WWE Financial Report – First Half of 2016 vs. 2015 comparison – Revenue, Profit, Domestic vs. Int’l

By James Caldwell, PWTorch assistant editor

With WrestleMania 31 occurring in First Quarter 2015 and WM32 occurring in Second Quarter 2016, a look at the first six months of both years is the best comparison of results.

The story is very similar to the Second Quarter results – a bump in total revenue and most revenue segments, but higher administrative expenses have eaten into profit.

The result is operating income favoring the first six months of 2016 by a small margin, but net income favoring the first six months of 2015 by a small margin.

– Another big comparison item is where the revenue is coming from on a global scale.

Revenue from North America contributed 75.6 percent to the first six months of 2016, very similar to 75.9 percent in the first half of 2015.

Therefore, international revenue was about 24-25 percent, which matches the split of WWE Network subscriptions between domestic and international sources.

Revenue from the Europe/Middle East/Africa region was the only international source that grew from half-year to half-year, while Asia was down and Latin America remained virtually non-existent.

Within the European business segment was the U.K. market, which generated $40.9 million, up from $33.3 million through the first half of 2016.

The U.K. market represented 64 percent of the European segment and 45 percent of total international revenue in the first-half of 2016.

As WWE noted in their 10-Q filing, U.K. is clearly WWE’s top international market.