How Much Does It Cost to Produce Various WWE Shows & Programs?

WWE recently released its annual financial report, in which they reveal how much revenue they earned over the previous calendar year. The report showed that while the company earned more in 2016 than in any other year in the their history, profits were only $33.8 million, after taxes, production costs, etc.

But how do all of these numbers break down to produce the final number for Vince McMahon?

Reddit user fiduciary_booty has tried to answer this question, as he broke down some of  the data that was released by WWE. He noticed some interesting finds when it comes to production costs, revenue, etc.

Television and network
* Prior to the development of the network, PPV revenues were $82.5 million. Now, PPV and network revenues together are about $180 million. The network cost $123 million last year.
* Increase in the subscriber base in 2016 was 15%. At about 1.4 million subscribers the base is well below initial estimates of 3-4 million subscribers by now.
* The costs of producing all television shows are $120 million, which is actually a decrease of $9 million from 2015. WWE reports that it cost $28 million to produce non-live shows like Total Divas/Bellas and Holy Foley. (Also notable is that they plan to reduce this cost to $10-25 million for non-live programs in 2017. As I note below, at the same time they are planning to increase spending on films.)
* What this implies is that with 104 episodes of Raw and Smackdown, the average cost to produce each episode is $885K. This is where I disagree with Dave (Meltzer), who I think did not notice the $28 million disclosure. He states that it cost $1.1 million per episode. This does not include compensation.
* Television revenue worldwide was $241 million, which includes $14m contractual increases this year for the USA shows. This is 33% of WWE’s total net revenues. Television profits were about $120 million.

Live events (this is sales of tickets and packages at shows)
* With 280 events in North American at an average attendance of 5800, paying an average ticket price of $58.19, average live event gate is $337,502 (excludes NXT). International a little higher, closer to half a million.
* Live event profit overall is $45 million
* While they don’t do this, if you offset the average cost of an episode of Raw/Smackdown with average ticket sales, you get about $547,113 outlay for WWE to produce an episode of the show. That’s pretty good for 2 or 3 hours of high-rated programming, but admittedly does not include other costs of WWE like corporate costs and salaries.

fiduciary_booty also breaks down the Performance Center, Movies, WWEShop, and more.

Raw's New Era officially kicks off with a new theme song: Raw, July 25, 2016

Editor’s Note:

I love when data like this comes out. I’m always interested in seeing how the company profits, and such what it takes to produce the quality entertainment that we see each week.

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