by WWE recently signed a multi-year deal with Netflix for WWE RAW streaming rights. It is expected to be $5 Billion deal for 10 years. WWE in its press release noted that Netflix will start streaming RAW from January 2025.
“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.”
Netflix’s co-CEO Greg Peters recently gave an interview to Stratechery.com, where he talked about Netflix’s deal with WWE. Greg Peters feels WWE is under-distributed and it’s been under-leveraged.
“We love this deal for a whole variety of reasons. One is that the one you mentioned, which we think that this is quite close to what we do. We think we are in the business of telling dramatic stories around sports. You’ve seen it with Drive to Survive or Break Point, Full Swing. We feel that’s a space that we’ve earned the right to play and an expectation to deliver value to consumers, and we feel like this is in that zone.”
“We also love it, because as you mentioned, this is 52 weeks of entertainment. This is always on entertainment, sports entertainment, and it fits really well within our model. We think it’s synergistic with what we’re doing on ads, and we like it from that perspective.”
“What we believe is that there’s a real opportunity for growing the fan base for this set of content globally. We think it’s been under-distributed, we think it’s been under-leveraged. There’s good signs that there’s fans out there, but we think we can grow that. We think about it as the inverse to Drive to Survive to F1. We could actually grow the international audience in a way that is material. We’ve organized the deal so that it’s a big long-term deal. In other words, there’s a little bit of risk insulation into the renting concerns that you mentioned before.”
