On Tuesday, WWE announced a 10-year, $5 billion deal to make Netflix the home of WWE Raw beginning in 2025.
With that in mind, let’s look at the winners and losers from the landmark agreement, which could prove transformative for not just WWE and Netflix but the future of live programming rights.
Winners: WWE and Netflix
Let’s start with the obvious. While time will tell how this deal plays out for both sides, it appears to be a win for both WWE and Netflix.
For WWE, the $5 billion price tag aligns with the market’s expectation for the Raw rights. And if anything, the addition of a partnership with Netflix has only increased the value of the deal for WWE, with parent company TKO Group Holding’s stock jumping from $77.41 on Monday to $95.42 on Tuesday morning (it sits at just under $89 a share as of Wednesday afternoon).
As for Netflix, the deal with WWE announces the streaming giant as a legitimate player in live programming rights. The agreement also affords Netflix plenty of flexibility, with the streamer reportedly having the ability to terminate the deal after five years or extend it to 20 years.
Of course, plenty can change throughout the deal, regardless of how long it winds up lasting. But if Wall Street is any indication — Netflix’s stock has jumped by more than 10 percent since the deal was first announced — it appears to be a win-win, at least initially.
Loser: Amazon
While Netflix had routinely been mentioned as a contender for the Raw rights, Tuesday’s announcement surprised many. That’s because during the ongoing negotiations for WWE’s flagship show, another streamer, Amazon’s Prime Video, had largely been considered the frontrunner.
Already laying claim to the NFL’s Thursday Night Football, adding Raw would have established Prime Video as the leader in live streaming rights. Instead, not only did Amazon not do that, but it also allowed its rival, Netflix, to make its most drastic leap into live programming.
To be clear, Amazon will be just fine, and no one is crying for Jeff Bezos. But when it comes to the ongoing streaming wars, this deal only further cements Netflix’s status as the industry leader.
Winner: All Elite Wrestling
Yes, you read that right.
While there’s no debating WWE’s status as the No. 1 wrestling promotion in the world (and the Netflix deal will only widen that gap), Raw landing with the streamer is ultimately a net positive for AEW. That’s because, besides Amazon, Disney, and Netflix, Warner Bros. Discovery had been considered a contender to land the longest-running weekly episodic television show.
WBD has been AEW’s television home since the company’s launch in 2019 and currently airs three of the promotion’s weekly shows. Had WBD landed Raw, it would have left AEW without an obvious landing spot when its television rights deal expires at the end of 2024.
Instead, assuming WBD wants to stay in the wrestling business (and there’s no reason to think it doesn’t), all signs point to the company coming to terms with AEW on a new deal by the end of this year. How big that deal will be is a different story. But it’s hard to view Raw‘s landing spot as anything but good news for the future of Tony Khan’s company.
Loser: Future WWE
The good news for WWE is that its primary source of income is guaranteed for at least the next five years. And as we saw during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, that’s certainly significant.
Making such a deal, however, comes with a tradeoff, and in this instance, it could prove sizable. While a five-year deal is fairly standard for WWE, a 10-year deal could ultimately wind up being a steal for Netflix — let alone what WWE might be giving up if the streamer opts to extend the deal to 20 years.
While WWE will be just fine collecting a massive paycheck for the next five-to-20 years, it’s also potentially passing up even bigger money in the long term.
Winner: The wrestlers
Let’s go back to AEW for a minute.
While Raw landing on WBD wouldn’t have killed the No. 2 promotion, it’s tough to overstate how big of a hit it would have been. Even with the premium placed on live television rights, AEW likely would have been forced to partner with a lesser network or take less money elsewhere on its next rights deal.
There’s nobody a healthy AEW is more important to than the wrestlers, whether they’re currently in AEW, WWE or elsewhere. That’s because a legitimate wrestling war leaves wrestlers with more options and negotiating leverage than they had between WCW’s demise in 2001 and AEW’s launch 18 years later.
Again, whether AEW will re-sign with WBD remains to be seen and, if so, what that deal will look like. But if nothing else, that option remains a possibility- the best choice for AEW’s viability.
Losers: The wrestling media
This isn’t to discredit those in the wrestling media, many of whom do a great job. However, those who spend their Tuesday afternoons waiting with bated breath for the Raw ratings are in for a change of pace.
While Netflix has an agreement with Nielsen to help track viewing habits, it’s safe to say that the success of Raw on Netflix won’t be measured via traditional ratings every week. Instead, one would imagine that Netflix will be taking more of a big-picture approach to Raw, not only focusing on who’s watching it live but also the subscriptions the show helps sell, among other factors.
The online discourse regarding wrestling ratings had lost much of its luster in recent years before the industry’s premier show landed on a streamer. But while wrestling reporters will need to find a new talking point each Tuesday, eliminating the weekly Raw ratings talk should be nothing but a positive for Dave Meltzer’s social media mentions.
