Live & Televised Entertainment
Live events and television programming are our principal creative content and production activities. Our creative team develops compelling and complex characters and weaves them into dynamic storylines that combine physical and emotional elements. Storylines are usually played out in the ring and unfold on our weekly television shows, and culminate in our monthly pay-per-view events.
Our success is due primarily to the continuing popularity of our Superstars and Divas. We currently have 150 Superstars and Divas under exclusive contracts, ranging from multi-year guaranteed contracts with established Superstars to developmental contracts with our Superstars in training. Our Superstars and Divas are highly trained and motivated independent contractors, whose compensation is tied to the revenue that they help generate. WWE Superstars and Divas include “Monday Night Raw’s” John Cena, The Miz, CM Punk, Kofi Kingston, Eve and Kelly Kelly; “Friday Night SmackDown’s” Undertaker, Randy Orton, Sheamus, Big Show, Alberto Del Rio, Mark Henry, Layla and Alicia Fox. We own the rights to substantially all of our characters and exclusively license the rights we do not own through agreements with our Superstars and Divas. We continually seek to identify, recruit and develop additional talent for our business.
Television Programming
Relying on our in-house production capabilities at our technologically advanced, high definition, production facility, we produce seven hours of original weekly programming, 52 weeks per year. This programming is distributed domestically, internationally and via WWE.com. Our domestic programs are: “Monday Night Raw” on USA Network and mun2; “A.M. Raw” on USA Network; and “Friday Night SmackDown” on Syfy and mun2. “WWE NXT” and “WWE Superstars” are available on WWE.com and distributed to more than 60 countries internationally. In the first quarter of 2012, WWE’s TV programs reached approximately 11.5 million total viewers during the average week in the United States.
“Monday Night Raw” is a two-hour primetime program that is broadcast live on USA Network. It is among the most-watched regularly scheduled programs on primetime cable television and anchors USA, helping make it a top-rated network. As part of the agreement with USA Network’s parent company, NBC Universal, “Monday Night Raw” also airs in replays on mun2 and Universal HD. “Monday Night Raw” will be celebrating its 1000th episode this July.
The two-hour “Friday Night SmackDown” airs on Syfy in primetime on Fridays. “SmackDown” is regularly Syfy’s most-watched program every week and was the Number Three most watched regularly scheduled program on primetime cable Friday nights in the first quarter of 2012. “SmackDown” is the second longest running weekly episodic program in U.S. primetime TV history, only behind “Monday Night Raw” (by number of original episodes).
“WWE NXT” transitioned to WWE.com domestically in Fall 2010. Since then, WWE NXT videos have generated more than 14.9 million streams.
Each year, more than 7,500 hours of WWE’s television programming can be seen in more than 145 countries and 30 languages around the world. Our broadcast partners include: BSkyB in the UK; Sky Italia, GXT, Italia 2 and Cielo in Italy; Sport 1 and Sky Deutschland in Germany; SIC, Sport TV in Portugal; Groupe AB and Canal + in France; 2x2 in Russia; Extreme Sports Channel in Poland; Nova Sports in Greece; Viasat6 in Hungary; TV2 in Norway; STB in Ukraine; Sport RO in Romania; Baltijos TV in Lithuania, Eurosport across Europe; e.tv in South Africa; Ten Sports in India; J SPORTS, TVK, TVS, SUN-TV, FTV, MXTV, TKU MTV, GYT, GBS, CTC and GTV in Japan; SITV, GDTV, HUBTV, SZTV, JSTV, SXTV, TJTV, HEBTV, FJTV, HNTV and BesTV in China; TV3 and ASTRO in Malaysia; Foxtel and Network Ten in Australia; Sky TV in New Zealand; ABS-CBN in the Philippines; Starhub and MediaCorp in Singapore; FX Channel in South Korea; Videoland in Taiwan; TrueVision and GMM Grammy in Thailand; MNC in Indonesia; Sport 1 in Israel; E-Life in the UAE; ADTV, OSN, and MBC in the Middle East; Televisa, TV Azteca, PCTV and MVS in Mexico; FX Channel throughout Latin America; Red Pat in Bolivia; Esporte Interativo in Brazil; UCVTV in Chile; Antena Latina in the Dominican Republic; Teleamazonas in Ecuador; Salvadorena in El Salvador; Albavision in Guatemala, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Paraguay, and Peru; Televicentro in Honduras; Medcom in Panama; WAPA in Puerto Rico, SCCN in Suriname and CNC3 in Trinidad and Tobago.
Pay-Per-View Programming
WWE has been the world’s pre-eminent provider of pay-per-view programming for the past 27 years. Our pay-per-view productions consistently rank among the highest selling live event programs in the industry. WrestleMania XXVIII, held April 1 at Sun Life Stadium in Miami, set new records for pay-per-view buys and gross sales. Preliminary estimates show that WrestleMania, featuring the historic Once in a Lifetime match between The Rock and John Cena, garnered 1.3 million pay-per-view buys with global gross sales in excess of $67 million including the live event.
Our international pay-per-view partners include: Sky Box Office in the UK; Sky Italia in Italy; Sky Deutschland in Germany; Sogecable (Taquilla), Cableuropa (ONO) and Telefonica in Spain; Cablevision, Sky Mexico, Multimedios Redes, Megacable and Cinepolis in Mexico; DirecTV Latin America in Chile, Ecuador and Peru; Digital Latin America (DLA) throughout Latin America; SKY Perfect TV! and J:COM in Japan; Main Event in Australia; SKY Arena in New Zealand; Canal + in France; StarHub in Singapore; Sky Pacific in Fiji; Astro Box Office Sport in Malaysia & Brunei; Orbit Showtime Network and E-Life in the Middle East.
Live Events
Our three brands, “Monday Night Raw,” “Friday Night SmackDown” and “WWE NXT,” allow us to perform more than 320 live events a year within the United States and abroad. In the first quarter of 2012, WWE held 69 live events domestically and six internationally, entertaining nearly 450,000 fans.
Venue Merchandise
Our direct merchandise operations consist of the design, sourcing, marketing and distribution of numerous WWE-branded products, such as T-shirts, caps and many other novelty items, all of which feature our Superstars, Divas and logos. In the first quarter of 2012, fans attending our domestic live events spent an average of $8.39 on our merchandise.
WWE Classics On-Demand
“WWE Classics On Demand” is a Subscription Video On-Demand (SVOD) service that offers highly-rated classic television shows, best-selling pay-per-view events, specials and original programming. The service draws its material from WWE's extensive 100,000 hour video library, the largest of its kind in the world, and includes other iconic wrestling brands, such as WCW, ECW and AWA. “WWE Classics” subscribers have access to approximately 50 hours of content each month.
WWE Classics is currently available to approximately 75 percent of SVOD-enabled subscribers. Major North American distributors currently include: Comcast Communications; Cox Communications; Charter Communications; Cablevision; Mediacom; Insight; Rogers Communications; Suddenlink; Verizon Communications; Bresnan Communications and RCN.