WWE Thinks Raw & Smackdown Rights Might Go To Netflix Or Other Streaming Service
WWE hosted its latest quarterly earnings presentation on Tuesday morning, hosted by Stephanie McMahon, Nick Khan, Paul "Triple H" Levesque and Frank Riddick. The presentation included McMahon celebrating the improved viewership for the past quarter's premium live events compared to the previous year as well as the improved viewership for Monday Night Raw. Khan then brought up the upcoming television rights renewals for both Raw and SmackDown, which are currently partnered with NBCUniversal and FOX respectively. Khan claimed that the group of potential bidders for the two shows has gotten even more crowded since the last round of negotiations and once again brought up Netflix as a potential bidder.
"On Netflix, we've been saying on these calls for many months that we believe Netflix is looking to enter the live space. We got confirmation of that this past quarter when Netflix made a bid for the rights for Formula 1. We believe Netflix's appetite for live (programming) will only increase after the introduction of their ad tier. As we all know, the strongest CPMs are those sold against live programming," Khan said.
The market is even more crowded for live. Nick talks about deep-pocketed tech players joining the market. Nick believes Netflix will become more interested live when they introduce their ad tier.
— Brandon Thurston (@BrandonThurston) August 16, 2022
Big increase for F1. NFL Sunday Ticket is expected to go to streaming player.
Khan also mentioned bids for live programming being made by Alphabet Inc. (Google's parent company) and Apple over the past year. He also speculated that NFL Sunday Ticket will be heading to a streaming service. Do you think Netflix could land either Raw or SmackDown? Let us know down in the comments!
This story is developing...