Ethan Rauch

In a recent announcement, WWE, the top American professional wrestling promotor, has agreed to terms on a new streaming deal with Netflix.

Whether or not you’re a fan of professional wrestling or WWE, even if you’re just a casual sports fan of leagues such as the NHL, NBA, MLB, and MLS, this ordeal could have major implications on the future of how you’re able to watch any sport that captures your interest. It is the representation of a trend that’s been taking place over the past few years, with more and more of these professional sports leagues agreeing to deals that have them strictly broadcasting some of, if not all their games on streaming services, moving away from standard cable television.

The deal between WWE and Netflix, as explained extensively The New York Times, is worth more than $5 billion, and extends for at least a ten-year period starting in 2025.

Netflix is to soon become the prominent home to WWE’s extensive historical catalog of content, while also airing live the WWE’s premiere flagship show of Monday Night RAW each week. 

In addition to airing Monday Night RAW live on its platform in territories like the United States, Britain, and Canada, an article published by Reuters expresses that fans outside of these regions of reach will also have access to live airings of other WWE shows and specials, such as Friday Night Smackdown and Tuesday Night NXT, and the Premium Live Events WWE typically holds once or twice a month.

In a major move within the sports entertainment media world, Monday Night RAW (which has been airing on network television for over 30 years with well over 1,500 episodes to date) is moving off cable TV for the first time in history. 

This isn’t the first time in recent years that some form of major sport entertainment has been essentially “bought out” by a major streaming company. Although this particular deal doesn’t affect local fans of Philadelphia’s sports teams, Amazon recently partnered up with the recently-declared bankrupt media company of Bally Sports, reaching a deal that could someday see all teams covered by Bally Sports having their local broadcasts be presented on the Amazon Prime Video service–with location proximity still a limiting factor on exactly what kinds of teams one may have access to.

ESPN’s Alden Gonzalez explains the more in-depth details of this deal, with an analytical and knowledgeable perspective on how this deal could eventually shape out.

In his article, Gonzalez notes that while Amazon’s streaming service of Amazon Prime could one day play host to a plethora of teams within not just MLB, but also the NHL and NBA as well, there are some apparent road-blocks in the way that still need to be addressed before anything becomes concrete and settled.

To quote Gonzalez specifically, this deal between Amazon and Bally Sports, “has the potential to undo previous agreements the leagues had negotiated with [Bally Sports’ parent company] Diamond. Last fall, Diamond secured wind-down plans with the NBA and the NHL in which it would broadcast the teams in its portfolio for the 2023-24 seasons, then revert the rights back to those leagues. MLB had the framework in place for a similar deal. This Amazon arrangement could change everything. Attorneys for the NBA and MLB said in court Wednesday that they still had a lot to digest.”

Gonzalez goes on to emphasize that, “the agreement, if it is ultimately approved by a federal bankruptcy judge, could supersede the prior deals, which were seen by Diamond executives as something of a placeholder while the company ironed out a set restructuring plan.”

For those interested to learn more, you can find Gonzalez’s article here.

Moving onward, it was earlier last year as well that the multinational technology company, Apple, reached a deal with the MLS (Major League Soccer) to become the league’s primary streaming platform for all of its teams. Their deal, as it is explained in  this article written by Joe Reedy and published to the APNews site, was structured in a way that removed the blackout aspect (that many, if not all of the professional sports leagues in North America have instituted), allowing fans from any place both in the United States and out to access any game at their leisure.

Another prominent sports league, Major League Baseball, has also teamed up with a variety of social media and streaming platforms in the past couple of years to deliver a small number of their games each season on those specific platforms. Before the 2022 season, deals were negotiated with both Apple and NBC/Peacock that ultimately resulted in, throughout the league, two seemingly random Friday games a week being presented strictly on the AppleTV streaming platform, and even fewer games on various Sundays throughout the season being presented strictly on the Peacock streaming platform. MLB’s deal with Peacock has since expired, but it was a large focal point of conversation at the time of its establishment.

In addition to all of this, the NFL (National Football League), prior to the 2021-2022 season, negotiated an 11-years media rights deal with Amazon that eventually saw Thursday Night Football being platformed strictly on the Amazon’s streaming service of Prime Video.

Considering all of these developments in the streaming and sports entertainment world that have taken place in just the past few years, it might not be all that surprising to see that the WWE has joined in the fray. World Wrestling Entertainment, known prominently as WWE, has been connected to streaming ever since 2015, which was when they announced the launch of the first WWE-focused streaming service: the WWE Network. And for a period of six years, WWE held their premium live events off of the service, while also offering thousands of hours of historical content produced by the company over the years for easy access to all.

In April 2021, WWE negotiated a deal with NBC/Peacock that saw the Peacock streaming platform become the new host for WWE’s content in the United States and a few other regional areas. But with the means in which this new Netflix deal has come along, it appears that there is a strong possibility of WWE’s relationship with Peacock ending (at-least temporarily) once their deal expires in 2026.

Fans of WWE and their flagship show of Monday Night RAW will have to be looking to Netflix starting in 2025 to watch their favorite wrestling show, and we’ve been seeing other developments in different sports that have more and more leagues airing a select number of their games strictly on specific streaming platforms. It’s a trend that could continue in the years to come, and is something that WWE fans, and fans of more competitively known sports, should be aware of for the future: as people weigh the decisions for which services they wish to pay for, with the consideration of what sports may one day be intricately and strictly connected to them.