Earlier this week, the WWE Network rolled out its free tier of the service and led to the removal of its 30-day free trial for potential subscribers.
The news was first reported by Mike Johnson at PWinsider.com that the free trial promotion was being removed and referenced the wording in the billing information.
WWE Network subscriptions are billed in advance and recur monthly. Billing starts on the date you subscribe or reactivate your account subsciption, and re-bill on the same day each month until cancellation.
In a follow-up, Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer states that the free trial could be re-introduced at different times.
The idea would be that the free tier will get new viewers in the door with the hope of converting them to paying subscribers. The free content in the newly opened tier includes select episodes of Raw, Friday Night SmackDown & NXT, the Monday Night War, Ride Along, Table for 3, Photo Shoot & Story Time, as well as their ongoing series The Bump, WWE NOW, The Best of WWE, WWE Timeline, and Top 10.
An interesting statistic to look at down the road is the level of free subscribers that convert with the elimination of having free access to the entire network. As of April 6th (the day after WrestleMania 36), the streaming platform boasted 476,000 free subscribers and a total of 2,098,000 subs. This year’s number of free subscribers the day after WrestleMania was up 104% from the day after WrestleMania 2019, which had 233,000.
