and every week. It was kind of a huge gamble for WWE to assume 1 million USA households can afford the WWE Network each month. Yes it’s a cheap price, but WWE programming is not as important as food and shelter.

In the span of just two weeks, 13 people have been fired from WWE. This doesn’t include the many other budget cuts the company has been making lately. WWE Network is a great service, but it may have also been too costly for WWE to operate. There’s just not that many wrestling fans out there these days who are willing to pay for such a service. Many older fans have stopped watching wrestling years ago and have moved on forever.