The WWE Network is celebrating its fourth birthday today with roughly 1.47 million subscribers, a modest but still a low number considering WWE’s worldwide reach.
Using the video streaming infrastructure of BAMTech, WWE Network was announced in Las Vegas on January 8, 2014 during the Consumer Electronics Show, and the launch date was set to February 24. Originally, the Network was available to only those in the United States although workarounds existed to get the service outside of the U.S. using VPN and DNS services.
In July of the same year, the WWE Network expanded to several other countries although it missed major markets due to complicated TV contracts. Eventually it took nearly two years after initial launch for the service to be available worldwide with many countries carrying the price of $9.99 as in the United States. The service reaches 186 countries and is only not available in 13, including North Korea, Libya, and Cuba.
The WWE Network has nearly 10,000 hours of footage, with the last count being 9,400.
