It was speculated that the WWE might part ways with some of its employees leading up to and following its earnings conference call on Thursday and the company reportedly released several employees while also updating the underwhelming WWE Network subscriber count.
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According to CNN Money, the WWE parted ways with seven percent of its employees on Thursday in the fallout of its earnings conference call.
The affiliate reported that a WWE spokesperson said that the job cuts will affect all of the WWE's business units and locations. The spokesperson also noted that the employees were let go on Thursday and that 60 jobs were lost.
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WWE CEO and Chairman Vince McMahon has been making budget cuts due to the company losing money over the lack of WWE Network subscriptions, a lackluster television deal being reached with NBC Universal and the company's stock taking a hit.
Wrestlingheadlines.com reports that McMahon notified WWE employees via e-mail on Thursday to inform them when the staff reduction process was over.
The WWE has been scaling back expenses in many different ways including catering, traveling and the use of its ring crew, but there have also been releases to go along with the budget cuts as well.
Earlier this summer, the WWE released 10 Superstars, a referee, a Monday Night RAW writer and an announcer as part of scaling back their expenses. Earlier this week, the WWE released Ricardo Rodriguez before then releasing seven percent of its non-talent employees on Thursday.
The lack of success of the WWE Network has been a big contributor to the company cutting costs. It was revealed in April that only 667,000 people had subscribed to the network, a far cry from the projected one million break-even point for the company.
Wrestlingheadlines.com reported coming out of the conference call that the WWE updated the number to 700,000 subscribers, a slight improvement from April but still far below the one million count it had hoped for. It should be noted that those numbers are as of June 30 and could have seen an increase or decrease in July.
The WWE may continue to make budget cuts over the next few months as the network numbers and other factors have caused the company to cut costs.
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