WWE Network is Official
Tonight, Vince McMahon officially announced the highly anticipated WWE Network. Triple H, Shawn Michaels, John Cena and "Stone Cold" Steve Austin were all on hand for what was an amazing night of reveals. [Cont…]
So after two years of hype and speculation, and a lot of us assuming it would never actually happen, the WWE Network is official, and it's coming out sooner than many expected. Of course, our own Justin LaBar will never get the credit he deserves for breaking every important detail over a month before the Las Vegas event, but that's not really surprising. Stop hating that guy; he works harder than you.
I think one of the biggest non-advertised news pieces coming out of this major reveal is that the WWE Network isn't actually a television network. Instead WWE smartened up to the current trends of society and went the way of Netflix, Hulu and Amazon and will be breaking into the world of internet-based content providers. I cannot stress enough how good of an idea this is. The TV industry is slowly dying. Sports sell, but even WWE's ratings are garbage compared to what they used to be. 90s shows like Friends used to draw 15-20 million viewers a week. Even the best shows of this era aren't coming anywhere close. The last thing WWE needs is to add to all the noise. Nobody would buy a real WWE television network; I'm a diehard wrestling fan, and I wouldn't buy it.
It's not hard to find success in online distribution. Netflix is the Hulk Hogan of their genre. People roll their eyes at WWE aiming for 1-2 million subscribers by the end of 2014, but put that in perspective. Netflix has over 30 million subscribers. Amazon Prime is dwarfed in comparison, but they're still bringing in about 12 million subscribers at last look. Pro wrestling is a niche market, but it's always been a niche market. All they need is 1/4th of their weekly TV viewership to purchase an account. Think about it this way: over a million people bought WrestleMania 2013, and WWE will be pushing hard to make sure the vast majority of those people are spending cash on the Network instead. It's totally possible that they could meet their goal right out of the gate, if they can draw the WrestleMania audience; the rest of the year is just icing on the cake.
The WWE Network is going to be awesome. $9.99/month is nothing. I'm saving $40/month on PPV alone. WWE will get that crowd sick of high PPV prices. WWE will get the crowd of people sick of crappy online streams. They'll get the crowd of people who want to watch old WCW and ECW pay-per-views. They'll get the Total Divas crowd, the Tough Enough crowd, the NXT fan crowd. They will get the niche fans inside of the niche market. WWE Network will be the biggest success story of 2014; mark my words.
