Earlier this year, Vince McMahon licensed the WWE Network out to NBCUniversal’s Peacock streaming service. The move was made when WWE was offered a substantial amount of money to let someone else handle the day-to-day of the demand for the Network and when he realized they could make more money with a partner than by trying to grow their streaming service on their own.
WWE Chief Financial Officer Kristina Salen was recently asked by the Wall Street Journal if low subscriber numbers might have contributed to the motivation behind the sale and she gave an interesting response. Instead of saying WWE believed Peacock could help them in that regard or that it didn't factor into the decision, she went a different route.
Her explanation for the low numbers were that WWE wasn't really trying all that hard. She explained:
“I would argue against the idea that the WWE Network struggled to grow. From our perspective, we didn’t actively and aggressively go after subscribers in the way that a large, mass-audience streaming platform would.”
It's an interesting response considering how often WWE was trying to convince Raw and SmackDown viewers to sign up.
What Would "Trying" Have Looked Like?
WWE absolutely pounded fans with the messaging that the WWE Network was only $9.99. When that didn't work, they offered a free month and said you could get their pay-per-views for free as part of that month. This included WrestleMania, which traditionally made millions upon millions in revenue through the standard pay-per-view model.
To suggest WWE didn't make getting fans on the Network a priority is hard to swallow. It makes you wonder, if WWE was really trying to get fans to sign up, how much would we all have heard about it during the shows that should have been more focused on actually entertaining the WWE Universe?