TKO Executive Says WWE Cutting Back On Live Events Even More In 2025
A top executive at TKO has made it clear that there will be even fewer live events in 2025.
The deal that Endeavor made to acquire WWE was announced in April 2023 and became official about five months later.
That means that the year 2024 has been the first one in which the Endeavor-owned TKO Group has been running the company.
One of the big changes that has happened this year has seen WWE drastically cut back on the number of live events they run. This was something that TKO President Mark Shapiro spoke about in December 2023 saying that they were going to cut back on live events.
Since the Raw, Smackdown, and NXT television shows are live nearly every week, that means there are over 150 televised events per year. Add in the Premium Live Events for the WWE main roster and NXT brands then that’s another 15 or so events. In addition to those, WWE has non-televised events which are often referred to as house shows, and those are what the company plans to cut back on even more.
TKO’s Mark Shapiro Explains Why WWE Is Cutting Events
The days of World Wrestling Entertainment running 300+ events in a calendar year are a thing of the past. According to TKO President Mark Shapiro at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia & Technology Conference, the company will likely be at around 200 events or less in 2025.
“We’re cutting events at WWE. We’re taking our low-margin, marginally profitable events, untelevised events that Vince put in place to grow the brand, right? You’re taking the show on the road, we’ve gotta go to every city we can get to grow the WWE brand.”
“Well, the WWE brand, while we still have to grow it, it’s on fire right now. We don’t need to carry these marginally profitable events. Andrew Schleimer, our CFO and Nick Khan at WWE have been hands on involved with cutting back those events, trimming those events. What was 300 [events] last year will be roughly 250 this year. And next year, we’ll be close to 200.”
An example of WWE cutting live events is that in September, there are only two live events in the United States on the 28th and 29th of September. While there are European live events in October & November, there are none in the US in those months. After late September, the next US live events are in the final week of the year in December as part of the annual holiday tour.