FOX, MLB, and WWE Television Deals Update

As noted before, FOX will become the new home of SmackDown starting in October 2019 and due to FOX’s current license with MLB, there could be rare instances of scheduling conflicts on Fridays resulting in SmackDown being moved to Fox Sports 1 instead of FOX during those weeks.

FOX Sports and Major League Baseball recently agreed to a seven year television contract extension, which would officially go into effect starting in 2022 and is reportedly worth an additional $5 billion. As part of the new extension, FOX will be airing more regular season and playoff games while retaining their current broadcasting rights for the All-Star Game, LCS, and World Series.

In regards to SmackDown’s value on Fridays for FOX, the Wrestling Observer’s Dave Meltzer reported that FOX averaged 3,845,000 viewers (11/2) and 4,113,000 viewers (11/9) so far this month for the Friday time slot SmackDown will be occupying. Meltzer said that he believes SmackDown would likely need to be in the range of five to six million viewers in order for FOX to get their money’s worth due to wrestling ratings traditionally being less valuable to advertisers. Meltzer also said that there will be times when SmackDown may perform better than FOX’s regular programming due to its nature as a 52-week show and FOX having down months during the year when they aren’t airing first-run episodes.