As WWE marches on following a richly successful weekend in Chicago, two of the company’s most visible figureheads reportedly were thinking ahead on Monday night.
While ‘Monday Night Raw’ emanated from Nashville, Tennessee’s Bridgestone Arena, Nick Khan and Paul ‘Triple H’ Levesque were not at the show, according to a PWInsider report. Instead, the two WWE executives were in Los Angeles making overtures on the show’s media rights deal.
It’s been a very busy year for the company. WWE sold to Endeavor Media earlier this spring, with the announcement coming amid the festivities of WrestleMania 39 weekend. Then, later in the year, WWE announced that Smackdown would return to the USA Network. The show currently airs on Fox and is teed up until October 2024.
Additionally, NXT was announced as heading to The CW as the network looks to extend its sports portfolio.
So, Raw is the only show currently without a home.
There are rumored to be plenty of suitors for the show. Khan has stressed flexibility for the show, which has aired on Monday nights since 1993. There seems to be a prevailing thought that the bidders involved are Amazon, Disney, NBC Universal, and Warner Bros. Discovery.
All of them offer intriguing possibilities. Amazon would be a different experience for WWE, as they’ve had their own streaming service or adjacent since 2014. Pushing off its flagship show to another streamer would be an intriguing move not just for convenience’s sake but financially as well. Streaming might be all the rage, but there’s a lot of ad revenue left on the table from the traditional cable networks. Raw has been a three-hour show for the last decade, so they’ve probably been pretty comfortable pulling in the money that comes with that. Meanwhile, a move to Disney would likely mean landing on FX. Or, they could just end up putting all their ducks in a row with NBC Universal, as they’ll already house Smackdown starting next year and their Premium Live Events.
WBD provides the most fascinating opportunity, if nothing else, because of who occupies that space. All Elite Wrestling has made its home on TNT and TBS since 2019. Their media rights are also up for renewal. There doesn’t appear to be much inching there, even amid occasional reports of interactions. So would WBD spurn AEW for WWE? If WBD felt unsatisfied with what AEW brings to the table, then anything’s possible in this wacky world of television media rights. AEW’s ratings have fallen year-over-year, and its Collision effort has all but sputtered not to mention the fact that David Zaslav may see CM Punk across the way now, too.
Another way of thinking about their involvement is that they may drive the price up on the rights or try to get AEW to squeeze down. This theory is workable, considering that WBD still has much on its plate. They have NBA rights due and made a move for mid-season NASCAR races this week. But you can’t imagine they would have both. Not with how strapped they’ll be. So if that does happen, things could potentially become awkward.
Nowadays, it seems like there are a lot of eyes on WWE. The action doesn’t appear to be confined only between the ropes.
