This past week was filled with news so fasten your virtual seat belts because this is gonna be a long one. Without further ado, here are The 5 News Week.
What's With The Story That WWE Will Possibly Put Their Content On A Different OTT?
This confusion all started when some fans (including myself) saw the headline from a well-respected publication "WWE In Talks Talks to Sell PPV Rights to Another ‘Major’ Streaming Service."
That publication is The Wrap and the article pretty much talked about what Vinne Mac said in the Q4 2019 earnings report about the possibility of putting their content to a major streaming service or enhance the prize point to a tiered payment but the deal to quote The Wrap " if made — would be announced by next month.". Did the old man say this? Let's observe what he said:
“Well, we have a lot of options. We could continue on as we are now, with a … free tier and a more enhanced paid tier,”
"Right now there’s no more better time to exercise the selling of our rights to all the majors who, quite frankly, all the majors are really clamoring for our content. So that could be a significant increase, obviously, in terms of revenue.”
Vince went on to say later in the report:
"Making reference to OTT and the interest of the major players, we’d be announcing that deal if we go that way, in the first quarter, that’s how far along we are."
The dude that wrote the article is actually true about the timing announcement part so, out of the clickbait scale of gotcha to satisfied, it's in the middle. Now, how did WWE get in the mess of Network subscriptions? Well, let's look at history in a detailed description.
WWE launched the streaming platform in 2014 that cost them $70 million dollars to develop. It includes all the archives and the latest PPVs even though their PPVs made them 16% of its net revenue in 2013 (if you do the math, that's $81.2 million in the total 2013 net revenue of $507.97 million).
The service reached over 667,280 subscribers in April 2014 and the company was confident that they'll reach a million subs later that year but that goal was reached the very next year.
George Barrios, the now-former WWE president, told CNBC back in 2015 that a 3 to 4 million sub count "would be transformational for the company" he said, but it wasn't an official goal for World Wrestling Entertainment according to Yahoo Finance.
However, 2 million subscribers to quote Barrios would be great and they did reach that number 3 years after that interview. That number has decreased drastically to a 1.4 million sub count today.
Some fans have said that it's the removal of NXT TV which was ranked as one of if not the highest watched show on the network, is one of the reasons but even in the yellow brand's current run with USA, the full episode will be uploaded on the network almost a day later so that doesn't make sense.
A Needham analyst Laura Martin said (from CNBC) that Amazon could not only get the streaming rights from WWE but as well as buy the whole damn company as it brings in a loyal fanbase (just look at the wrestler's Twitter replies).
According to Dave Meltzer and The Wrestling Observer Radio (shout out to WrestlingINC), Amazon isn't interested in WWE because they're seeking for cheaper content which I believe this story given that their upcoming Lord Of The Rings prequel series on Amazon Prime is expected to have a budget of a billion dollars but anything is possible.
This is getting long enough so I wanna quote a short paragraph from a 2014 Business Insider article because it describes this whole network situation best:
"Looking back, the WWE's recent implosion was caused in large part by an embarrassing amount of unsubstantiated hype the company communicated to investors, both about the size of its forthcoming TV deal and the fortunes of its recently launched streaming video network."
(How the holy hell shows like Last Week Tonight process a lot of information like this?)
WWE 2k20's Revenue Decreased Says WWE CFO.
Speaking of the earnings report. The chief financial officer of WWE Frank Riddick revealed at the Q4 earnings that WWE 2K20's revenue to put it simply, went down. Here's what he said (from Tony Maglio via a tweet):
"Revenues decreased to $30.8 million from $32.8 million in the prior year quarter primarily due to lower video game royalties, which were driven by the Company’s franchise console game WWE 2K20"
Y'all know why that game wasn't doing well. Glitches upon glitches that lead to a patch with you guessed it, glitches. Justin Leeper, a former writer and game designer for the Smackdown vs Raw series, said back in late November that the budget for next year's game is gonna be cut (from Fightful):
"2K20 is selling poorly, it’s doing poorly all around. That means the budget is going to be cut. It means 2K21 is gonna have to be made for less money. Less money to fix things, innovate, and now there are about ten less people on the team. As you can tell, the outlook is not good for 2K21 either.”
I've not played a WWE 2K game since 16 and honestly, I've not missed much since then based on seeing the gameplay from the later games.
To state the very obvious, this ain't looking good for WWE or 2K for that matter.
Kabuki Warriors Sets A New Record For Women's Tag Belts.
Both the express of tomorrow and the pirate princess are killing it right now despite lacking a proper women's tag team division.
Thanks to their dominant run as tag champs, The Kabuki Warriors have been champions for 121 days since capturing the belts from the duo of Alexa Bliss and Nikki Cross at Hell In A Cell 4 months back.
Good for them. This is the closest thing to a badass wrestling machine, Asuka. While it is not undefeated Asuka, at least she's winning most of the time. I don't see a bad guy in Kairi Sane but that run certainly made a believer in me.
Why Are The IIconics Absent From WWE TV?
We haven't seen the Australian duo since November of last year facing Charlotte Flair and Becky Lynch in a losing effort on RAW. The question is, why are The IIconics absent from WWE TV? Dave Meltzer got you covered via a tweet if you believe him that is:
I asked about them a few weeks ago. A decision was made to take them off TV. Maybe repackaging, but the idea was they'd be back. https://t.co/gfHtBIUSf2— Dave Meltzer (@davemeltzerWON) February 7, 2020
I'm not a fan of The IIconics even going back to their NXT days. Their character wasn't clicking for me but I hope that reboot will benefit them.
The Date And Venue For Extreme Rules 2020.
It seems like the concept will never go away as proven by the news I'm about to share.
From PWInsider and Mike Johnson, The 2020 edition Extreme Rules will take place at the SAP Centre in San Jose, CA on July 19th. Cool.
What do you think about the news I just reported and follow me on the tweets @omartheplayaguy. Anyways, stay safe smarks.
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