By Jason Powell, ProWrestling.net Editor (@prowrestlingnet)
TKO issued the following press release on Tuesday to announce that Netflix will be the new home of WWE Raw in 2025.
STAMFORD, Conn., January 23, 2024 – WWE, part of TKO Group Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: TKO), and Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) today announced a long-term partnership that will bring WWE’s flagship weekly program – Raw – to the world’s leading entertainment service. This marks a major programming shift as Raw leaves linear television for the first time since its inception 31 years ago.
Beginning in January 2025, Netflix will be the exclusive new home of Raw in the U.S., Canada, U.K. and Latin America, among other territories, with additional countries and regions to be added over time. Likewise, as part of the agreement, Netflix will also become the home for all WWE shows and specials outside the U.S. as available, inclusive of Raw and WWE’s other weekly shows – SmackDown and NXT – as well as the company’s Premium Live Events, including WrestleMania, SummerSlam and Royal Rumble. WWE’s award-winning documentaries, original series and forthcoming projects will also be available on Netflix internationally beginning in 2025.
“This deal is transformative,” said Mark Shapiro, TKO President and COO. “It marries the can’t-miss WWE product with Netflix’s extraordinary global reach and locks in significant and predictable economics for many years. Our partnership fundamentally alters and strengthens the media landscape, dramatically expands the reach of WWE, and brings weekly live appointment viewing to Netflix.”
“We are excited to have WWE Raw, with its huge and passionate multigenerational fan base, on Netflix,” said Netflix Chief Content Officer, Bela Bajaria. “By combining our reach, recommendations, and fandom with WWE, we’ll be able to deliver more joy and value for their audiences and our members. Raw is the best of sports entertainment, blending great characters and storytelling with live action 52 weeks a year and we’re thrilled to be in this long-term partnership with WWE.”
“In its relatively short history, Netflix has engineered a phenomenal track record for storytelling,” said Nick Khan, WWE President. “We believe Netflix, as one of the world’s leading entertainment brands, is the ideal long-term home for Raw’s live, loyal, and ever-growing fan base.”
With 1,600 episodes to date, Raw is the most iconic show in sports entertainment. Since its debut in 1993, Raw has delivered action, compelling drama and unmatched athleticism – 52 weeks a year. Blending the best of scripted content with unpredictable live entertainment, the three-hour show has helped launch the careers of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, Triple H, John Cena, Roman Reigns, Bianca Belair and Charlotte Flair.
The show is currently the No. 1 show on USA Network, where it brings in 17.5 million unique viewers over the course of the year. One of television’s best performing shows in the 18-49 advertising demographic, Raw trends on X 52 weeks a year while each new episode is airing. On social media, WWE has more than one billion followers across its platforms.
Powell’s POV: This is a big surprise in that Amazon and Warner Bros. Discovery had been mentioned more frequently, and Netflix hasn’t done much with live programming. On a side note, AEW’s Tony Khan should sleep better tonight now that he knows Raw won’t be going to WBD.
Let’s not flood over the best part of this news. Moving towards the end of ratings comparisons for these shows.
good point! Earnest
Now people will just compare Smackdown and NXT with the AEW shows. I wish the polarized crap would end, but I’m not holding my breath.
Nope. Nielsen has been tracking streaming ratings for a while now, including Netflix, and is starting to roll out their new Nielsen ONE ratings system that covers everything.
Yes! The “ratings” that, while not being completely real back in the day, mean NOTHING these days. Good riddance.
The ratings remain very important to the advertisers and therefore to the networks. I’m not sure what you mean by them not being real back in the day. They have always been based on a sample size.
It’s a much larger and more accurate sample now than ever before, especially for people using live streamers like YouTube TV and Hulu Live that default to sending your viewing data to Nielsen.
*gloss.
Wow this is shocking, although I doubt WBD was ever really in the discussion (at least from my perspective) it really didn’t seem to make a whole lot of business sense(for WBD), and I’m guessing Tony Khan was probably aware of what their intentions were or at least had an inkling, but wouldn’t be shocked if they at least sat down and listened to what wwe was pitching…it only makes sense.
What will be interesting is the terms of the deal if and when they are released like length of the deal and how much they paid to get the rights.
I don’t think WBD met with TKO officials multiple times just for the hell of it.
10 years 5 billion dollars….interesting that’s a long deal and a ton of money, that might scare away a few suitors?? who knows however I agree I don’t think they sat down just for the hell of it either ( it’s all about negotiating and getting the best deal possible) but I don’t see WBD putting out that kind of money without having had a NBA deal in place first even more so when they probably pay a lot less for AEW.
That was always the question. Did WBD want AEW at a cheaper price or did they want the industry leader at a very high price. Obviously, the international (and future domestic) streaming rights played a big part in this. One can only assume that WBD was interested in having WWE’s streaming package on Max. Hopefully it means AEW will eventually end up with its own streaming deal on Max, which feels long overdue.
The other question is Will it be 3 hours still?
Will it have commercials or ads?
Lol
TBA. As much as I hope Raw will be a two-hour show, let’s not forget that Smackdown is moving to three-hour loving USA Network.
Seems like the perfect vehicle for Netflix w/ads, which Netflix has admitted brings them more revenue per user than their higher cost tiers without ads.
That’s a huge amount of money. Major League Soccer had a first year on Apple TV+ that shattered their expectations, with Apple execs saying that viewership was up substantially over MLS games on cable and network TV in previous years, and that was with a smaller streaming service and only about 2 million paying for the full MLS package of games.
Going with Netflix is obviously a much bigger pool of potential viewers and Nielsen already does a monthly release of streaming ratings. Supposedly their all-inclusive ratings system (Nielsen ONE) will be debuting in the next year or so, so the talk about ratings not being compared is premature.
if this means the end of the wwe network then how will we watch wcw and wwf. if we cant watch them we will get super depressed. and they not doing dvds anymore either making the situation worse. we demand our wrestling history. also i might support wwe but i dont want to support netflix.
You can’t always get what you want. I suspect that there will be archival footage in a WWE tier on Netflix, but only time will tell. We haven’t had the network here in the United States for a while now and it’s been fine. It was nice when the network had the archives. But WWE quickly learned that current content is where they make their money. There just isn’t a huge audience that does back and watches the older footage.
Well, Raw, it was nice watching you.
I wonder if they will they still bleep out naughty words, or do only the children at the event get to hear and say them?
Anyway, these pay streaming services are already going the way of pay cable, which was supposed to be commercial free.
The combined streaming bills are going to be as much as the cable bill.
The combined streaming bills are still significantly lower than a cable/satellite bill. In the real world, cable and satellite prices are actually increasing more quickly and at larger price jumps.
Netflix makes more money per user off of their ad tier than all their ad-free tiers.
The dirty little secret that streamers have found out is that it’s only a very vocal minority who won’t watch ads. Services like Peacock and Paramount+ have been starting movies with 2-3 minutes of ads, then the movie itself ad-free, for years now and it’s great. FAST services like Pluto TV and Tubi are doing so well with an ad based approach that 4 of them are in the top 10 streamers now.
Even more telling is the research is now showing that 18-24 year olds are the most likely to watch ads and buy the products, and they’re doing it on purpose to support the shows they like.
Goodbye and Good Riddance.