WWE Pay-Per-Views To End?, Former Diva Denies Inducting Bob Backlund
- 4-Traders.com has an interview with WWE CFO George Barrios, who discussed the upcoming WWE Network.
"Continuing on with our core products, we're going to keep them fully distributed," said Barrios. "We think that's a great platform for a network. And we think there's a lot of value as those shows come up for renewal. Our four biggest contracts will be renewed over the next three years. We think that's a great opportunity for us because of the value we deliver. Then to the network, we said we're going to take our pay-per-views. We're one of the preeminent pay-per-view providers today and our pay-per-views are priced anywhere between $49.95 and $59.95 today and we're going to make that the core of a value proposition with a lot of other new content and put it on a premium network so that our fans can subscribe. We said the price will be somewhere between $12.99 or $14.99, to be determined as we go to market but we think that's a real great opportunity. And to your question about break-even, about a million subscribers because the pay-per-view buyers will migrate over to the network. That's our belief. About a million subscribers, we break-even at 2 million, it's a really good business; at 3 million to 4 million, for us it's transformative."
Barrios then admitted that pay-per-view would eventually go away "over time."
"We believe the value proposition will be much more powerful to subscribe to a network at $12.99 to $14.99, 24/7, you have the pay-per-views, a lot of great content, our library, a lot of retrospective programming that we're doing that's testing really, really well, we're producing it right now so over time, I think the pay-per-view does go away."
- Former WWE Diva Maria Kanellis denied reports that she was inducting Bob Backlund into the WWE Hall of Fame. She wrote on her Twitter, "I love Bob Backlund's work but I am not inducting him into the Hall of Fame. I'm sure it will be an amazing show but I am not involved."
- You can purchase the new Paul Heyman "2 Extreme" t-shirt at WWEShop.com by clicking here.