Tag: WWE ticket prices

Update on WWE planning to lower ticket prices

Posted on by Joseph Currier

Speaking on Tuesday’s edition of Wrestling Observer Live, Bryan Alvarez gave an update on WWE’s plans to lower ticket prices.

Lower ticket prices was something CM Punk advocated for in the promo he delivered on Raw last night. Alvarez reports that WWE is legitimately looking to reduce prices through the summer, though it won’t be an across-the-board decrease. It will instead be done on a case-by-case basis.

“What I can tell you is, immediately after this promo, the lower bowl tickets for WrestleMania dropped below $2,000 for the first time. So they did immediately lower ticket prices for WrestleMania. Not by a lot, but they did lower them,” Alvarez said.

“I was also told that, not every show, but there are shows through the summer where they are planning to lower ticket prices. And obviously if it’s going to be in like a hot market where they’re easily going to sell out at high prices, they aren’t dropping the prices for that. I mean, if it’s a smaller show in a smaller market — you know, Seattle didn’t sell out, and the ticket prices were ridiculous… A show like that, they’re going to lower the ticket prices through the summer. So depending on the market, what they think they can sell — they’re not lowering everything across the board. But for shows where they don’t expect to sell out, they are lowering ticket prices.”

The price of tickets during the TKO era has been a frequent complaint among fans, and the fact that WrestleMania 42 isn’t sold out yet has been worked into the build for the show. Pat McAfee aligned with Randy Orton on SmackDown last week and said he wants to help save pro wrestling by elevating Orton back to the top of the card. The WrestleMania night one main event will see Orton — with McAfee in his corner — challenge Cody Rhodes for the Undisputed WWE Championship.

WWE looking to lower ticket prices through the summer

Posted on by Bryan Rose

WWE may be lowering their ticket prices soon.

The cost of entry for the company’s shows has been a source of conversation in recent months, with prices for this year’s WrestleMania being an inflection point in just how expensive it can be to go to a major WWE show. Bryan Alvarez is reporting, however, that prices could go down soon.

“If it wasn’t obvious from Punk’s promo, it appears WWE is looking to lower ticket prices through the summer,” he writes.

During Raw, CM Punk went on one of his infamous ‘pipe bomb’ promos, touching on the subject of WWE’s ticket prices while lashing out at Pat McAfee. He asked WWE to lower them so more families could see him defeat Roman Reigns at WrestleMania.

“You want to talk about ticket sales? Do me a favor and call up that agent that was foolish enough to shoehorn you into this business and this show and tell him to lower the ticket prices,” he said. “Lower the ticket prices because I want all of these families to come watch me stand on Roman Reigns’ throat at WrestleMania. Because my name is CM Punk, and I approve this message.”

The ticket sales for WrestleMania have been cause for concern in recent weeks as sales have stalled, causing WWE to offer a number of promotions in an attempt to boost turnout.

CM Punk references Vince McMahon, lower ticket prices in WWE Raw promo

Posted on by Bryan Rose

CM Punk had another pipe bomb on Monday.

During his promo that opened Raw, the World Heavyweight Champion addressed his WrestleMania opponent Roman Reigns, who wasn’t there, taking shots at him, his family including The Rock, TKO, and a “weird old man,” referencing Vince McMahon.

“You’re a bucktoothed nepo baby who ate dog food for a weird, old man,” Punk said, referencing an angle involving Reigns from years ago. “That weird old man for years treated me like a dog and he expected me to smile, but I had ‘f you’ money so I took that and my dignity and left.”

Eventually, he turned his attention to Pat McAfee, who was recently revealed as the mystery caller that had been guiding Randy Orton. Punk dismissed the idea, giving McAfree a blunt instruction.

“You want to talk about ticket sales? Do me a favor and call up that agent that was foolish enough to shoehorn you into this business and this show and tell him to lower the ticket prices,” he said, causing the fans in Houston to cheer.

“Lower the ticket prices because I want all of these families to come watch me stand on Roman Reigns’ throat at WrestleMania. Because my name is CM Punk, and I approve this message,” he concluded.

Reigns did not appear during the promo. The last time the two met, it was Punk returning the favor from the previous week by sending Reigns through an announce table.

TKO exec on WWE ticket prices: Vince McMahon ‘wasn’t totally focused on maxing the opportunity’

Posted on by Josh Nason

A week after a clip went viral with a fan questioning WWE head Nick Khan about the increasing price of WWE tickets, the message apparently didn’t get through to TKO leadership in terms of what’s to come.

TKO chief operating officer Mark Shapiro spoke at the annual Goldman Sachs Communacopia & Technology Conference Wednesday (audio below) and in talking about ticket prices for both UFC and WWE, he said “WWE is not where the UFC yet is on ticket yield. We have our work to do there.”

“We know we have a lot of room there because Vince McMahon was primarily pricing tickets for families and wasn’t totally focused on maxing the opportunity there. Now that we’ve seen what we can do with UFC, we’re replicating that in terms of ticket yield and holding back and advance sales when it comes to OnLocation on the WWE side and it’s working out really well,” he said.

A term used commonly by concert venues, airlines and hotels, ticket yield is considered a measure of the average revenue generated per ticket sold, maximizing revenue with the goal of selling all inventory at the right mix of prices.

WWE live event & hospitality revenue finished at $185.7 million for the second quarter, up $41.4 million year over year, partially attributed to higher ticket revenue. Both WrestleMania 41 and Night of Champions from Saudi Arabia were in the second quarter.

Shapiro hasn’t been shy about saying publicly this year that TKO sees “tremendous upside” in increasing ticket prices. An example he used Wednesday was UFC shattering previous records to become the highest-grossing event in the history of Chicago’s United Center.

Site fees continue to be a key focus of TKO with Shapiro saying they need to sell out their inventory of UFC numbered events in addition to WWE PLEs before moving on to UFC Fight Nights, WWE Raw and SmackDown events.

He said they are talking to Atlanta, Charlotte, Detroit, London, Paris and that “there are no shortage of countries…that want to see us bring our show to town.” He said they will continue to maximize those opportunities with both in-kind deals (goods & services) but that the “most important to me is cash. Cash kills.”

He also had a warning of sorts for towns that are successful when WWE or UFC comes to their town, especially for the smaller events, using UFC Fight Nights as an example.

“If we have a St. Louis going up against a Des Moines, Iowa, and you want us back there and you’ve broken records and sold out both your arenas, you have to pay for us to come back or else we’ll take it to another town. And that goes for NXT, Raw and SmackDown on the WWE side.”

Shapiro also talked about how TKO hopes Wrestlepalooza will be in the same conversation as WrestleMania and SummerSlam.

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TKO exec defends reduced WWE live event schedule, sees ‘tremendous upside’ in ticket pricing

Posted on by Josh Nason

Any hope WWE fans might have of ticket prices coming down any time soon will have to wait.

During his annual appearance at the JP Morgan Global Technology, Media and Communications conference in Boston, TKO president & chief operating officer Mark Shapiro (pictured above) spoke about both WWE and UFC business which included the upside he sees in both brands.

One of those is ticket pricing which he says has “tremendous upside” in addition to site fees, dynamic pricing (a growing trend with concerts and events where prices are driven by demand in real-time), and yield management (a broader strategy that aims to maximize revenue by controlling inventory availability and pricing).

WWE live event reduction

Shapiro also defended TKO’s decision to reduce yearly WWE live events to around 200 a year, a cut of what he said was 75% off the 300 WWE used to do (even though it’s actually a 33% reduction). He said that decision wasn’t done just to improve margins, and that WWE already had a strong following. Shapiro feels 200 events is a good place to be, but they will continue to prune the schedule as time goes on.

WWE & Peacock

Shapiro said they are continuing to talk with NBC Universal/Peacock who are interesting in renewing their deal for WWE PLEs that expires at the end of March 2026.

Shapiro said they aren’t afraid of working with multiple partners from a business perspective as it’s smart to not put all the marketing eggs in one basket while also maximizing financial opportunity. He added that as a viewer, “I can’t stand it” but admitted that’s the world we live in now.

Like with the UFC rights, there is no rush to make a deal and they want to have the right partner(s) from a financial and brand growth perspective. He also again noted that what is unique about WWE PLEs is they are “very high quality and low volume.” He again didn’t mention anything about the library and perceived value there.

Here’s some other highlights from Shapiro’s 35-minute talk:

  • He confirmed that the state of New Jersey is giving WWE a $7 million site fee for this August’s first-ever two-night SummerSlam. As previously reported, the money is coming from pandemic funding.
  • Shapiro put over how half the WWE/UFC audience is in the 18-49 demographic and that under 18 years old is one of their biggest audiences. He said in that age, they are tied with the NBA as the biggest draw and no. 1 with males under 18.
  • The X-factors to growth with younger viewers: sporting betting with the UFC and Netflix with WWE.
  • He feels WWE will be one of the vehicles Netflix uses to become the first-ever company with a $1 trillion valuation as WWE is an “anditote to churn” and a “proven formula for subscriber acquistion.”
  • He said Raw is in the Netflix top 10 weekly in 29 countries and up 14% for “what we did on USA last year” without specifying what that 14% represents.
  • He pushed the WWE Unreal docuseries in June on Netflix, noting that he cautioned Nick Khan to “not give away the Coca-Cola formula” to expose everything they do but said there’s a proven desire for behind-the-scenes content like this.

WWE to hold fewer live events in 2025, potentially increase ticket prices

Posted on by Josh Nason

On the eve of their first anniversary after merging both WWE and UFC into the publicly-traded TKO, the brand’s president revealed some news on the live event front for WWE fans.

The full audio for the call can be found below.

Speaking at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia & Technology Conference Wednesday, Shapiro said they are continuing to trim “marginally profitable” non-televised live events that Vince McMahon liked to run when he was trying to expand the brand name in smaller cities and regions.

Going from what Shapiro said was 300 events in 2023, he said they will put on 250 shows this year and then drop down to “close to 200” in 2025 in the effort of “margin expansion” which is financial speak for an increase in a company’s profit rate.

He did not specify whether the 200 number included NXT shows as well.

As he has done in the past, Shapiro said that they remain underpriced on WWE tickets and joked that he yells at the WWE team about not making prices higher when they are selling out so fast. He mentioned they didn’t have dynamic pricing tools in the past, indicating the trend of ticket prices increasing as demand increases that has taken over the concert industry could be coming to WWE.

He said with the current Peacock deal for their PLEs/archive content coming up in 2026, they feel “incredible” about that deal coming up and that it’s “beautiful” they have all the deals in place for Raw, SmackDown and NXT, putting over Netflix strongly as a “battleship” that will help them grow their brand and audience.

On the PLE deal, Shapiro said the 12 monthly events are “exciting and that people know” all about the shows. He said the WWE fanbase is a casual sports fan, an entertainment fan, lots of women, and very, very young. He said they are in a “really strong place” and plan on doing a lot of listening with all the potential suitors for the PLEs.

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Shapiro also talked about the impending UFC TV & PPV rights negotiations that are coming up in 2025. He revealed that the exclusive negotiating window with ESPN/Disney is between January 15 through April 15 and that their preference is to re-sign with the incumbent.

He said there have been no negotiations with ESPN as of now and that other platforms remain interested in having conversations about UFC programming. He reiterated they are going to remain flexible with the negotiations and with any partners who align with what they are trying to do like grow revenue in addition to both the audience and brand.

That extends to what they do with pay-per-views and revealed that Dana White initially didn’t like releasing control of sales to ESPN as he loves being a promoter. Shapiro said when it comes to either splitting the package or taking PPV sales back in house, they are up for all of it.

Click here to listen (no sub needed)