WWE NXT could be joining Raw and SmackDown as a touring brand next year.
Following the news that WWE NXT will be leaving the USA Network in October 2024 and will air on the CW Sports network for at least the next 5 years, the show will be available to more homes than ever before. According to a new report, the show itself could also be much more accessible to experience live than it was previously.
NXT has been based in Orlando, Florida for the majority of its weekly shows, beginning at Full Sail University and later being broadcast at the Performance Center. The only time the weekly show was taped outside of Florida was to film matches that would air on the show following a TakeOver event.
Speaking on Wrestling Observer Radio, Dave Meltzer has stated that there are discussions in place for the brand to go on the road following the substantial increase in media rights fees:
“There’s talk about taking them touring with the extra money. There are pluses and minuses of it. The pluses are, if it looks good and it looks better, we’ve seen with Raw, we’ve seen with everyone, that when it looks good on TV, the look of the TV show is very, very important when it comes to viewership. So moving to bigger places will help to a degree.
Is WWE NXT Going On The Road A Good Idea?
Meltzer continued by addressing how wise the move would be. On one hand, touring the brand would be a success financially because playing in bigger venues will allow more tickets to be sold. However, it was stressed that NXT is a developmental brand, meaning that the talent needs additional time to work on their in-ring and promo skills. If the show goes on tour, talent will have less time to improve:
“But the developmental aspect of the thing – if you are taking the people out of town, with the travel days and everything like that, it does give them less days in the gym, and it does take a lot of the people who work with the talent away for a couple of days.So there is a negativity towards… unless they do arenas in Florida, but the problem with doing arenas in Florida is there’s only so many before you burn out the audience. Especially in that area.
“It would help the show, it would help the numbers for them to move to a bigger setting. They’d sell more tickets, things like that, bring in revenue in that way – I don’t know if they’d sell enough tickets to offset the expense of going, but they might. All of this remains to be seen, but with the new money, it’s more affordable to do that. It was definitely something that’s been talked about though as far as moving tapings out of the Performance Center.”
Following the news being made official that the brand would be moving networks in 2024, new details emerged as to how the presentation of WWE NXT will be affected and if there are any plans to move the show off Tuesday nights.
H/t to WrestleTalk.