WWE Network Stock Price Tanks Hard After RAW And Smackdown Deal With NBC

The WWE Network stock price has tanked after the news about Monday Night RAW and WWE Smackdown remaining with NBC Universal.

In a related report by The Inquisitr, we say that Vince McMahon should make the WWE Network free trial cover at least one WWE PPV event in order to help them reach the one million subscriber mark. Now that Daniel Bryan will be missing the WWE Payback PPV because of his neck surgery, it would seem this might be the ideal choice since the main man of the hour happens to be missing in action.

Shortly after the WWE NBC deal was announced, the WWE Network stock price dropped hard, losing almost a tenth of its value. But by time the closing bell rang, the WWE stock price rose again, ending at $19.93. Unfortunately, that’s when someone decided to take a chair to the back of McMahon’s head because the after hours trading dropped it all the way down to $15.20, which means it lost almost a fourth of its value today. But it’s still possible that in the morning it may rise again like Daniel Bryan at the end of WrestleMania 30.

Despite the bad news about the WWE stock, Vince McMahon think the future is bright:

“We continue to achieve significant increases in the value of our largest television agreements, a key component of our business plan. The rising value of our content coupled with the global expansion of WWE Network will provide the foundation for long-term growth that continues to transform our business over the coming years.”

Unfortunately, The Street believes that the WWE Network stock may not be the best option at the moment, but they’re not saying to sell if off, either:

“We rate WORLD WRESTLING ENTMT INC (WWE) a HOLD. The primary factors that have impacted our rating are mixed — some indicating strength, some showing weaknesses, with little evidence to justify the expectation of either a positive or negative performance for this stock relative to most other stocks. The company’s strengths can be seen in multiple areas, such as its solid stock price performance, revenue growth and largely solid financial position with reasonable debt levels by most measures. However, as a counter to these strengths, we also find weaknesses including feeble growth in the company’s earnings per share, deteriorating net income and disappointing return on equity.”

Whether they’ll still have the same recommendation on Thursday morning remains to be seen.

The biggest complaint most fans have so far about the WWE Network app is that Monday Night RAW and Smackdown are not re-broadcasted after the live event is over. In fact, you can get to the older shows faster on Hulu Plus than the WWE Network at this time. As part of the NBC deal we are hoping they may renegotiate their re-broadcast rights for RAW and Smackdown, but so far nothing along those lines has been announced.