At the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media, & Telecom Conference, TKO President and COO Mark Shapiro discussed the deal that WWE and Netflix reached to move Monday Night RAW to the streaming service in January 2025.
Shapiro revealed that they had originally talked about NXT going to Netflix. He said,
“When we met with Netflix, Apple, and other streaming platforms, the conversation always started with, ‘When are the PLEs up?’ When we met on Raw, always started with that. ‘We’re not here to talk about the PLEs.’ We are in the sense that it’s part of the narrative. When you watch Raw and SmackDown, things weave in and out of the PLEs. It’s an important part of the narrative concept. ‘Why wouldn’t Netflix be there?’ Let’s just get out of the gate with Raw strong. We have time. Let’s see how that partnership goes and that marketing delivers and the viewership shows up and we’re monetizing it from a sponsorship, consumer product, site fee standpoint, and then we’ll talk about where it goes, if it doesn’t go back to Peacock. We’re patient and that has bode well for us.”
He continued, “We had a lot of pressure when we announced the SmackDown deal. Market was freaking out. “Raw, NXT, why didn’t they announce it? They don’t have anybody. There is no demand.’ There was pressure, but we said we were going to be patient and it was going to work in our favor. It over-delivered on our expectations. Never did I think Netflix was coming in. Not in my wildest dreams. When we first started talking to Netflix, it was frankly about NXT. It wasn’t even about Raw. That just turned into a bigger conversation. Then the Raw conversation became a global conversation.”
