May 9, 2022 Observer Newsletter: WWE Q1 2022 financials, Forbidden Door presale sells out

WWE set business records in quarter one, which included a Saudi Arabia show and the Royal Rumble, but did not include the two days of WrestleMania.

The company took in $333,448,000 in revenue and had a $66,041,000 profit. The first quarter last year, with no live events or Saudi Arabia show (which brings in $50 million in revenue alone) did $263,524,000 in revenue and $43,832,000 in profits.

The numbers beat the Wall Street estimates of $325 million in revenue and $50 million in profits.

Adjusted OIBDA was $111.7 million, and the projection for the year is $360 million to $375 million.

There wasn’t a lot of news regarding new deals at the 5/5 investors call, which was mostly Nick Khan talking about the potential for multiple bidders for WWE content when its current deals expire in September 2024.

He called WrestleMania the most viewed event in the history of the company both domestically and globally. It would have been the most-watched PPV event given they are combining two shows, but the individual shows were not watched by anywhere near the number of people who used to watch the television shows in the 80s and 90s. He said the Peacock viewership numbers were up 61 percent from last year, but gave no numbers of what that means. He said it was the second-most watched live event ever on Peacock, behind the Super Bowl, which did about ten million streaming viewers. It should be noted that Peacock had 28 million homes watch its programming in the first quarter and 13 million paying subscribers, numbers way up from last year, so a lot of the gains are far more people with access. Plus they are adding the numbers of two shows, although the two prior years were also two shows. The WWE Network was at about 1.2 million U.S. subscribers so of course viewership should be way up. He claimed the show had 56.1 million viewers in India, a number that has not been explained what it all encompasses past the fact that it was up 29 percent from the 2021 show. He also said that the company has strong momentum coming off the show.

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