Home Media & Internet Views Way Up!
On a positive note, WWE's home media has done remarkably well this year. WrestleMania 29 is on track to sell 200K units by the end of 2013, with The Best of WCW Monday Nitro Volume 2 passing 121K as of October 31. Perhaps proving that the former world champion is still a draw, Goldberg: The Ultimate Collection sold 74K copies in its first two weeks; almost as much the WCW War Games collection has sold since June.
The best news for WWE this year has to be the continuation of digital media, as traffic through WWE.com and their WWE app has skyrocketed, and shows no signs of slowing down. In Q4 of 2011, their website saw 292 million page views. Since the WWE app launched in Q3 of 2012, usage has rarely slowed down, and in October of this year alone they've seen 629 million page views, with 15.1 million unique visitors.
The way people interact with entertainment has definitely changed over the years, and right now WWE has captured lighting in a bottle with their digital media. Despite a large portion of the vocal online community in protest of highlighting the WWE app, it is clearly paying off for the company. There has been more content added to WWE's YouTube channel in the past few months than every before, most of which is funneled back through WWE.com and the app in some way or another.
With plans for a WWE Network firming up – there's a rumored release window of Q2 2014, likely before WrestleMania – one has to wonder if the company could make more money by continuing to keep their focus on internet-based ventures, over putting even more of their product on television. Between Monday Night Raw, Main Event and Smackdown there are six hours of WWE programming on television each week, with two more in Superstars and NXT available through their partnership with Hulu. Some would argue WWE has already over-saturated its own market.
