WWE News: Vince McMahon Addresses Low Ratings, ‘We Have Far More Fans Now Than We Have Ever Had’
WWE programming has experienced dwindling television ratings throughout the pandemic, but Vince McMahon isn’t concerned about them. As documented by Fightful, the chairman explained that the company has “far more fans now” than it ever had in the past.
“Not to say we don’t want to increase them, of course we do. Aside from that, our total audience is much bigger, so you can’t just hang your hat on ‘ratings are down.’ Without question, we have to have a mothership, and we do with Raw and SmackDown, and from there, clips and comments and other videos, take it to the next week or the next year. We’re never off the air. It’s fine to say ratings are down, I wanted to give you that bit of color in terms of overall viewpoint.”
The chairman noted how the promotion’s YouTube channel and other outlets bring in a lot of viewers. According to the boss, television isn’t the be-all and end-all anymore. Every outlet combined, meanwhile, shows that the company has a large audience.
McMahon went on to explain that the figures for the weekly shows have improved in recent weeks. He said the move to the ThunderDome, “better writing” and having top talent that fans want to see are the reasons for the slightly increased interest in the product lately.
As The Inquisitr previously documented, McMahon addressed similar issues during the last investors’ call. This is also when he vowed to push fresh talent to combat the problem.
WWE president Nick Khan also weighed in on the matter, addressing concerns about the company’s rights fees going down as a result of the viewership dip. According to Khan, the promotion’s success against the NHL and NBA playoffs is proof that it’s in a healthy position at the moment.
While McMahon admitted that he’d like more people to watch the flagship programming live, he had plenty of reasons to be optimistic about the future. In a separate Fightful report, it was noted that revenue has stayed steady and the Network has seen an increase in subscribers.
As the article highlighted, the corporation generated $221.6 million in total revenue for the third quarter of 2020. This is slightly under the $223.4 million generated in the previous quarter, but it’s still high, especially considering that the pandemic has restricted live shows and touring.
This year’s third quarter was also more successful than the previous two years, mostly due to the increase in television rights fees from both NBCUniversal and FOX.
