It was announced on Tuesday that WWE Monday Night RAW will be airing on Netflix starting in January 2025. This will be the first time RAW will not air new episodes on a traditional television network.
The deal with Netflix is worth $500 million annually and will span over ten years. This represents a significant increase compared to WWE’s previous deal with NBCU, valued at approximately $250-260 million per year.
During the company’s Q4 earnings report, Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos weighed in on the service’s new $5 billion deal for the rights to WWE RAW.
You can check out some highlights from the earnings call below:
On the deal to bring RAW to Netflix: “We are thrilled to bring WWE live programming to our members around the world. WWE Raw is sports entertainment, which is right in the sweet spot of our sports business, which is the drama of sport. Think of this as 52 weeks of live programming every week, every year. It feeds our desire to expand our live event programming. Most importantly, fans love it. For decades, WWE has grown this multi-generational fanbase that we believe we can serve and we can grow. We believe WWE has been historically under distributed outside of North America, and this is a global deal. We can help them, and they can help us build that fandom around the world. This should also add some fuel to our new and growing ad business.”
On if spending that much fit into their programming spending plans: “Expanding the live event programming is something we’ve talked about for a while and this has been in the works. This fits inside our $17 billion programming spending. In terms of building on it, you should think of Formula One, this is almost the inverse of Formula One, which is a very big and passionate US fanbase and a lot of room to grow outside of the US. We can build that, as we have with Formula One and other sports, through our shoulder programming like Drive to Survive, Full Swing, Break Point, and Quarterbacks. The events itself are the storytelling in WWE. This is a proven formula for us and we’re excited to jump into. This is sports entertainment, very close to our core, the deal is long-term, we’re super excited about it.”
On a recent edition of his “Something To Wrestle With” podcast, WWE executive Bruce Prichard weighed in on Tatanka potentially being inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame.
You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On a possible Hall of Fame induction for Tatanka: “I think that Tatanka put in the time. I think Tatanka’s a character that … a lot of the audience at the time, man, they really identified with Tatanka. Tatanka had one hell of a run and busted his ass and was one of those talents that was very colorful that you remember.”
On Tatanka’s legacy: “I think that everybody thought he was a very good in-ring performer. He was there for things, understood the business, [and] executed well. It always helps when you’re a nice guy, too. It always helps when you’ve got the experience and you’re not an a**hole about it and you know how to present yourself.”
