Wrestlenomics' Brandon Thurston On What To Expect From WWE's Q3 2022 Results

The commercial ramifications of Vince McMahon's disgraced exit from WWE will soon be known.

Wrestlenomics' Brandon Thurston recently spoke to Wrestling Inc. Senior News Editor Nick Hausman about his expectations for the impending release of WWE's third-quarter financial results. Thurston described WWE's third financial quarter as a "Post-Vince McMahon" period and, despite the fact that there were minimal Vince McMahon mentions on WWE's Q2 earnings call, talked about how McMahon's absence could be felt business-wise in subtler ways.

"Most of that quarter is in the Triple H era, where Triple H has been the head of creative." Thurston noted there has been "real change" in the promotion since Paul "Triple H" Levesque took over the creative direction of the company, also saying that WWE has been on a positive business trend since mid-July, something likely not lost on investors. 

Amongst the items Thurston expects WWE to tout as part of its results is that ticket sales for WWE's Q3 are up from this time last year. Thurston believes this is impressive considering last year's Q3 took place when WWE returned to touring. "You can think of it as Q3 should have had a really strong, sort of artificial enhancement," Thurston explained, "just because nobody could go to live events, and then they could go to live events again. And we saw it through multiple forms of entertainment, that the pent-up demand really benefited ticket sales across entertainment and sports. Despite that, this Q3, a year later, Raw did better than the Raw of a year ago."

"WWE SmackDown" was also up, though not quite to the degrees of its Monday night counterpart. "SmackDown was not better, but it was comparable, and it was better than the three quarters in between the return to touring and now," Thurston continued. "So SmackDown did better than usual."