If you were one of many fans who were hoping for a reprieve in ticket prices for WWE events, not only does that sound like it won’t happen, but in fact, prices could yet still be going up.

TKO Chief Operating Officer Mark Shapiro spoke at the annual Goldman Sachs Communacopia & Technology Conference earlier today and shared some insight into the company’s strategy when it comes to ticket pricing, suggesting that they are not yet at the level of UFC and have a ways to go to improve their yield.

“WWE is not where the UFC yet is on ticket yield. We have our work to do there. 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. Now that we’ve seen what we can do with UFC, we’re replicating that in terms of ticket yield and holding back and advance sales when it comes to OnLocation on the WWE side and it’s working out really well.”

Shapiro also had some disheartening news for any market which does well and sells out a prospective live event that WWE brings, indicating that if they want the company to come back, they will have to pony up a rights fee. This wouldn’t just be for PLEs but smaller shows like Raw, Smackdown or even NXT.

“If we have a St. Louis going up against a Des Moines, Iowa, and you want us back there and you’ve broken records and sold out both your arenas, you have to pay for us to come back or else we’ll take it to another town. And that goes for NXT, Raw and SmackDown on the WWE side.”

Shapiro added that TKO is currently in discussions with such cities as Atlanta, Detroit, Charlotte and internationally, London and Paris about bringing live events there noting that “there are no shortage of countries that want to see us bring our show to town.”

H/T to www.f4wonline.com for transcribing the above quotes.