Speaking during the earnings conference call with investors, TKO Chief Operating Officer Mark Shapiro said they still have two packages they can sell: the NXT premium live events and their video library.
He noted that the Peacock deal, which he clarified was $900 million, was for everything at the time, and now, they got $1.6 billion just for 10 WWE premium live events.
“Our goal here is to increase profitability, increase margins, get to industry grade – investment grade. And we’re marching to that beat,” he said when asked why they left NXT out of the PLE package.
Chief Financial Officer Andrew Schleimer said that they received a slightly higher rights fee from another partner but they felt the ESPN brand, their reach, new platform, and makeup of their audience was just as important as the fee. They also mentioned of not putting all their eggs in one basket, splitting the rights to different broadcast outlets.
“We’ve retained for further monetization are all of the NXT PLEs roughly 6 per year, 250 hours of original programming that historically had been in WWE’s cost and expense that we no longer have an obligation to produce contractually, 5 documentaries over the term, 1 per year at WWE’s cost and expense, which we no longer have the obligation to produce contractually as well as the content archive,” Schleimer said. “So meaningful opportunity for additional monetization on top of the $325 million.”
