Notes from WWE’s Fiscal First Quarter 2021 Report

WWE held an investor’s meeting on Thursday afternoon discussing the results from their fiscal first quarter 2021 report.

Some notable financial highlights included:

• Revenues for the fiscal quarter was $263.5 million, down 9% ($27.5 million) from last year’s fiscal first quarter.
• Operating income was $65.1 million, up 22% ($11.8 million) from last year’s fiscal first quarter. This was stated to be due to the upfront payment from NBC for WWE Network’s move to Peacock and partially offset by the lack of a new large-scale event in Saudi Arabia.
• Adjusted OIBDA1 was $83.9 million, up 9% ($6.6 million) from last year’s fiscal first quarter.
• Net Income was $43.8 million, up from last year’s fiscal first quarter amount of $26.2 million.
• Digital video views for the fiscal quarter was 9.4 billion and hour consumed was 367 million. Total views were down 9% while hours consumed were up 7% compared to last year’s fiscal first quarter.
• This year’s WrestleMania Week viewership was around 1.1 billion views across all of WWE’s digital and social media platforms, up 14% compared to last year’s WrestleMania Week period. The company stated that they set a new WrestleMania Week record in terms of hours consumed at 32 million hours, up 9% from last year’s WrestleMania Week period.

Other notable highlights from the investor’s meeting:

• Vince McMahon stated that he feels the company’s current management team is the “best management team in WWE history”
• WWE President Nick Khan stated that the company has plans to pursue additional streaming deals for their WWE Network in international markets.
• Khan also stated that the company will be releasing more NFT digital collectables within the near future.
• Khan also stated that the company recently signed a deal to produce a new anime series for anime streaming service Crunchyroll.
• Stephanie McMahon stated that the company changed their signature slogan to “Then Now Forever Together” in response to the return of fans for WrestleMania 37.
• Bad Bunny was stated to have generated an increase of 37% in Hispanic demographic viewership for his segments on WWE RAW.
• CFO Kristina Salen stated that the company currently does not expect to resume a regular live touring schedule until the latter half of 2021.
• On the topic of the lack of Peacock’s viewership numbers for WrestleMania 37, Khan stated that Peacock officials informed the company to not share the numbers at the moment. Khan also stated that Peacock officials were happy with the numbers WWE’s event generated for their service.
• On the topic of NXT’s move to Tuesdays and AEW’s viewership increases, Khan stated that “everything is competition” and they are only focused on getting eyeballs on their own content. Khan also stated that he feels NBC will not be successful at getting the second television contract from the NHL but NXT’s move to Tuesdays had nothing to do with that situation.

Sources: PWInsider 1 & 2, F4WOnline