September 3, 2001 Wrestling Observer Newsletter: WWF quarterly earnings exceed expectations, more

Largely due to the success of the Invasion PPV, WWFE exceeded its previous projections for the first fiscal quarter of 2001-2002 (May through July) .

Invasion, which is now estimated at doing 681,000 buys (1.43 buy rate), slightly down from the projections of two weeks ago but still putting it in the top ten PPVs in pro wrestling history (trailing the last four Wrestlemanias, a couple of Royal Rumbles, an Undertaker vs. Austin SummerSlam with a summer-long build-up and nothing else) when it comes to total buys and total revenue ($20,396,000 of which the WWF share would be about $8.77 million, about 10 percent lower than original estimates that were used in last week’s Observer’s business figures). The event nearly doubled what WWF had averaged on its previous three PPVs since business fell after Wrestlemania, none of which came close to previously estimated 1.0 percent buy rates.

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