Branded Merchandise
We offer a wide variety of branded merchandise through a licensing program and an integrated direct sales effort.
Licensing
We have established a worldwide licensing program using our World Wrestling Entertainment marks and logos, copyrighted works and characters on a large variety of retail products, including toys, video games, apparel and books. Currently, we maintain licenses with more than 90 licensees worldwide that provide products for sale at retailers, including Wal-Mart, K-Mart, Toys R Us, AAFES (Army Air Force Exchange Service) and Target.
Sales of WWE licensed games have exceeded 24.8 million units and more than $760 million in retail sales worldwide since 1999. Our video games cover current console platforms, including PlayStation 2, Xbox and GameCube. Our most recent title, “SmackDown vs RAW 2006,” released in November 2005 in the U.S., has done very well. In the first week, it was the #1 overall title at Electronics Boutique, the #1 PlayStation 2 game of the week and the #2 overall at Best Buy. Gamestop sold more than 87 percent of its reservations/pre-sales on day one. This is the best first-day sales to reservations percentage of all recent major titles with the exception of “Star Wars Battlefront II.”
Publishing
Books: With partner Simon and Schuster, we’ve produced 34 titles, including biographies of our Superstars and wrestling legends, historical anthologies, children’s books, fitness guides, fiction, photo journals, and many others. Our titles have sold more than five million copies globally. Nineteen of our books have appeared on The New York Times Best Seller List, including three that have reached number one.
Magazines: Our publishing operations consist primarily of two magazines, RAW and SmackDown! Our magazines complement storylines in our television programs and at our live events. The combined cumulative annual circulation of our two magazines, including seven special issues, was approximately 4.1 million for fiscal 2005.
Merchandise
Our direct merchandise operations consist of the design, sourcing, marketing and distribution of various WWE-branded products, such as T-shirts, caps and other novelty items, all of which feature our Superstars and/or our logo. All of these products are designed by our in-house creative staff and manufactured by third parties. During fiscal 2005, fans attending our domestic live events spent an average of approximately $9.54 each on WWE merchandise.
Home Video
WWE owns the world's largest library dedicated to wrestling and sports entertainment. It contains footage from our historical televised events, as well as the acquired libraries of World Championship Wrestling (WCW), Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW), American Wrestling Association (AWA) and Smokey Mountain Wrestling (SMW), among others. In fiscal 2005, WWE released 27 new titles, including “The Rise + Fall of ECW” (currently the #2 best seller in WWE DVD history), and “Hard Knocks:The Chris Benoit Story.” In fiscal 2005, we shipped approximately 2 million units, including new releases and back catalog titles, with three titles shipping 100,000 units each. Sony BMG Music markets and distributes our home videos to major retailers nationwide. WWE distributes home video releases through international licensing agreements in the UK, Canada, Japan, India, Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan, Thailand, New Zealand, Brunei, South Africa, the Philippines, and all of mainland Europe.
Music
Music is an integral part of the entertainment experience surrounding WWE’s live events, television programs, and pay-per-views. We compose and record most of our music, which includes entrance themes for our Superstars, in our recording studio. Sony BMG/Columbia Records distributes our albums to major retailers nationwide.
WWE Raw Superstar John Cena’s album, “You Can’t See Me”, which was released in May, debuted at #15 on the Billboard Top 200 Chart and continues to sell a few thousand copies a week. It is fast approaching a gold ship figure. Recently, we have worked with artists such as Fat Joe, Korn, Shinedown, P.O.D., Peter Gabriel, Lifehouse, and Staind to have them contribute music for WWE programs on a global basis. Another exciting project we are currently working on is with WWE Diva Lilian Garcia; she is recording a Spanish rock record produced by George Noriega (Ricky Martin, Jon Secada, Gloria Estefan) and Tim Mitchell (Shakira), which will be released this fall.
Digital Media
We utilize the Internet to promote our brands, to create a community experience among our fans, and to market and distribute both our offline and online products.
Based on the average of the last three months (November 2005 – January 2006), our primary website, WWE.com, attracts more than 13.5 million unique visitors worldwide per month, with a total audience in excess of 27 million visitors per month. This active and engaged audience generates an average of 415.5 million page views per month. They view more than 47.3 million video streams per month and browse more than 12.46 pages per visit. As a result, WWE.com delivers more than 658 million advertising impressions to our online audience per month. *Statistic Source: Numbers are based on cookie based technology provided through Omniture, Inc. Advertising impression numbers are provided by 24/7, Real Media and CheckM8, Inc.
WWE Films
WWE Films was established in the summer of 2002 to expand WWE’s role within the film and television business. The division creates feature film and television properties, some of which star WWE Superstars.
WWE Films first feature, “See No Evil,” stars WWE Raw Superstar Kane. It will be released theatrically by Lionsgate Films on May 19, 2006. The second film from WWE Films, “The Marine,” stars WWE Raw Superstar John Cena and will be released theatrically on September 29, 2006, by 20th Century Fox. Legendary Superstar “Stone Cold” Steve Austin has signed to appear in three WWE Films productions. The first of these, “The Condemned,” will begin shooting in May 2006. It will be released theatrically by Lionsgate Films.
WWE 24/7 On Demand
WWE 24/7 On-Demand is a Subscription Video On-Demand (SVOD) service that makes available to fans who subscribe approximately 40 hours of content throughout the month. The content includes the Company’s highly-rated and best-selling classic television, pay-per-view, specials and home video/DVD programming from WWE and other leading wrestling brands, including WCW, ECW and AWA. It is currently being distributed to and made available through a growing list of cable, satellite and telephony providers around the world.
The WWE 24/7 On-Demand product was developed internally by WWE Enterprises, an internal business “greenhouse” and new product development unit formed to pursue disciplined, organic growth originating directly from the Company’s many existing assets, properties and franchises. It has been responsible for preparing WWE’s extensive programming library, totaling more than 75,000 hours, for repurposing across multiple emerging outlets worldwide, including cable, satellite, IPTV, broadband, wireless and iTV.