As noted earlier this morning, WWE announced a new deal with Netflix that will bring its flagship program Raw to the streaming giant beginning in 2025.
Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos has since commented on the deal on today’s quarterly earnings call. He says that Netflix is thrilled to present Raw to its members, and reminds his investors that Raw will air to its audience internationally as well.
We are thrilled to bring WWE live programming to our members around the world. WWE Raw is sports entertainment, which is right in the sweet spot of our sports business, which is the drama of sport. Think of this as 52 weeks of live programming every week, every year. It feeds our desire to expand our live event programming. Most importantly, fans love it. For decades, WWE has grown this multi-generational fanbase that we believe we can serve and we can grow. We believe WWE has been historically under distributed outside of North America, and this is a global deal. We can help them, and they can help us build that fandom around the world. This should also add some fuel to our new and growing ad business.
The WWE and Netflix deal is wroth $5 billion for the next ten years, with Netflix having the option to extend another five years or opt out after five years. You can check out Sarandos’s full interview below.
(H/T and transcribed by Fightful)