TKO President Mark Shapiro reveals big changes coming to WWE next year
TKO President Mark Shapiro makes a huge announcement, making radical changes to WWE for next year and beyond.
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Mark Shapiro reveals cutting down on WWE live events (via WWE and Andrew Toth/FilmMagic)
WWE Live Events, informally called ‘House Shows,’ have been an integral part of the promotion. They allow the company to target smaller cities during their commute between major locations or host events in foreign countries. The company is now looking to cut down on these events, as announced by TKO President Mark Shapiro.
Speaking at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia & Technology Conference, Shapiro revealed that the company was gradually cutting down the total number of events hosted each year. As the number of weekly programming shows and PLEs is mostly fixed through the year, the major brunt is being taken up by the house shows.
Shapiro is aiming towards making WWE a more profitable company. Thus, TKO CFO Andrew Schleimer and WWE President Nick Khan were toning down the shows with low margins and low profitability, mainly house shows.
They hosted roughly 300 events in 2023, and this number would drop to 250 by the end of this year. Furthermore, the company plans to host only 200 shows in 2025. As of now, the company only has three more live event tours planned for the rest of the year to be hosted in the United States and a few in the UK.
How did WWE begin doing Live Events?
Speaking at the same conference, Shapiro revealed how such shows came about in WWE. While Vince McMahon was in charge of the company, he started hosting such shows to grow the WWE brand. Apart from these live events, WWE also hosts a few televised shows with much less importance. These include WWE Main Event, which is still active to this day, and WWE Superstars, which stopped broadcasting in 2011.
While there is always room to grow, the TKO President believed they were much more popular now compared to when these shows were introduced. He announced that the WWE brand was on fire right now. Hence, it was not worth it to carry the entire show to so many towns.
Such live events are almost unheard of for other wrestling promotions. They are generally not big enough to accommodate for these events outside of their weekly programming. AEW stopped doing house shows in 2023 after seeing dwindling attendance not just for house shows but also for their TV tapings.
WWE recently hosted a few house shows in Japan, featuring several local talent and some of their company’s biggest names, such as Cody Rhodes. Many superstars, such as Jade Cargill, revealed how much of a great time they had in the land of the rising sun. However, such experiences will be few and far between heading into the future.
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Mokshit Batra
(1453 Articles Published)