World Wrestling Entertainment: The Bull Case

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World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) Company History

  • 1926 – “Toots” Mondt starts “Slam Bang Western Style Wrestling”
  • 1952 – Mondt partners with boxing promoter Jess McMahon to form Capital Wrestling Corp (CWC)
  • 1953 – The CWC pledges to the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) which coordinated activities between regionally focused groups
  • 1954 – Vince McMahon Sr takes over for his father Jess and builds the CWC into the dominant wrestling promotion in the North East
  • 1963 – McMahon Sr and Mondt leave the NWA and form the World Wide Wrestling Federation (WWWF)
  • 1979 – WWWF renamed World Wrestling Federation WWF
  • 1982 – Vince McMahon Jr. buys the company from his father, secretly planning on abandoning the traditional regional model and building a national wrestling power house. McMahon starts signing all of the biggest regionalstars and negotiates television deals, upending the traditional regional model.
  • 1985 – McMahon catapults WWF onto the national stage with Wrestle mania, which incorporated mainstream entertainment with wrestling
  • focus is “Sports Entertainment“ which incorporates stars from music, sports and film world
  • 1993 – Monday Night Raw is launched as live programming
  • 1999 – IPO 11.5M shares $17
  • Mid 90’s – 2001 – WWE and WCW go head to head and destroy each other’s profits
  • 2001 – World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. (NYSE:WWE) buys WCW and solidifies their position as the dominant wrestling brand

World Wrestling Entertainment: The Bull Case

 

Main Drivers

Live Events / Television

  • 240 – 260 domestic events, 70-80 international events per year
    • ~1,800,000 people attended a live event in 2012
    • Average Ticket Price $44
  • 6.5 hours of original programming per week.
    • RAW on USA Network (Replayed on mun2 and Universal HD)
    • Smack Down on Syfy (Replayed on mun2)
    • World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. (NYSE:WWE) Main Event on Ion
    • Saturday Morning Slam on The CW
  • 12,000,000 US viewers per week

Pay Per View

  • 10-12 “mega events” per year
  • $44.95 normal events
  • $54.95 Wrestle mania
  • More than 4,000,000 buys in FY`12

Other

  • Merchandise Sales
  • Video Games (Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. (NASDAQ:TTWO) replaced THQ Inc. (OTCMKTS:THQIQ))
  • Online Video ($1.5B YouTube Views)

Customer Behavior

  • No chance to “go to the next game”
  • Less supply = easier to pass on ticket price increase
  • Difficult to say how much drops to the bottom line (flat fee vs % of door)
  • World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. (NYSE:WWE) television has a highly attractive demographic making future increases in broadcast rights likely

World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE)

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