The WWE has had a great start to 2016 so far. We saw them break the attendance record at Wrestlemania 32 this year in Texas. Smackdown has now gone LIVE on Tuesday nights with the recent WWE Brand Split. They launched the Cruisweight Classic featuring some of the top wrestlers in the world. The WWE product right now is probably as hot as its been in a long time. It appears like from a business aspect, they are being rewarded for their efforts as they announced they hit record revenue in the second quarter of 2016.
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Here were the highlights of their report for the second quarter of 2016 from their corporate page:
“Revenue increased 32% (13% excluding the timing impact of WrestleMania) to a record $199.0 million as WWE’s Live Event and Network segments achieved their highest quarterly revenue in Company history
WWE Network reached a record of 1.52 million average paid subscribers over the second quarter 2016, which represented a 25% increase from the second quarter 2015
Through the first six months of the year, digital engagement metrics continued to grow with video views up over 100% to nearly 8 billion and social media engagements up 39% to 570 million versus the prior year
The Company announced a multi-year content distribution deal in China with PPTV, the return of a WWE live event to Shanghai in September and the signing of the first-ever Chinese talent” (Source: WWE).
Vince McMahon also commented saying:
“I continue to be pleased with the execution of our strategy to optimize the long-term value of our content. Progress on this objective is evidenced by the continued year-over-year growth of WWE Network, the transition of SmackDown to a live format every week and the completion of our first exclusive content agreement in China” (Source: WWE).
Great news for the WWE. Hope they are able to keep this up moving forward!