George Barrios Recalls WWE Network Viewing Surprise

How much wrestling would people watch if WWE gave them a streaming service? George Barrios recalled Vince McMahon asking him that question before the WWE Network launched. In a clip from My World With Jeff Jarrett, the former WWE executive said the answer became clearer once the company could see what subscribers watched on its own platform.

Barrios described McMahon’s question as a memory from their discussions before launch. He recalled the WWE chairman asking how much content fans would consume once they had access to the service:

“George, how much [ __ ] wrestling do you think people can watch?”

WWE launched the Network in the United States in February 2014. Its announced lineup included live pay-per-views and a video-on-demand library with more than 1,500 hours of programming. That gave subscribers options beyond the major events and gave WWE a direct view of how they used the service.

Barrios said WWE’s first-party data let the company see what subscribers actually watched. He called their consumption of Network programming outside the pay-per-views “staggering”:

“Because we have this now data stack, right? And this is now first party data … it’s our service. We can actually see it and analyze … The amount of consumption of the network content that wasn’t the pay-per-views was staggering, right?”

He also recalled bringing charts to a meeting and returning to McMahon’s earlier question. Barrios described using those charts to tease McMahon about how much wrestling viewers consumed:

“We have now all these fancy charts … we’re in a meeting. There’s a few of us. … I go to Vince kind of like to needle. I go, ‘Hey, Vince, remember when you asked me how much wrestling people could watch?’ And I put it in front.”

Source: George Barrios on My World With Jeff Jarrett.