by WWE last year made a WWE network exclusive deal with Peacock a streaming service of NBCUniversal for a whopping 1$B for 5 year. Ever since that there were many report that WWE is getting many buyout offers.
Nick Khan on January in SportsMediaJournal noted that WWE have received many offers but WWE is not looking for buyers at this moment of time.
“We’re open for business on anything and everything. Even some of the business plans that we’ve announced recently are different and unique to what the company has traditionally done,” he said. “We’re open for business. If somebody called, we’ll listen, but we’re not active or out on the marketplace trying to change that structure.”
Brandon Thurston on his latest Wrestlenomic Radio talked about Raw, Smackdown & Peacock contract expiry. How much could WWE potential make from the deals.
“what I could speculate might be happening here is, if you look at the value of WWE tv rights currently especially not average annual value which we just talk about often. 205$M for Smackdown, 265$M for Raw, 200$M for peacock network content, that’s the US value for a year, over the course of the term of the contract each one of the contract is 5 years long. Raw & Smackdown are aligned, they start and expiry at the same time. Peacock will expiry about a year and half later in march 2026.
“Over the 5 years course of those contracts that’s a value of 3.4$B just for the US rights, we talked about a few weeks ago, all the reason & all the math behind why AEW & WWE would probably get an increase and I would put the base line expectation what WWE can get on his next round of US tv rights fees at about 1.5x times about what they currently get. so we take all, lets put peacock in here too and assume peacock is perhaps due for a 1.5x increase as well. So we end up with what’s currently worth over the course 5 years 3.4$B end up being 5$B perhaps in next term of deals, that’s a lot of money if your NBCUniversal or whatever tv partner that might want this rights, this rights for sports are really important but also really expensive, it is sort of like renting a home versus owning a home as I’m sometimes reminds of.
“Why continue to rent a home when you can own one maybe eventually sell it rather than just paying money that just goes away, WWE is kind of a landlord in this situation, this networks licence the content, than they have to renew it every several years, so 5$B could be what major WWE rights are worth in the next term, let assume another 5 years deal that would run from end of 2024 to end of 2029, the rest of the decade 5$B, people can see that’s more than current capitalisation of the WWE company. If you just multiply that by current share price which is of Friday is about 60$ you could get of about 4.5$B.
“If I’m NBC universal, lets cut to the chase here, I don’t wanna renew licensing of Raw & peacock, i would rather own the content, company not worrying the lease of my apartment every few years, use my house, remodel my house however i want to it not have to worry about what landlord think about it.”
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article please credit Wrestlenomic Radio with a h/t to WrestlingManiafan.in for the transcription.
