WWE and Netflix will begin their partnership in January 2025, which many deemed to be odd when it was first announced.
When WWE announced that they would be broadcasting Raw on the streaming platform at the start of the new year, the timing seemed somewhat perplexing as their current deal in the United States with the USA Network expires in October. With the USA Network seemingly not wanting to extend their deal at the start of the year and it being highly unlikely that another network would pick up the show for only 3 months, there appeared to be a scenario where Raw may not be broadcast on any network in the final quarter and the company may have to look for other platforms.
However, during the recent quarterly earnings report, WWE was able to strike up a deal to find a home for Raw in the final months of the year before they began a new era of the show on Netflix. Despite this, some are still curious as to why the deal with the streaming giant didn’t commence the week after the current deal expires.
Discussing the nature of the deal on Wrestling Observer Radio, Dave Meltzer stated that the reason for the delay was due to other international deals not expiring until the end of the year as the partnership between the two companies extends beyond the United States, meaning that Netflix wanted to start in multiple markets on the same date:
“They didn’t want it until January. Netflix is a worldwide company, and all the deals that they were picking up expired at the end of December. They had deals in Canada and in England, and everywhere, and they all expire at the end of December.
“They wanted a 10-year deal [from] January to January, they had the ball in their court. They didn’t want an October to October deal. They wanted a January to December deal. Obviously, they didn’t want to pick it up early, because if they wanted to pick it up early they could have got it, but then the whole thing is that it’s only for the United States. I mean, it’s already a situation where they wanted everything.
Because WWE had made the deals for the United States for Smackdown and for NXT before the Netflix deal, they can’t get either of those deals for five years. So but for everywhere else in the world, they’re getting all the shows, and they’re getting the pay-per-views, and they’re getting the essentially the Network, whatever they want to pick up in the Network, who knows how much they want, but they have the rights to all of it, and nobody else has, anything they don’t pick up is going to disappear into the abyss.”
New Agreement To Possibly Affect Major WWE Shows
When WWE Raw is broadcast on the streaming platform in 2025, this will be the latest in a series of many first-time-ever events to take place within the company. Another historic move may also take place in the future in regard to WWE’s relationship with Saudi Arabia.
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