Post by Agent P on Aug 2, 2012 15:50:14 GMT -5
From F4WOnline.com....
WWE announced today that for the second quarter of 2012, which includes WrestleMania, the company took in $141.6 million in revenue and ended wiht $11.9 million in profit. The numbers were slightly down from the same period in 2011, which took in $142.6 mllion in revenue and had $14.3 million in profit.
There were both pluses and minuses in comparisons. The profitability of WrestleMania as a whole was not discussed, but ticket sales for the live event and PPV numbers were up 8% in both categories.
Worldwide PPV was up for all four shows in the quarter with announced numbers of 1,217,000 worldwide buys for WrestleMania, 263,000 for Extreme Rules (up from original expectations), 167,000 for Over the Limit and 194,000 for No Way Out. The latter two numbers were lower than original expectations, but still up from last year's numbers.
The declines were largely expected. Video game revenue was way down because last year had WWE All-Stars as a secondary release and there was no comparable item this year, so it was inevitable. Magazine publishing continues to decline, with a 19% year-over-year drop. Toy sales dropped 12%.
House show attendance was down, even with a bigger Mania factored in, largely because of low attendance in South America and a decline in Mexico. Domestic attendance also dropped slightly, from 5,600 to 5,400 per event, if you factor out WrestleMania from the average.
However, the company said they expect profitability to be up 5-15% from last year. The key differences are new revenue coming from the television side and lower losses expected on the film side because of a cutback in production of movies. The combination of revenue from a third hour of Raw and a new show on Ion, as well as new revenue from the Yuotube channel should be the major positive changes that will affect the final six months of the year.
Perhaps the big disappointment from the financial community at the press call was with all the talk about social media numbers, every aspect of company business that existed a year ago was either flat or down, with the exception of PPV, and most of that increase was due to The Rock and Brock Lesnar wrestling. There was no mention of either man's name when PPV increases were brought up, and only a claim of better creative for the reasons.
When noted that 60% of social media followers were outside North America, even though overseas PPV besides WrestleMania is flat or down and house shows were down, it was asked if all of that has contributed to ratings increases abroad. George Barrios, the company's CFO, noted that most countries do not have the level of sophistication with ratings as we do in the U.S., but also that they have not seen any examples of ratings increases they could tie to it.
There was frustration with the stock price and the feeling Wall Street was uncertain about the network. Vince McMahon said that at the next earnings call they would have more information on first-run programming on the network.
The company announced that it invested $5 million in Tout but would not state what percentage of the company that represents.
McMahon also when asked about PG programming said they have a lot of latitude to work within PG and admitted that RAw was perhaps veered too much to the G side in the past.
WWE announced today that for the second quarter of 2012, which includes WrestleMania, the company took in $141.6 million in revenue and ended wiht $11.9 million in profit. The numbers were slightly down from the same period in 2011, which took in $142.6 mllion in revenue and had $14.3 million in profit.
There were both pluses and minuses in comparisons. The profitability of WrestleMania as a whole was not discussed, but ticket sales for the live event and PPV numbers were up 8% in both categories.
Worldwide PPV was up for all four shows in the quarter with announced numbers of 1,217,000 worldwide buys for WrestleMania, 263,000 for Extreme Rules (up from original expectations), 167,000 for Over the Limit and 194,000 for No Way Out. The latter two numbers were lower than original expectations, but still up from last year's numbers.
The declines were largely expected. Video game revenue was way down because last year had WWE All-Stars as a secondary release and there was no comparable item this year, so it was inevitable. Magazine publishing continues to decline, with a 19% year-over-year drop. Toy sales dropped 12%.
House show attendance was down, even with a bigger Mania factored in, largely because of low attendance in South America and a decline in Mexico. Domestic attendance also dropped slightly, from 5,600 to 5,400 per event, if you factor out WrestleMania from the average.
However, the company said they expect profitability to be up 5-15% from last year. The key differences are new revenue coming from the television side and lower losses expected on the film side because of a cutback in production of movies. The combination of revenue from a third hour of Raw and a new show on Ion, as well as new revenue from the Yuotube channel should be the major positive changes that will affect the final six months of the year.
Perhaps the big disappointment from the financial community at the press call was with all the talk about social media numbers, every aspect of company business that existed a year ago was either flat or down, with the exception of PPV, and most of that increase was due to The Rock and Brock Lesnar wrestling. There was no mention of either man's name when PPV increases were brought up, and only a claim of better creative for the reasons.
When noted that 60% of social media followers were outside North America, even though overseas PPV besides WrestleMania is flat or down and house shows were down, it was asked if all of that has contributed to ratings increases abroad. George Barrios, the company's CFO, noted that most countries do not have the level of sophistication with ratings as we do in the U.S., but also that they have not seen any examples of ratings increases they could tie to it.
There was frustration with the stock price and the feeling Wall Street was uncertain about the network. Vince McMahon said that at the next earnings call they would have more information on first-run programming on the network.
The company announced that it invested $5 million in Tout but would not state what percentage of the company that represents.
McMahon also when asked about PG programming said they have a lot of latitude to work within PG and admitted that RAw was perhaps veered too much to the G side in the past.
