WWE Network no longer requires six month commitment @ $9.99 - Can Pay Monthly - Free for the month of November

[Tom]

http://www.wwe.com/wwenetwork/free-in-november-26763463

This gonna entice anyone to sign up? I may test it out for a month and see how Hola works for me before deciding whether to commit further. I get the feeling the the UK will get a watered down version on Sky so I may as well subscribe for what the Americans are getting.

From a busienss perspective, I don't think it has been as successful as they'd hoped so far. The constant changing to the subscription (as seen here) as well as their failure to hit specific targets demonstrates this. The new plan also shows a much easier escape option for their subscribers so that may not be beneficial either if the change does not increase the amount signing up. Apparently their subscriber rate is in the 700,000's and didn't increase much at all when it expanded a couple of months back. They'll need close to double that in order to make the same money they were through pay per view providers and over a million to break even!

[Messiah]

WWE Network sucks if you aren't a hardcore WWE fan and the WWE sucks at advertising it. They rely on insulting their viewers ("why buy PPV if you can just get it for 9.99 on our Network?!"), they provide a crappy and stale product where the PPV matches often happen on RAW anyway, and haven't done one thing innovative or the slightest bit of creative.

Also truth be told, and someone needs to tell the WWE this, the majority of people don't care about a pre-show or post-show analysis of a scripted product. It comes across as corny and them trying to be something they are not.

[Hanley!]

Meanwhile I'm pretty sure you still can't get the Network in the UK or Ireland. They could at least try and bring all their major markets into the fold before making other changes.

Part of me thinks that the future of the Network is to take live pay per views off it and go back to the old system. I don't think the model is sustainable the way they're running it at the moment. Which is a pity, because for any big wrestling fan, it's a freaking great deal. But it hasn't been a good business decision so far, and that will probably be the case going forward too.

Messiah is right that they've done a bad job advertising it too. They're relying too much on selling people on the price, rather than giving people reasons to really want the Network. They should be trying to sell people on the content. Putting out a genuinely exciting product wouldn't hurt either. Pay per views at the moment all feel very skippable.

[Tom]

^^

Apparently the UK is getting WWE Network sometime in November. And it will be the same as the American version, which kind of surprises me.

I agree with everything both you and Messiah have said though. WWE has done such a poor job with marketing it, and Messiah is right in saying that nobody is interested in pre and post shows.

One thing that has me interested is seeing whether WWE increase the quality of their pay per views or provide better cards for them. By having subscribers contracted for six months, they pretty much had sold six pay per views to people already without the worry of them not paying. Now it is different. Their current subscribers can leave when they want while new subscribers have the option of purchasing for one to month to see the pay per view they want to see. Knowing that the pay per views is the networks biggest selling point, hopefully the monthly plan will see WWE put on better pay per views for their fans and make them more must see. I don't see that happening though!

[Hanley!]

^^ Well it's already pretty clear that the champion isn't showing up at Survivor Series, which is one of their big four. So it doesn't look like they'll be making much more of an effort with pay per views, in the near future at least.

[The Legend]

^^ Well it's already pretty clear that the champion isn't showing up at Survivor Series, which is one of their big four. So it doesn't look like they'll be making much more of an effort with pay per views, in the near future at least.

Unless Cena gets the belt off of Lesnar before Survivor Series.

[Tom]

^^ Well it's already pretty clear that the champion isn't showing up at Survivor Series, which is one of their big four. So it doesn't look like they'll be making much more of an effort with pay per views, in the near future at least.

November is free though so that doesn't matter

^^ Well it's already pretty clear that the champion isn't showing up at Survivor Series, which is one of their big four. So it doesn't look like they'll be making much more of an effort with pay per views, in the near future at least.

Unless Cena gets the belt off of Lesnar before Survivor Series.

I don't see that happening before Survivor Series. WWE will want to get a good pay off on pay per view with Lesnar losing the title, and it makes sense for them to do that as well. And hopefully not by having him lose to Cena either!

[PorkChop]

Is this them basically accepting defeat with their current model? From what I've seen/heard the Network has been a complete flop so far.

[The Legend]

I think people are overestimating just how much of a flop the Network has been as well. The WWE took a big loss up front on start up costs, but that is always going to happen with a project like this. They said that they wanted 1 million subscribers after one year and would feel like that would be on par for making their money back and moving forward. During today's conference the WWE announced that 7 months in they are at 731,000 subscribers, in other words in a half a year they have roughly three quarters of the subscribers they wanted at the end of the year. That is perfectly on pace.

Another thing to remember is the fact that the costs of starting up the network diminish greatly from here on out once they have rolled it out to all the different markets. After that the profit margin of each subscriber shoots up.

[Hanley!]

The original reports I was hearing were suggesting for it to be a truly worthwhile commitment, they'd need closer to 2 million subscribers, which seems like an outright impossibility at this point. Things were always going to be hardest starting off, but the worrying thing is that the amount of subscribers appears to have leveled off. And they're not just looking to make up what they lost in start-up costs. They also have to try and pull in the same profits from their supershows as they were doing when they were only available on pay per view. That'll make it harder to get the project back in the black.

Ultimately though, we'll probably know how viable the Network is after Wrestlemania this year. Everywhere should have access to the Network by then, so if WWE can't get their subscriptions way up in anticipation of their biggest show of the year, then they're in real trouble.

For the moment all we can do is sit back and hope for the best. Because while their product is pretty bad at the moment, the WWE Network is something really positive for fans and it would suck if they had to pull it or reduce its contents.

[The Legend]

Things were naturally going to tail off eventually until we get to the next Royal Rumble/Mania season. That will always be the time you pull in the biggest spike of new customers.

[Racing Guy]

I tried it and it's really not worth the time. Other than old episodes of Nitro and some PPV's it really doesn't have anything good on it.