TKO Executive Says WWE Deal With Netflix Wasn’t Easy
A TKO Executive has opened up about WWE signing a huge deal with Netflix to bring Monday Night Raw to the powerhouse streamer.
It was announced in January 2024 that starting in January 2025, the 31-year television staple known as WWE’s Monday Night Raw will be heading to Netflix, which is by far the biggest streaming service in the world with over 275 million subscribers worldwide.
The deal between WWE and Netflix starts in January 2025 and is reportedly worth $500 million a year and is set to run for 10 years, bringing the total value to a staggering $5 billion. There is also an option for Netflix to get out of the deal after five years while also having the right to extend the deal for another decade.
In addition to Monday Night Raw airing on Netflix for American viewers, the deal with Netflix will bring WWE’s flagship show to streaming in Canada, the UK, and Latin America. Most countries outside of the US will get other WWE shows on Netflix like Smackdown and NXT as well. Other unnamed territories and countries will see Raw move to Netflix over time.
While speaking to The Main Event with Andrew Marchand of The Athletic, Endeavor/TKO President Mark Shapiro talked about the process of making a deal with Netflix and made it clear that it wasn’t easy to get done.
“No, I don’t think they’re jumping into that any time quick (Shapiro responded to the question of if he thinks Netflix will bring more live sports into their portfolio) and I will tell ya, this (WWE on Netflix) wasn’t an easy deal. Ted Sarandos is amazing and just an incredible track record of success and frankly, driving change in the business along with Reed (Hastings) and you know, Bela (Bajaria) has just completely reorganized the content team there.”
“Showing the willingness to take chances and big swings and not afraid of risks and has a $17 billion dollar budget behind her. So, they’re in it. If they think there’s something out there, premium, that’s going to bring in subs and keep subs and allow them to raise prices and sell advertising, they’ll jump in so in that respect, if sports is going to do it at a reasonable price, they’ll do it.”
“But there’s no behind the scenes strategy. Wink, wink — we’re getting into WWE which is close to sports and then we’ll get some NFL games and then we’ll really open up the floodgates. It took ‘em a lot of convincing by Bela and Ari (Emanuel) and me to Ted directly and Spencer Neumann, the C.F.O., to get them all in on the WWE and then they took a shot. But guess what? They drove a hard bargain, they were terrific negotiators.”
“The devil’s in the details and there are a lot of details and they held their ground and I think they got a great deal for themselves as well.”
John Cena Confirms He Will Be Part Of WWE Raw Debut On Netflix
When WWE Raw debuts on Netflix on Monday, January 6th, 2025, the company will likely feature a lot of big names. One of the names that has already committed to it is WWE legend John Cena, who is doing a WWE retirement tour through 2025.
The 16-time WWE World Champion Cena recently confirmed he will be part of the Raw debut on Netflix, which should certainly add some major star power to the show.