After a hugely successful 2018, which saw WWE’s GIPHY channel reach nearly 4 billion views, our goal for 2019 was to continue using our incredible Superstars and our extensive video library to create GIFs that allow our fans to express themselves on an emotional level across social media and help introduce the WWE brand to new audiences.
WWE Superstars continue to be the most expressive performers on earth, and GIFs provide the perfect platform to connect with viewers, whether they are WWE fans or not, at the most basic level.
Before our marquee annual event, WrestleMania 35, we launched a new set of reaction GIFs and Stickers featuring a diverse group of Superstars, which proved to be very popular with our fans across various social media platforms.
WWE continued to post new GIFs on GIPHY every week, featuring the best reactions and moments from our weekly television shows – Raw, SmackDown, WWE NXT, WWE 205 Live, NXT UK and WWE Mixed Match Challenge – as well as GIFs from our WWE Network live specials. We also posted weekly GIPHY Stories, ensuring that our GIFs always had a spot on GIPHY’s front page and app home screen.
We continued to experiment with new ways to get our Superstars in front of GIPHY’s user base, including another set of original reaction GIFs and Stickers for WWE Premiere Week – another huge company initiative in October 2019.
-- Due to our continued commitment to providing our fans with unique means to express themselves, WWE’s official GIPHY channel now boasts over 6,500 GIFs and Stickers, and grew from 3 billion views to 7 billion views in 2019.
-- Our GIPHY activations surrounding WrestleMania once again proved to be a huge success, helping us amass 324 million views in April 2019.
-- The WWE Premiere Week reaction GIFs and Stickers were a smash hit with fans on GIPHY and across social media, and led to October 2019 becoming WWE’s most successful month on GIPHY, with 521.8 million views for the month.
-- The weekly uploads of new WWE GIFs have proven to be a massive success, with many of them showing up in GIPHY’s “Trending GIFs” section again and again. Many of WWE’s trending GIFs have gone on to gain tens of millions of views and continue to be loved by users. One of our GIFs, featuring WWE Superstar Xavier Woods, even landed on GIPHY’s list of the 25 most viewed GIFs of 2019.
WWE channel in 2019: 7 billion+ views
Most popular WWE GIF of 2019: 153.9 million views
