WWE Finances

Tyler Durden

Add another floor to the McMahon mansion then!

Blitzkrieg

Seems like those overseas tours are the major player in all of this, but the athletes have suffered and soon, if the 'E cannot keep these guys healthy, they will take their own swanton..

Tyler Durden

To complete the report in full this week from f4wonline.com -

The year that Chris Benoit killed his family and it seemed WWE was about to be hit harder than it had ever been hit before they ended up shattering all business records.

I don't understand the world sometimes, but there you go. WWE grossed $485.7 million in 2007, more than in any other year in history including all of those giant years during the boom period of the late 90s and early 00s. In the fourth quarter alone they were up 23% over last year, finishing with $132.6 million in total revenues as compared to $107.6 million in 2006. Net income was $21.5 million as compared to $15.5 million last year.

Here's the breakdown for the quarter, comparing 2007 to 2006. Keep in mind this is the Christmas season quarter, which is usually huge but smaller than the WrestleMania/Royal Rumble quarter which we're in right now. Live and Televised Entertainment did $82.3 million this year compared to $72.7 million last year; Consumer Products did $35.3 million compared to $23.9 million; Digital Media did $11.9 million compared to $11.0 million; and they finally made some money off WWE Films, $3.1 million.

Live and Televised Entertainment was up 13% thanks in strong part to some very successful overseas touring. They did $30.9 million on live events this year, up from $24.4 million in 2006. They ran 75 events with 26 being considered international as compared to 87 total and 25 international last year. International did $16.9 million last year, or $650,000 per show on average, as compared to $12.5 million last year, or $500,000 per event. One big difference is that they did 10 ECW shows last year that dragged everything down, whereas this year ECW and Smackdown ran together. International ticket prices were also up considerably this year to $83.47 on average from $70.12. Domestically they did $14 million off 49 shows ($285,700 each) compared to $11.9 million off 62 events ($191,900) last year. Attendance grew from 5,300 per event to 7,100 per event this year, up 34%. Again, remember that ECW skewed the average way down. Average ticket price was $40.66 as compared to $35.78 last year. PPV revenues were $19.9 million at compared to $18.7 million last year, and last year they did five shows during the quarter compared to four this year.

Buyrates were as follows. No Mercy did 271,000 this year and 197,000 last. Cyber Sunday did 194,000 this year and 228,000 last. Time to drop that one. Survivor Series did 341,000 this year and 383,000 last year, so a disappointment. December to Dismember was dropped this year, and did a wretched 90,000 buys last year. To think that the worst WWE PPV in forever still did five times your average TNA buyrate.

Armageddon was also down to 237,000 from 239,000 last year. In total, they actually did less buys, 1.1 million compared to 1.2 million in 2006. The difference in revenue was due to them actually doing more buys domestically (where PPV prices are higher). Last year, a full 42% of buys came from overseas. This year it was only 37%.

They did $4.6 million in house show merchandise compared to $4.4 million last year.

TV rights fees were $23.8 million as compared to $21.6 million last year, so they got some rate increases both domestically and internationally. WWE 24/7 made 1.1 million as compared to an even $1 million last year.

Consumer Products were way up to $35.3 million compared to $23.9 million last year, a 48% increase. Hell of a Christmas here. It's funny, because more merchandise being sold should mean more guys are over, but if you look at PPV revenues they don't appear to be all that over after all. Home Video was up to $19.8 million compared to $14.0 million last year, thanks to the strength of the Cena and Shawn Michaels DVDs among others. That number should increase quite a bit by next year with Blu Ray DVDs being more expensive. Licensing was $9.4 million compared to $6.3 million. Apparel was up 128%, toys up 48% (even with the toy recall issues from this fall) and novelty items were up 161%. Wow. Their new WWE Magazine is doing very well in newsstand sales, so publishing revenues went from $3.3 million to $6 million. Digital Media was up slightly from $11 million to $11.8 million. WWE.com made $4.2 million this year compared to $3.3 million last year. I'll have to talk to my accountant, but this appears to be quite a bit better than F4Wonline.com did. Wireless content made $700,000 and web advertising increased by $200,000. WWEShop did $7.7 million both this and last year. They actually sold slightly less stuff, but charged more for it. The $3.3 million they got for WWE Films was related to See No Evil.

The $485 million they made in 2007 was up from $415.3 million in 2006, a 17% increase. Net income was $52.1 million compared to $48.8 million, though they would have made more had they not taken a $15.7 million loss on The Condemned. Yay WWE Films! Live and Televised Entertainment rose from $292.2 million to $316.8 million, Consumer Products from $95 million to $118 million, Digital Media from $28.1 million to $34.8 million, and WWE Films made $16 million total (though because they paid for other losses, in the end they lost $13.1 million on the division).

Very interesting to look at Live and Televised Entertainment, the number one profit generator for the company, and what the biggest contributors were. Pay-per-view is actually number two for 2007 behind live event touring. Seriously. They made more with live events than they made with PPV by $5 million ($99.3 million compared to $94.3 million). In third place is TV rights fees with $92.4 million.

The company has $470 million in current assets and $136 million in cash on hand. They're not going out of business anytime soon.