Netflix has just landed its biggest live-sports licensing smackdown and a major blow to linear TV. In a new deal valued at more than $5 billion, WWE’s weekly flagship show, Raw, will jump off of cable and head to the streaming service for a decade. Per the deal, starting in January 2025, Netflix will be the exclusive home of Raw in the U.S., Canada, U.K., Latin America, and other territories in that time frame. Outside the U.S., it will also carry weekly WWE titles like SmackDown and NXT (which run on Peacock domestically) and will feature other WWE specials and premium events.
This is a big deal for a few different reasons. For Netflix, it’s a step into live programming for a streamer whose track record with it has been spotty despite forays into livestreaming comedy specials and Love Is Blind reunion events. The chaos of Raw will demand consistency from Netflix: It runs 52 weeks of the year and is currently the USA Network’s biggest show, raking in 17.5 million unique, rabidly loyal viewers a year. As CNBC’s Alex Sherman notes, it will also allow Netflix to exploit the WWE’s intellectual property, just like it has done with Formula 1: Drive to Survive and other sports titles. For WWE parent TKO Group Holdings, it’s a long-term payday and exposure to the biggest audience in paid streaming, and the news was also timed with an announcement that Dwayne Johnson would join TKO’s board of directors; share prices spiked 20 percent this morning.
For Peacock, it probably looks like trouble. Netflix’s competitor is the current streaming home of the WWE Network and WrestleMania domestically, but as Andrew Marchand, the New York Post’s streaming columnist, points out, that deal’s good only through March 2026. At that point, WWE could take them to its newer livestreaming partner that’s conveniently already carrying those titles internationally, assuming the price is right. (For what it’s worth, fans who don’t want to split their wrestling between two paid services would probably prefer that, too.)
At one point, the idea that Netflix could be a live-programming company felt about as crazy as Netflix having ads, but it’s just another way the arc of the streaming universe seems to bend toward cable. (Netflix sees the advertising potential of WWE shows as much as it does any potential subscriber gains.) In the meantime, for Raw’s legions of fans, hopefully Netflix has some good error messages at the ready, just in case.