Boston, MA 04/08/2014 (wallstreetpr) – Very few businesses can claim to have the sort of global fan following as World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. (NYSE:WWE) has. Fewer businesses still are essentially competing against themselves as WWE does.
WWE network numbers
The latest innovation from this entertainment pioneer was the launch of the WWE Network in February. This is a subscription-only streaming video service like Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ:NFLX).
Although the stock fell by 14.7% after the subscriber numbers were announced, 667,287 subscribers since the launch of the WWE Network on February 24 is pretty good by any reckoning. The company has targeted reaching one million subscribers by the end of next year.
Global phenomenon
WWE has millions of fans all across the world as evidenced by the 17 million plus fans of its Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) page or more than 4 million followers of its Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) account. If the company can convert four to five million of its fans in countries such as the U.K., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Germany, Singapore, Hong Kong, Thailand and India (apart from the U.S. of course) into paying customers who will pay $10.00 per month to have exclusive access to World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. (NYSE:WWE)’s premium offerings such as Wrestlemania and the entire WWE wrestling archive of more than 100,000 hours of fights, that translates to a steady revenue of $600 million per annum by 2018 or 2019.
It remains to be seen how many will be willing to pay $10.00 per month for the WWE Network when Netflix costs $8.00. But for Mr. Vince McMohan, the founder of World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. (NYSE:WWE), this move to streaming video is not going to be one of his notable failures such as XFL, a planned competitor to the National Football League (NFL) or Tout, a social media platform. Rather, this might turn out to be Mr. McMahon’s swansong.
Growth stock after price correction
The steep fall in the stock price may be seen as a necessary correction. It can be considered an attractive growth stock in the $22 to $24 price range.
