Stock Analyst Believes Third Hour Of SmackDown Live On Fox Could Be Worth An Additional $75 Million
Guggenheim analyst Curry Baker recently met with WWE management and walked away with a pretty big impression.
According to Curry, adding a third hour to SmackDown Live on Fox could add an additional $75 million in OIBDA. As of now, there are no official plans for SmackDown to expand to three hours. The show will debut on Fox this October.
Curry added, “We see incremental content deals (‘third hour’ of SmackDown), sponsorship growth, and the WWE Network re-launch as significant opportunities not currently reflected in our estimates.”
Vince McMahon has hinted that WWE Network will move to a tiered pricing model at some point in 2019, but no plans have been made official.
Finally, Curry reports that WWE’s sponsorship deals are under-earning given market demand for its TV content. He stated WWE can add $50 million to $100 million in OIBDA over the next three years if it negotiates better sponsorship deals.
WWE’s stock traded around $84.48 per share on Thursday.
It was recently revealed that Vince McMahon sold over 3 million shares of his WWE stock. You can find more information on WWE’s 2018 financials by checking out Brandon Howard Thurston’s full report.
