WWE CFO George Barrios was a presenter at the J.P. Morgan Global Technology, Media, and Communications Conference this week. Barrios discussed numerous topics regarding their revenue records and current projects.
Barrios was asked about the Mixed Match Challenge, and whether it fared to expectations. He was also asked about using other shows for the Facebook Watch feature, and if there is any chance of using existing network programming for Facebook, such as 205 Live.
“You’re doing something for the first time ever, so it’s hard to have any expectations around it,” said Barrios. I think that goes for Facebook [too]. If you ask them, because we did, what would make this successful for you guys because obviously that’s a real important thing for us. And I think they’re still determining, you know, what success is. We know what the metric is, it’s time. So, it’s how many people are you reaching, and how much time are they spending. That’s easy. That’s what we measure and are kind of super intense about measuring time and making sure we have our arms around that.
“So, having said that, we’ve took Facebook’s lead, and they seem to be really happy with how Mixed Match Challenge was, or how it performed, so in turn we are too. So we learned some things around the scheduling. We learned some things around the promotion, both within Facebook and externally, and we saw the viewership get impacted with certain things we’re trying. I think we’re in early days.”
Barrios added that he remembered someone in early meetings around Mixed Match Challenge saying that the goal is to reinvent TV in terms of the viewership experience. Although he does not feel that WWE did that with Mixed Match Challenge, he does feel that WWE did some interesting things, and over time, WWE would be interested in the future.
The strange bedfellow pairings of the 12-week Mixed Match Challenge ended up with The Miz and Asuka defeating Bobby Roode and Charlotte in the finals to win the tournament.
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