The WWE Network turned two years old today, currently standing at just over 1.2 million paid subscribers with data provided until December 31, 2015.
WWE officially unveiled the WWE Network to the media and fans worldwide at CES 2014 in Las Vegas, Nevada, on January 9 live from the Wynn Hotel with Vince McMahon, Stephanie McMahon, Triple H, Shawn Michaels, and Stone Cold Steve Austin present for the launch.
The launch of the Network created friction between WWE and its service providers, mainly those who carry the pay-per-views as many opted to drop their programming citing unfair competition since WWE was offering the same show for $9.99 a month.
The first WWE Network live broadcast was the NXT ArRIVAL show from Full Sail University which streamed live on February 27, just three days after the initial launch with WrestleMania being the first pay-per-view to air on the Network.
The day after WrestleMania XXX, WWE announced that it had 667,000 subscribers to the Network but that did not go down well with investors and it led to a massive sell off of the WWE stocks, sending them nearly 50% down during the trading day.
Since then, WWE has a total of over 4,300 worth of content on the Network with another 1,000 hours being added including 300 hours of original content in 2016. For the last quarter of 2015, the WWE Network generated $37.2 million in revenue, and although it’s a number that is more than what pay-per-views did in the past, the profit is much less due to the price difference.
