More on WWE’s New RAW TV Deal with Netflix – Wall Street Reaction, Ad Breaks, Airing Status for Oct. 2024 to Jan. 2025, Ari Emanuel & Netflix CEO on New Deal

As noted before, WWE announced on Tuesday that they recently signed a new television and media rights deal with Netflix for their WWE RAW series starting in January of 2025.

The stock market’s reaction over the new was very positive with TKO Group’s stock closing Monday’s regular trading hours at $89.33 per share, up $12.11 (15.77%), and at $90 per share for after hours trading. Endeavor’s stocks also saw a positive gain albeit at a much smaller level closing Monday’s regular trading at $25.39 per share, up $0.79 (3.21%) and no gain for after hours trading.

In regards to Netflix, their stocks closed regular trading at $492.19 per share, up $6.48 (1.33%) and at $534.80 per share for after hours trading.

In regards to the status of ads during RAW shows on Netflix, CNBC’s Alex Sherman reported that his sources stated that subscribers to Netflix’s ad free tier will be able to watch RAW shows without ads during commercial break moments. Sherman reported that one source spoken to stated that matches on RAW will be scripted around ad breaks and will focus mainly on non-important match action such as sustained headlock holds being shown during ad breaks for ad-free viewers.

In regards to WWE’s talks with Netflix, Dave Meltzer reported in a special preview edition of this week’s Wrestling Observer Newsletter that those spoken to close to the situation stated that while WWE had talked with other potential interested bidders, they viewed Netflix as their top choice for a new deal.

In regards to the WWE Network, Meltzer reported that WWE’s new deal with Netflix being an all encompassing deal for their programming over time does leave the question of the future of the WWE Network being uncertain. Meltzer reported that it is currently not known if WWE Network will be incorporated into Netflix or kept as a separate thing once WWE’s current deal with Peacock expires.

Meltzer also reported that RAW’s broadcast status for the period of October 2024 to January 2025 is currently not known due to that period being the gap in time from the end of WWE’s current TV deal with USA Network to the start of their new deal with Netflix.

In a recent interview with CNBC, Endeavor and TKO CEO Ari Emanuel gave his thoughts about WWE’s new deal with Netflix.

“All I can say is that we are in line with the market expectations and where our step up would be. The only other thing I would say is it’s Netflix. They’re the global leader. They’re the best company with regard to sports entertainment whether they’ve done it with Formula One or Tour De France, this is the next iteration as they go to live and moving into live. This is an important step for them in their SVOD and subscription service and live is important for them. The word Netflix is important for this. Ten year deal, with Raw, it’s a big deal.”

Emanuel also gave his thoughts about Netflix entering the live sports market.

“We just saw, two weekends ago on Peacock, how big football played. 27 million people. I don’t think linear is going away, I don’t think cable is going away, but there is a push to streaming. On this deal, we did that early on with the UFC on ESPN and ESPN Plus. From our perspective, this is the next iteration of where this goes. We have a linear play with SmackDown and NXT. This is the streaming play. For us, it was the next step. It’s a great deal for Netflix, in our opinion. They get 150 hours of programming over $5 billion dollars. It’s like two and a half movies for 150. For us, it’s the global player in streaming. It’s a great deal.”

In an fiscal fourth quarter 2023 earnings call meeting on Monday, Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos gave his thoughts about their new media rights deal with WWE for RAW.

“We are thrilled to bring WWE live programming to our members around the world. WWE Raw is sports entertainment, which is right in the sweet spot of our sports business, which is the drama of sport. Think of this as 52 weeks of live programming every week, every year. It feeds our desire to expand our live event programming. Most importantly, fans love it. For decades, WWE has grown this multi-generational fanbase that we believe we can serve and we can grow. We believe WWE has been historically under distributed outside of North America, and this is a global deal. We can help them, and they can help us build that fandom around the world. This should also add some fuel to our new and growing ad business.”

Sarandos also gave his thoughts about how WWE fits in their $17 billion spending spree for live sports programming for the service.

“Expanding the live event programming is something we’ve talked about for a while and this has been in the works. This fits inside our $17 billion programming spending. In terms of building on it, you should think of Formula One, this is almost the inverse of Formula One, which is a very big and passionate US fanbase and a lot of room to grow outside of the US. We can build that, as we have with Formula One and other sports, through our shoulder programming like Drive to Survive, Full Swing, Break Point, and Quarterbacks. The events itself are the storytelling in WWE. This is a proven formula for us and we’re excited to jump into. This is sports entertainment, very close to our core, the deal is long-term, we’re super excited about it.”

Transcript h/t: Fightful.com 1 & 2