WWE Earnings Call Recap with Vince McMahon and Others: Hulk Hogan, WWE Network, SummerSlam, More

– Vince McMahon, George Barrios and Michael Weitz will be hosting a Second Quarter 2015 earnings call today from WWE headquarters in Stamford.

The call opens with Weitz going over the basics. Vince takes over and touts the strong growth in the second quarter. He says they are “definitely on the right path” with WWE Network subscriptions. Vince says they’ve had a lot of new content come to the WWE Network and says they are looking at doing a show similar to HBO’s Hard Knocks but will come up with a better name than that. Vince talks about WWE’s version of South Park, Camp WWE, and says it’s very funny, especially the Mr. McMahon portion. He says they’re at 14 million unique US viewers each week between RAW, SmackDown, Tough Enough, Total Divas and the rest. He touts their social media followers. He says they’re at over 400 million video views on Facebook. Vince turns the call over to Barrios.

Barrios noted that the Network generated more revenue than the annual pay-per-view business had in the past decade. The Beast In the East special was the most-watched Network special with the exception of pay-per-view events. Barrios goes over numbers and talks about new Network content being worked on – a NXT reality show, the WWE studio show, Table 3. He talks about adding more video on demand content to the Network.

WWE is planning on releasing a three-month subscription card in retail stores that can be used without a credit card. The next subscriber count will be released in their 3rd quarter earnings report. It’s time for callers now. One caller asked about making more money with subscriptions vs. pay-per-view and Barrios said they’re getting there. They were asked about social media and Barrios said they kill it at doing video. They are involved with other brands in a new Facebook video revenue share campaign. Barrios touted their video work and Vince called it a high-class problem.

They are excited about SummerSlam and Vince said SummerSlam is so much great content that they had to make it 4 hours. They said it feels like WrestleMania in August. They talked about working on new WWE Network features, bells and whistles. They are also happy with what Triple H has done with NXT. Vince said they are confident with how talents are being developed and it’s an investment into their future. Parting ways with Hulk Hogan came up and Vince just said he’s no longer with the company but it won’t have any material effect on anything. That wrapped up the call.

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