WWE’s live international broadcast from Saudi Arabia hit a half-hour delay over power outage

While tape delays have often worked very poorly for live sports, wrestling has found more success with that approach. And a U.S. tape delay of a special episode of WWE Smackdown Friday may have worked out quite well for the promotion and Netflix. WWE and the streamer hit major technical issues at their live event in Saudi Arabia Friday (ahead of Saturday’s Night of Champions PPV). That event was being broadcast live in many international markets, but the U.S. broadcast at 8 p.m. ET should go forward without that. Here’s some of what went on during that stall:

Randy Orton did yeeting with the live crowd while the feed has been down for Netflix international viewers. #WWE #Smackdown pic.twitter.com/hXFmjLzcHe

— NoDQ.com: WWE and AEW news (@nodqdotcom) June 27, 2025

As Sean Reuter wrote at SB Nation’s Cageside Seats (warning: that post has spoilers for those not wishing to learn the outcomes of matches until they air in the U.S.), the outage lasted around 30 minutes:

“We’ll be right back” messages have been looping in multiple languages for the past ten minutes…

We’re at about 25 minutes and counting. A rumor online is that a “camel munched a cord”. Clips posted from inside the arena make it seem like there are power or production issues in the building as well.

Fightful’s Sean Ross Sapp noted that this was a power issue:

A power outage at the venue caused issues with Gorilla position and the control room for WWE Smackdown, which led to the disruption for the show.

— Sean Ross Sapp of Fightful.com (@SeanRossSapp) June 27, 2025

Those outages certainly happen at times across sports. Sometimes, they even happen in the Super Bowl. But this one is particularly interesting for the tape delay actually creating a smoother broadcast for the U.S. audience than happened with the live broadcast for international viewers. Somewhere, the architects of NBC’s much-hated past Olympics tape delay approach are raising a toast…