Kane talks about business decision made by Vince McMahon that he thought was ‘crazy’

During an appearance on The Doug Collins Podcast, Glenn Jacobs aka Kane talked about the launch of the WWE Network in 2014 and Vince McMahon’s decision to put PPV events on the Network…

“I think Vince’s real genius, when it comes to his entrepreneurship, was determining where entertainment technology was going and getting to the cutting edge. When he launched the WWE Network, we all thought he was crazy. You have a subscription-based network, wonderful. But he moved all of the PPVs over to the Network and we were getting $50 a pop or whatever it was for PPVs. When you go into subscription base, and you get all the PPVs $9.99 a month, so you get them for free, or not for free, but you know, that includes the PPVs. So, the PPVs at the time, were about 50% of the company’s revenue was coming off of the PPV. So you eliminate that whole revenue stream and move it to a different platform. Who in their right mind would do that?”

“I thought he was crazy. What I thought he should do is, you keep the major PPVs like WrestleMania, Royal Rumble, SummerSlam, and Survivor Series. You keep those on your PPV platforms and you move everything else. Because those were the big revenue generators anyway. But that’s not how he saw it, and I was wrong. Now you look at the Network and the revenue is bigger than it ever has been. They’ve now exceeded on the Network the revenue that’s coming off the PPV. He’s not afraid to take risks.” (quotes courtesy of WrestlingInc.com)