People aren’t happy about WWE’s price hike.
The company has notably been raising prices for their live event tickets and WWE isn’t even trying to hide it. Recently, TKO COO Mark Shapiro made a bold comment about jacking up prices and he somehow made Vince McMahon look good for a brief second.
“We’ve seen a meaningful increase, as evidenced by the 59% margin we did in the second quarter. Ticket sales and site fees play a big part in driving that," Shapiro said.
We know we have a lot of room there because Vince McMahon was primarily pricing tickets for families and wasn’t totally focused on maxing the opportunity there. We see what we can do with the UFC and we’re replicating that in terms of ticket yield and advance sales when it comes to On Location on the WWE side."
Many fans weren’t happy about that. One of those fans happens to be Emmy winner Paul Walter Hauser, who's made quite a dent in the wrestling world as of late. During an appearance on TMZ Sports "Inside The Ring," Hauser chastised WWE for their high ticket prices and said that there’s no real humanity from corporate.
"Times are tougher than they used to be but the prices are going up. There's no real humanity from a corporate perspective. Whereas you can go to an AEW show or an MLW show for 15 to 40 bucks and have a decent seat," Hauser said. "To me, that's like Mr. Potter from It's A Wonderful Life, you're getting greedy and ugly. You're being ugly by doing that. I understand 'we have stockholders, we have shareholders,' be a real person, you d***. Like be a real person, do something."
Like many fans, Hauser knows that it’s mainly to look good for the shareholders. He even said it’s good for the Undisputed Champion Cody Rhodes. But to the common man, nobody on that roster is going to speak out against it.
"It's good for the shareholders, it's good for Cody Rhodes who's only going to be making more and more money you know? And by the way, he deserves it, he's killing it. But I'm just saying you're not going to hear the roster speak out in favor of the people because they're benefiting from it as well."
Despite the crazy price hike, WWE has been doing relatively solid with their live attendance recently. Granted, they have dropped, but not to the point when WWE feels that they're charging too much. However, the recent news about WWE’s prices for John Cena’s last match may change the show.
For basic tickets, Row A is $11,500. Row B on the ramp side is $9,500 and other ramp side tickets in Row E are currently running for $6,500. If WWE manages to sell out with these prices then it’s clear that audiences don’t mind the prices hikes too much, even though these prices are really insane.