Months of speculation ended Tuesday as WWE announced that its flagship show, RAW, would begin airing on Netflix in 2025. It’s the first time in the company’s history that RAW won’t be shown on linear television.
“Beginning in January 2025,” WWE said in a press release, “Netflix will be the exclusive new home of Raw in the U.S., Canada, U.K. and Latin America, among other territories, with additional countries and regions to be added over time. Likewise, as part of the agreement, Netflix will also become the home for all WWE shows and specials outside the U.S. as available, inclusive of Raw and WWE’s other weekly shows – SmackDown and NXT – as well as the company’s Premium Live Events, including WrestleMania, SummerSlam and Royal Rumble. WWE’s award-winning documentaries, original series and forthcoming projects will also be available on Netflix internationally beginning in 2025.”
According to Variety, the deal between WWE and Netflix is ten years long and worth $500 million per year. After five years, Netflix can either opt out or extended the deal for another 10 years. It’s an interesting move for WWE, but not entirely unheralded.
WWE has been slowly moving in the direction of streamers for a few years. In 2015, the WWE Network launched in the US. People who subscribed for the low price of only $9.99 got not only a whole bunch of back catalog material but all the pay-per-view events including WrestleMania. Then, in 2021, the WWE Network moved to the NBCUniversal-owned streaming platform, Peacock. Fans were required to sign up to Peacock to access all WWE Network material, including PLEs (Premium Live Events, the new name for WWE’s pay-per-views).
For now, in the US, you’ll have to subscribe to Netflix if you want to watch Cody finish the story or see R-Truth live, laugh, and love his way through three hours of wrestling. People in other territories, such as Canada and Latin America, will get the whole WWE package exclusively on Netflix.
Without the limitations of normal broadcast television, WWE has the opportunity to make RAW a more adult product. Odds are, they won’t. With RAW, WWE provides three hours of family-friendly sports entertainment. That has become the company’s hallmark and main marching order. Don’t look for that to change when RAW goes to Netflix. WWE knows both its audience and its stockholders. Turning RAW into Lucha Underground would not be what’s best for business.
What may be unclear when RAW makes the leap to Netflix is how the ratings will be handled. Netflix gauges the success of its programming in two different ways. One metric is views, which consists of the hours a program is viewed divided by the program’s total run time. Netflix also uses hours watched as a metric to determine which programs stand or fall. The more time viewers spend engaged with a program, the more successful the program is.
Barring the debut of similar live programming, RAW will be the first live weekly series Netflix has presented. How the ratings for RAW, once it is live and streaming, will be determined could be an area to watch. On linear television, wrestling ratings are measured almost down to minutiae. There are charts for quarter-hours, demographics, full episodes, the works. Comparing wrestling shows, such as the ongoing battle between All Elite Wrestling and WWE programming, may take on a new dimension. With big shows on two different broadcast platforms, possibly using different methods for determining success, the ratings war between wrestling companies could very well become irrelevant.
Streaming may be the new frontier for the wrestling business. WWE has led the way in that area, going from its proprietary platform before making its way to other, larger outlets. New Japan Pro Wrestling and TNA have established streaming networks. All Elite Wrestling’s Tony Khan has expressed interest in streaming AEW programming on the Warner Bros. Discovery-owned platform, MAX. Speculation abounds, but taken all together, the information and rumblings from beneath the ring indicate a paradigm shift is on the way.
There’s an old wrestling adage that says, “Nothing matters but the money and the miles.” If streaming platforms become the accepted home of televised professional wrestling, that saying could be changed to “Nothing matters but the money and the metrics.”
