Providing market intelligence for more than 35 years

In The News

WWE Is Laying the Smackdown on the World

The market’s enthusiasm for WWE stems largely from its lucrative TV contracts, combined with its early success in direct-to-consumer streaming TV apps. In 2014 the company made a risky move, deciding essentially to cannibalize its traditional pay-per-view business. Instead of paying their cable companies one-time fees to see WWE’s marquee events—say, $44.99 for the Royal Rumble—fans would be encouraged to subscribe to a streaming video service, the WWE Network, and pay a monthly fee. After some early turbulence, the move is paying off. Roughly 1.5 million people now hand over $9.99 a month for the WWE Network, making it the 11th-most-popular streaming video service in the U.S., according to Parks Associates, and the second-most-popular, after Major League Baseball’s, in the “sports-related” category.

From the article "WWE Is Laying the Smackdown on the World" by Felix Gillette and Kim Bhasin.

Previously In The News

Editor’s Corner—How far can Amazon reach into pay TV?

Parks Associates’ Brett Sappington said during the Pay TV Show, an event produced by Fierce parent company Questex, that Amazon is the only company to get a la carte TV right. On top of that, he said...

Deeper Dive—Nothing’s dying in pay TV, it’s just getting segmented and iterated

In fact, I heard all of those questions posed—some of them multiple times—at our first annual Pay TV Show in Denver a few weeks back. The answers were always nuanced, often vaguely unsatisfying … and...

What Hulu needs to beat Netflix

Loyalty is the name of the game for places like Netflix and Hulu going forward, Callahan says. “It’s much easier to keep a customer than acquire a new one,” he explains. High turnover has been one...

Amazon's New Netflix Competitor Is A Bad Deal For Most People

The benefit is that you can cancel any time you want, and are only committed on a month-to-month basis. This might serve as a good move for Amazon, allowing people to dip their toes into the Prime wat...