August 3, 2020 Observer Newsletter: WWE has most profitable quarter ever
For a number of reasons, as it turns out, the pandemic was the greatest thing for WWE’s business as they posted the most profitable quarter in their history.
It’s not that they overcome the pain of the pandemic. They outright benefitted from it, with more consumer product sales, higher network numbers and the real difference maker, far lower costs to produce television.
Profits quadrupled in the quarter, blowing away all estimates, due to saving $51.6 million in media costs. The vast majority of those savings was the lower cost of producing television the way they do it now in the Performance Center, no longer running live, and taping multiple shows on successive days as opposed to live Monday, Wednesday and Friday in different parts of the country with far more wrestlers, production people and costs.
For one, taping two weeks had a time for each show, and taping shows on successive days, saved travel costs greatly.
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Dave Meltzer is the founder and lead writer on the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, the weekly constant when it comes to news and reviews in pro wrestling and mixed martial arts for more than 40 years. Dave also co-hosts Wrestling Observer Radio with Bryan Alvarez and had had bylines for The National, Yahoo Sports, MMA Fighting and others.