Netflix and WWE Are Gearing Up for World Domination

Anyone who watched the Jake Paul-Mike Tyson fight would be forgiven for questioning whether Netflix is equipped to broadcast live combat sports without technical glitches. But on Monday, January 6, the streaming service will broadcast another fight-filled evening that’s even more important to its future in the live entertainment space. And then it will do it again every Monday for the next 10 years.

When “Monday Night Raw,” WWE‘s flagship wrestling program and America’s longest-running weekly episodic TV show, streams live from the Intuit Dome in Los Angeles, Netflix’s $10 billion partnership with WWE will officially be underway. Interest in the broadcast is likely to be high, and the prospect of more technical difficulties loomed over a private kick-off event hosted by the two companies in Los Angeles on Tuesday. But while Netflix and WWE executives acknowledged that the service is still working out the kinks of live broadcasting, they emphasized that the opportunity to reach more wrestling fans made the prospect of glitches an easy trade-off to make.

“I’ll just say that if it blinks a couple of times and we do 60 million, I’m good with that,” WWE Chief Content Officer Paul “Triple H” Levesque said, referencing the number of users that streamed the Paul-Tyson fight.

Levesque, who serves as a default showrunner for the company’s entire slate of scripted matches and promos, has overseen an artistic renaissance at WWE since assuming creative control in 2022. His optimism about the company’s future was echoed by his fellow panelists including WWE president Nick Khan, Netflix Chief Content Officer Bela Bajaria, and Netflix VP of nonfiction series and comedy specials Brandon Riegg.

In January 2024, the two companies struck a deal to move “Monday Night Raw” from its current home on USA Network to Netflix through 2035. Netflix is paying $500 million a year for the show, with an option to extend the deal for another 10 years at the same price. (WWE’s “Friday Night Smackdown,” will remain on USA for the time being.) WWE’s Premium Live Events (formerly known as pay-per-views) like “WrestleMania” and “SummerSlam” will also be broadcast on Netflix internationally, though they will continue to stream exclusively on Peacock in America. In 2021, NBCUniversal acquired the exclusive rights to WWE Network and folded it into Peacock for a reported price of $1 billion over five years.

While much of the buzz from American pro-wrestling fans has naturally centered around “Raw” moving to Netflix, as that will be the only change to their viewing habits, executives from both companies stressed that this deal will allow WWE to become a truly global entertainment brand. The same company that gobbled up virtually every American wrestling territory during Vince McMahon’s aggressive expansion throughout the 1980s could repeat the phenomenon on a global scale with the access that Netflix provides. (Levesque is McMahon’s real-life son-in-law, married to Stephanie McMahon.) The origins of the deal date back nearly 10 years, when WWE began winding down agreements with international broadcast partners with the hope of uniting all of its rights under a single streaming umbrella.

“In my prior life as an agent, I had the good fortune of being one of the people who helped WWE sell their media rights,” Khan said, recalling early conversations he had with Riegg as early as 2018 about what a potential Netflix deal might look like while he ran CAA’s TV department. “He said ‘You gotta help WWE line up their international rights.’ Because if we ever get into live, the notion of ‘Netflix Gets Into Live with WWE in Tunisia’ is not going to get the kind of press that Netflix and WWE wants.” 

With Netflix providing increased international exposure, WWE hopes to seize the moment and turn its wrestling offerings into a truly global product. The company has begun holding more of its PLEs in European markets and plans to take “Monday Night Raw” on a months-long European tour in early 2025. (WWE also entered a controversial ten-year partnership with Saudi Arabia in 2018 and hosts two PLEs per year there.) “We know we can’t just be an American company piping out American content hoping people will tune in,” Khan said.

In addition to promoting more matches in foreign markets, WWE is expanding its international recruitment effort with the hope of finding homegrown wrestlers who can open up new markets organically.

“We call it the Yao Ming effect. If you ask people in China what is their favorite NBA team now, it’s still the Houston Rockets because of Yao Ming,” Khan said. “[We’re looking for] the Manny Pacquios of the world, the Yao Mings of the world… with Netflix giving us this global presence, who knows if there’s some 15-year-old kid right now watching saying ‘Hey, I want to do this.’ With our enhanced recruiting effort led by Paul, who knows where the next one is going to come from.” 

In the immediate future, Netflix hopes to appease wrestling fans by offering them more of the same. The first show on Netflix will feature a murderer’s row of the company’s biggest stars including John Cena, CM Punk, and current champions Cody Rhodes and Liv Morgan. Levesque noted that he is still working out the details of how the show’s format will evolve without the time constraints of linear television, but he shot down rumors that “Monday Night Raw” would become more, well, raw once he’s free of network censors. Levesque confirmed that the show will maintain its TV-PG rating, and current restrictions on profanity and blood will remain in place.

While the initial rollout will focus on ensuring that longtime WWE fans continue to receive the show they’ve come to expect without interruption, Levesque noted that Netflix affords him the opportunity to take stories in new directions down the road.

“I think what’s really cool about this is the openness of the platform,” Levesque said, explaining that there could be room to expand WWE’s programming with new documentaries and unscripted offerings on Netflix. “What WWE brings to the table is this platform that can build massive IP with a huge following. And now we have the ability to capitalize that any way we want to on a platform that is willing to go in any direction it takes.” 

As a legendary wrestler in his own right, Levesque has watched the business evolve through some of its darkest and most triumphant eras. He noted that golden ages of wrestling aren’t easily identified until they’re completed, but expressed his belief that WWE’s next chapter could go down in history as its biggest one yet.

“I was in the Attitude Era at the peak of it. We didn’t realize what it was in the moment. Having seen that, I see this as way bigger,” Levesque said. “At the end of this, I think we’ll be calling it the Netflix Era.”