TKO President Mark Shapiro spoke at the Goldman Sach’s Communacopia + Technology conference on a number of topics, including how they plan on reducing the WWE’s marginally profitable live events, something that Vince McMahon put in place to grow the brand.
Shapiro said, “We’re cutting events at WWE. We’re taking our low-margin, marginally profitable events, untelevised events that Vince put in place to grow the brand, right? You’re taking the show on the road, we’ve gotta go to every city we can get to grow the WWE brand. Well, the WWE brand, while we still have to grow it, it’s on fire right now.”
On it being less necessary to put on marginally profitable live, non-televised shows:
“We don’t need to carry these marginally profitable events. Andrew Schleimer, our CFO, and Nick Khan at WWE have been hands-on involved with cutting back those events, trimming those events. What was 300 [events] last year will be roughly 250 this year. And next year, we’ll be close to 200.”
(H/T to Fightful for transcribing the above quotes)