WWE Doesn’t Want To ‘Price Out’ Their Fans With Streaming Service Up-Charge

WWE is going through a lot of changes, and fans are seeing that shift right in front of their eyes. Cost-cutting measures are going down to prepare for a company sale, and securing media rights deals will be essential to keeping perspective buyers in the game.

While speaking with Andrew Marchand and John Ourand on the Marchand & Ourand Sports Media Podcast, WWE CEO Nick Khan was asked about the company’s current media rights deals. An up-scaled premium content streaming service situation was posed to him. This could generate a lot of cash for à la carte pay-per-view offerings.

While WWE is interested in that idea, it is also important not to price their fans out of enjoying those events. That being said, WWE is always open for business.

“We’re open to conversations. If NBCU came to us and said, ‘We’ll take you from where you’re at now to 5X for Peacock, but we need to charge an upcharge,’ we’d have to take a hard look at that. Most importantly, we don’t want to price out our fans. If you look at the pricing of WrestleMania, the floor seats are the highest priced floor seats we’ve ever had. They sold out in a second. For folks like that two of you [Ourand & Marchand], we’re going to charge you and charge you as well as we can.”

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“For folks that don’t have that disposable income, our upper deck, we kept those at $25. Could we increase it to $30 or $35? Sure, but what does that actually do, revenue wise? It’s small ones and twos. We like it at $25 for the upper deck, we like the price point for ringside, both nights sold out.”

WWE is certainly going through a lot of changes, and it seems that the company is on track to be sold by the middle of 2023. Only time will tell who comes up with the cash to buy the multimedia juggernaut.

WrestleMania is coming up this weekend, so the company’s focus is on their biggest event of the year. SoFi Stadium will be a sold out show, on both nights of WrestleMania, and fans will be able to watch all the action on Peacock inside the United States. It will be very interesting to see if that ever changes.

What’s your take on paying more for WWE pay-per-views? What is your price limit? Sound off in the comments!