WWE had to make some painful moves when the 2008 financial crisis hit, and former WWE CFO George Barrios is now explaining how the company got through it.
While speaking on the Two Man Power Trip podcast, Barrios said WWE faced the same fear many companies had at the time: nobody knew how bad things were going to get: “So there’s a period of time, which seems like a long time ago, where you’re a business, you don’t know if you’re going to survive.”
Barrios compared the uncertainty to the early days of COVID, when companies were trying to figure out whether everything was about to collapse. According to Barrios, he, Michelle Wilson, and Vince McMahon quickly focused on making WWE leaner and giving the company a financial cushion.
“It was kind of similar to the COVID thing where you’re like, you know, what is happening here? You know, is the world, you know, financial system going to collapse? Everybody’s going to lose their jobs. Michelle and I really spend the time and Vince kind of saying, hey, what’s our plan to kind of ride this storm out?”
That meant WWE had to cut costs and make difficult decisions, including reducing its dividend. Barrios said WWE spent about a year and a half focused on survival mode. By around 2010, the company felt like the worst of the crisis was behind it.
“We end up cutting our dividend, you know, things like that, things that are incredibly difficult, but you feel like you have to do because you have lost total visibility to the business. It’s coming out of that, let’s say 2010-ish, you know, a year and a half, two years later. We’re okay. That’s behind us. It’s behind the world.”
Once WWE stabilized, Barrios said he and Wilson started looking at bigger opportunities, including improving live events and studying how fans interacted with the company around the world. That led WWE to dig deeper into consumer research across major markets
“Michelle and I start thinking about, well, you know, what is the opportunity here? So anyway, while we’re doing the learning on the inside, we’re starting, we’re doing this kind of consumer research in India, in the Middle East, in Latin America, in the US to really go deep.”
Barrios’ comments show that WWE’s response to the 2008 financial crisis was not just about cutting costs. The company first focused on surviving the storm, then used the recovery period to rethink its business and understand its global audience better.
What do you think about WWE’s approach during the 2008 financial crisis? Please share your thoughts and feedback below.
Please credit Ringside News if you use the above transcript in your publication.
