WWE’s massive Netflix deal could change the world of live sports streaming

WWE’s Monday Night Raw has a new home for live shows: Netflix.

The streaming titan has come to a deal with the WWE to begin producing the live episodes of Monday Night Raw beginning in 2025. The deal is ginormous, with reports topping it out at $500 million each year for 10 years. Variety reports that Monday Night Raw is current valued at about $250-$260 million per year, a massive jump to where Netflix bought the production. Netflix will stream Raw in the US, UK, Canada and Latin America.

This isn’t the first time Netflix has gotten into the live streaming game. In March 2023, Chris Rock’s comedy special “Selective Outrage” was streamed live on Netflix. In addition, a “Love Is Blind” reunion in April was produced live, which came with a bug that prevented people from watching until more than an hour after the scheduled time.

Since then, Netflix has live streamed the Screen Actors’ Guild Awards and a cross-promotional golf match between golfers from the show “Full Swing” and F1 drivers from the hit show “F1: Drive To Survive”. This will be an entirely different beast though, with Monday Night Raw being live every Monday. It’s an unprecedented endeavor for Netflix, so seeing how it unfolds will be critical in 2025.

The reactions to the deal are on both sides of the spectrum, with some pleasantly surprised by the deal with others questioning Netflix’s ability to produce livestreams. The technical difficulties are going to probably be an issue to start, but with the ability to also have exclusive WWE content on Netflix, it could be beneficial. Now just don’t hike up the subscription price please?

Most fascinating part of that Netflix deal for me. Netflix can opt out of this deal after 5 years, and has a TEAM OPTION for another 10 years!

Although A LOT can happen in 5 months, let alone 5 years, the prospect of WWE on Netflix as a potential 20-year partnership is nuts pic.twitter.com/7ZWY2G0wlT

— Jeff J. (@JeffJSays) January 23, 2024

Netflix isn’t allowed to give WWE $5 billion while they pretend they don’t have the money for more seasons of Mindhunter

— Ross W Berman IV (Unrated Director’s Cut) (@RossWBermanIV) January 23, 2024

Overall, this is a huge move for the WWE and the future of streaming. Getting $5 billion over 10 years is a massive deal, and with the potential to eventually bring WWE documentaries and other live shows like NXT and Smackdown to Netflix, the WWE could boom on the streaming titan. However, cable is slowly becoming impossible to keep, and with streaming conglomerates spending big dollars to buy rights to production, it’ll get crazy for cable very soon, if it hasn’t already.