As of this morning the WWE Network had 1,661,000 million paid subscriberওs. An additional 288,000 users held fre💫e subscriptions giving the Network 1,949,000 in total subscribers.
WWE held a conference call this morning to report Network subscriber numbers. When asked by a stock analyst if the company is interested in putting independent wrestling content on the WWE Network, Chꦆief Revenue and Marketing Officer Michelle Wil💮son responded in the affirmative: "We're always looking at opportunities to super serve our fans, so we continue to look into that."
United Kingdom independents PROGRESS and Insane Championship Wrestling (ICW) have been rumored to be in talks with WWE. There 🌺was that the company is in talks to purchase Ring of Honor.
WWE broke🧸 down subscr💙ibership by domestic (U.S.) and international (non-U.S.) in , as follows:
The Network continues grow among international subscribers while growing more slowly with the domestic market which has had an earlier access to the Network, by a year or mo🧔re in many cases, and likely has greater overall access to broadband.
The releaseꦏ also highlighted the success of the WrestleMania event overall, claiming the 75,245 attendance number that was announced at the liveಞ event. We should get an idea of what the paid attendance was for WrestleMania 33 when certain attendance numbers are release in a few months.
Analysis: These subscriber numbers are very close to . Barrios noted that today's news doesn't change the 😼company's earlier projection to report $100 million in OIBDA for the full year of 2017. In the grand scheme, with subscriber growth decelerating, it's questionable whether the Network is truly worth the opportunity cost of moving away from pay-per-view. WWE's investor audience, which often sells on results, haꦡsn't moved much yet on this news as it was announced late in the trading day and many likely haven't reviewed the press release yet.
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