The Cruellest of Angles, or the Worst of Cock-ups?

It’s a cruel irony that following the breaking story of WWE’s behind-the-scenes business manoeuvres is much more entertaining than watching most of its recent in-ring output. As evidenced by the Birmingham crowd’s reaction to his recent “apology”, the company’s chairman, Vince McMahon, now has more heel heat than he did at the height of even his feud with the beer-swilling “Stone Cold” Steve Austin. Just about the only way that he could save face now would be to fold the evolving drama into a storyline, and have the immediate UK launch of the “over-the-top” WWE Network celebrated by him taking an on-screen beating from Blackpool’s own William Regal on this week’s Liverpool-based RAW.

On Monday evening, as the launch of the WWE Network in the UK neared, I decided to sign up for the month’s free trial. I had planned to spend a month filling my boots with retro Attitude Era content, and perhaps even catch up on the last four months’ worth of pay-per-views. And, if impressed, I would have happily paid up my $9.99 per month thereafter - a price that, for what’s on offer, I wouldn’t have begrudged a dime of (and I do mean a dime - the price is set in US dollars). WWE would have won back a customer from a decade ago, and would have been one subscriber closer to breaking even on its mammoth outlay.

But I couldn’t sign up. Unbelievably, a one-line statement on WWE.com simply stated that the launch had been delayed indefinitely. I pressed the “MORE INFORMATION” button to find out the details, but it just took me to another page with the exact same statement on it, together with a whole host of vitriolic comments from other would-be subscribers. These promptly disappeared, replaced in short order with a nonsensical “WWE would like to thank our fans in the United Kingdom for bearing with us.” After this second delay, there was nobody in the UK that I could see “bearing with” WWE. Most were calling for blood – and rightly so. One half of the screen took away what the other half continued to promise (see below).

Indeed, the backlash was understandable as the UK launch had been hyped to the hilt - I’d received two e-mails from WWE about the launch just that weekend. More than that though, for the very first time, the UK’s WWE fans would have had access to the same product as their American counterparts, and for the same price. Sky’s decades-long chokehold would have finally been weakened, if not broken, as most of their customers would have flocked to the make-or-break, “over-the-top” streaming service that has almost ended the reign of pay-per-view stateside.

Some hopefuls clutched at straws, speculating about technical issues holding up the launch, but I didn’t buy that. The network had been rolled out in numerous countries at once in August, and without any technical hitches that were newsworthy.

This delay of the UK launch - the second in as many months, and this one without even a revised date to fixate on - made WWE look foolish at best, and has done irreparable harm to its reputation in the UK. As such, it’s hard to believe that the delay was of the company’s own making - it would have been damned stupid to enrage an entire nation’s worth of punters simply to try and broker a more lucrative, premium channel contract with Sky (as they did in Canada, with Rogers Communications’ ten-year deal).

I suspect, as many do, that upon their announcement to launch the WWE Network in the UK as an “over-the-top” service, Sky sought an interim injunction to prevent the launch. WWE hoped to negotiate their way out of the situation before the launch, but failed to do so, hence the embarrassing - and inflammatory - last-minute pull of the plug.

The only problem with this theory is that it suggests those running WWE are incredibly myopic. The network’s main selling point for most people is, obviously, that it includes all twelve annual pay-per-views within its $9.99 per month price. As no commitment is required, a viewer can effectively just buy an otherwise £14.95 pay-per-view for only a little more than a third of what it would cost them through Sky, and enjoy a month’s worth of the network’s on-demand content and original programming to boot. That clearly and foreseeably would have hurt Sky. Not as much as most people assume, I reckon, but it would have lost them pay-per-view buys, particularly in November, when Survivor Series would have been effectively given away with the free trial.

The outcome of this situation will be fascinating to see, not just from my potential Apple TV WWE Network subscriber / never-ever-gonna-get-Sky point of view, but also as someone who’s genuinely interested in the way that television / media consumption is changing. Not being privy to the terms of the WWE / Sky deal, who knows what, if any, distinction there is in there between satellite broadcasting and online streaming? This whole thing could turn on something so simple as a badly-drawn deal that neither side properly understood the implications of, and that didn’t fully reflect WWE’s future intent.

But if this is WWE stalling to try and sell out the UK for a fast buck now, just as it did Canada earlier this year, I don’t think that its fans will be quick to forgive, particularly given that what was advertised has not been delivered. After SummerSlam 1991, the late, great Warrior was reportedly fired by the WWF for merely threatening not to perform as advertised in the hope of forcing a better deal for himself. Thirteen years on, and WWE itself doesn’t deliver on what’s been advertised, and given its guilty silence, we can only speculate as to why.

One thing is for sure though: the times they are a’changin’, and the WWE Network is right at the heart of it all.