How much will it cost WWE moving Wrestlemania to the Performance Center?
Wrestlenomics’ Brandon Thurston said in a new interview that he believes WWE could be losing over $20 million by moving WrestleMania to the WWE Performance Center. Thurston spoke with Wrestling Inc and explained where his numbers on that come from, why WWE would hold the show at the PC in the face of that loss and more. Highlights are below:
On why WWE would move WrestleMania to the Performance Center: “It sounds crazy but also sounds like a very WWE thing to do as they’re not letting the outside forces stop them from what they want to do. It probably, financially, makes the most sense to them from hearing that they wouldn’t know when they would be able to do it if they postponed it. There’s speculation that this could go on through July or August so Vince felt like it’s best to just get it out of the way. Doing it this way allows them to keep their sponsorship probably with Snickers. It will be a cheaper show to run than running it in a stadium. The production costs will be less in the PC than at Raymond James Stadium. I think they also save on the bump in Network subscribers that they would expect around WrestleMania. If you postpone it to 2-3 months down the line, then that bump doesn’t come until later if it comes at all.”
On the usual bump in Network subscribers that WrestleMania brings: “Without that, the Network is hurt even worse than as is. We’ve seen a downward trend in Network subscribers year-after-year. It makes financial sense to keep WrestleMania on the date that you have it to keep revenue up and subscribers up. I guess it’s a money-saver in terms of production costs and a money-saver in one major sponsor in the form of Snickers.”
On how much WWE will likely lose due to moving WrestleMania: “I think WrestleMania is probably a $16 million date roughly. The other four events [Axxess, HOF, Raw, SmackDown] probably do, on average, $1 million each so that’s $20 million. Then I think they do about $3 million in merch. The best quarter for venue merch sales is the WrestleMania quarter. When you compare that to the other three quarters, the difference is about $3 million, so that comes to about $23 million.”