WWE, Can't Stop Making Money As Other Media Flounder

                                     


While US entertainment company leaders battle sagging stock prices because of revolutionary changes in the media landscape, WWE’s Vince McMahon is riding high.

Disney’s Bob Iger is fighting subscriber loss at ESPN; Les Moonves at CBS is involved in a nuclear war with his company’s controlling shareholder; Discovery’s David Zaslav is trying to convince Wall Street that the Scripps acquisition is a winner; and Bob Bakish at Viacom — well, Moonves doesn’t even think he is worthy of the C-suite.

And shares of each of the companies are down 9 percent or more year to date.

Meanwhile, McMahon has posted solid subscriber growth in WWE’s over-the-top streaming service and is expected to announce in the near future a huge increase in rights fees for his “Monday Night Raw” and “SmackDown Live” programming.

And WWE shares are up nearly 90 percent this year — and 186 percent over the last 12 months — to $58.95 at Friday’s close.


The strong performance, according to FBN analyst Rob Routh, is the result of growing appreciation for quality content that is live, scripted and, while niche, commands loyalty from people of all ages, genders and education levels.


“The reality is people who like WWE love it,” Routh told The Post. “And with so many platforms out there chasing so little compelling content, distributors are willing to pay crazy sums for a loyal fan base.”



Together, “Raw” and “SmackDown” are expected to see their annual domestic rights fees jump from $130 million to $470 million.



Press accounts have “Raw” re-signing with NBCUniversal’s USA Network, and “SmackDown” giving up its Tuesday slot on USA for Friday nights on Fox.




McMahon, 72, who followed his father into wrestling entertainment in its chair-throwing days, is also ringing up solid results for WWE Network, a subscription-based video streaming service launched in 2014. The network claimed 1.56 million paid subscribers in its most recent quarter.




To be sure, money from WWE’s expected new contracts won’t begin flowing until its current deal with NBCU expires in the fourth quarter of 2019 — a delay that leaves plenty of room for caution.


Longtime shareholders will remember WWE stock got hit with a one-day loss of 43.5 percent when word of the current deal leaked in May 2014.




Investors had been expecting a big bump from the $100 million NBCU had been paying. But when the two-show total came in around $130 million — “a good deal, just not as good as everyone expected,” Routh said — they knocked the share price down from $17.90 to $10.12 in a single trading session.




BTIG analyst Brandon Ross doesn’t expect a replay of that scenario — even if actual terms for “Raw” and “SmackDown” fall short of outsized expectations.




WWE’s success in domestic deal-making is about to be duplicated in five of its six largest international markets, Ross noted. And that includes India, where WWE already ranks second to India Premier League cricket on a per viewer hourly basis.




These overseas prospects, coupled with strong prospects for growth in the US, stirred the analyst to raise his target price for WWE to $75 — or 27 percent greater than the stock’s closing price on Friday.