Barrios talked how WWE “launched the pay-per-view business” with WrestleMania I and now they are going to”re-imagine” the same business with the WWE Network.

“We are going to take 11 of our 12 pay-per-views – Wrestlemania will continue to be a pay-per-view – and move it to a subscription network,” Barrios said.

The CFO listed the price between $12.99 to $14.99 a month for the network, making their PPV broadcasts more available to people because as he said, today’s pay-per-views are “pretty expensive…and frankly we know that kind of narrow caps our audience because of the high price point.”

Barrios said the price will be easy to afford and they have received a lot of good feedback from their research. The company plans to produce new shows from their 100,000+ hours of library footage as well as airing classic shows.

“At two million subscribers on a steady state basis, it would be fairly transformational for WWE,” Barrios said, saying that that would bring in the range of $50 million to $100 million incrementally.

“At 3 million to 4 million subscribers it really changes the business completely. So there is a lot of focus within the company on bringing this to fruition.”

He said to break even they would need around a million subscribers to the proposed WWE Network, and with two million it will be a very good business. Anything over that will be “transformative.”

Barrios added that if you give the monthly pay-per-views, a lot of great content, the vast WWE library, and a lot of retrospective programming and put them all on the Network, pay-per-view does go away.

WWE announced that the best approach in the U.S. to reach their audience is to have the network as a premium subscription model and based on a market research they would attract between 2 million and 4 million subscribers.

The estimate of subscribers – although not by any means a definite – is based on the inclusion of all pay-per-view events, except WrestleMania, to air as part of the network as well as original content. All pay-per-views would still be available to consumers who do not subscribe to the WWE Network and would pay the normal PPV price.

The proposed price per month for the WWE Network is between $12.99 and $14.99, which would give WWE an additional revenue of between $125 million and $250 million.

The survey states that the proposed WWE Network would involve a separate monthly fee on top of the DirecTV subscription and eleven out of the twelve current WWE pay-per-views would be shown on the network “free” for subscribers, or better yet, as part of their monthly fee.

The other pay-per-view, WrestleMania, would not be airing on the network but only as a pay-per-view. The remaining eleven shows would still air on pay-per-view for those individuals who do not subscribe to the Network.

McMahon called it the “most interactive network in the world” however stopped short in announcing when the Network will eventually launch.

The Network was supposed to launch earlier this year on WrestleMania Sunday however it got pushed back with no date set.

WWE did massive upgrades to their television facility and is hiring up to 200 employees to work on it.

The library contains around 1,200 hours of footage from the 1970s and 1980s and the library was one of the last meaningful ones remaining for WWE to acquire.

Ene Watts – the ex-wife of WWE Hall of Famer Cowboy Bill Watts – owned the library as part of a divorce settlement. It has not been revealed how much WWE paid the Watts family for the library.

WWE has well over 100,000 hours worth of footage including libraries of Capitol Wrestling Corporation, WWWF, WWF, WWE, WCW, AWA, GCW, ECW, OVW, Deep South Wrestling, Memphis Championship Wrestling, SMW, Stampede Wrestling, UPW, WCCW, and Maple Leaf Wrestling.

Barrios repeated the options that WWE have – a traditional network, a pay TV channel, or a normal channel.

Apparently the big hold up at the moment is the State of Connecticut. Connecticut is offering the “Next Five” program which offers millions of dollars in state aid for company expansions and WWE has applied for it.

The program requires that companies add 200 jobs and invest at least $25 million in the state – something that WWE already did or in process of doing. Over the past two years, WWE went from 585 employees to over 700 and more are expected to be hired for the Network.

To accommodate the Network, WWE leased additional space in Stamford and expanded their headquarters and Barrios clearly stated that state aid would be a factor in decisions as to where the Network will go.

“We try to look at the right business decisions we want to make. Where do I want to do all this? To what extent can I do it? Would it be based in Stamford? Where things will go ultimately will be decided as we move forward,” he said.