The move of Monday Night Raw from USA Network to Netflix earlier this year was transformational for the streamer and the U.S. live sports marketplace.
One quieter element of the partnership may be paying greater dividends for Netflix.
In an appearance on The Town podcast this week, Netflix chief content officer Bela Bajaria revealed that the streamer is seeing particularly strong WWE viewership numbers overseas. Based on the agreement the two companies struck, we can assume that is because those users get just about all their WWE content in one place now—Netflix.
As part of the landmark agreement for Raw to air on Netflix for American wrestling fans, the deal also shut down the WWE Network worldwide. In many countries—though notably not the U.S., where PLEs stream on Peacock and Smackdown airs on Fox—Smackdown and WWE premier live events (PLEs) now air on Netflix alongside Raw. That includes places like Brazil, Spain, and Thailand.
In those regions, Bajaria said the Raw numbers are even more promising.
“I think what’s been really great to see is that I’d say the viewing outside of the U.S. is really interesting,” Bajaria said. “Because we have Royal Rumble, we have all of the other pieces of WWE outside (the U.S.). And I think audiences and (subscribers) outside of the U.S. having it all there, in all of those countries, in one place and easy access to watch it, to watch it live, to also watch it (on-demand), it’s just been great.”
When Netflix releases WWE viewership, it announces the countries where events reach the Top 10. The most recent episode of Raw was charted in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Bolivia, per Wrestling News Source. Each of these countries can access the full WWE slate on Netflix.
In the future, countries like India are expected to port their content from platforms like Disney+ Hotstar to Netflix. When the streamer says it has a global reach and focuses on worldwide events, this is what it means.
About Brendon Kleen
Brendon is a Media Commentary staff writer at Awful Announcing. He has also covered basketball and sports business at Front Office Sports, SB Nation, Uproxx and more.