Shapiro’s insight into the WWE-Netflix deal.
Beginning January 2025, WWE Raw is going to stream exclusively on Netflix. The deal was formally announced in January 2024.
Both WWE and UFC are under the TKO Group Holdings banner and TKO/Endeavor President Mark Shapiro spoke about the aforementioned deal. He guest appeared on The Main Event with Andrew Marchand and stated that WWE on Netflix was not easy to get done.
He said it took a lot of convincing for Netflix to go all in. Shapiro, TKO/Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel and Netflix’s Chief Content Officer had to sell Netflix’s CEO and C.F.O. on the idea.
No, I don’t think they’re jumping into that any time quick (Shapiro responded to the question of if he thinks Netflix will bring more live sports into their portfolio) and I will tell ya, this (WWE on Netflix) wasn’t an easy deal. Ted Sarandos is amazing and just an incredible track record of success and frankly, driving change in the business along with Reed (Hastings) and you know, Bela (Bajaria) has just completely reorganized the content team there. Showing the willingness to take chances and big swings and not afraid of risks and has a $17 billion dollar budget behind her. So, they’re in it. If they think there’s something out there, premium, that’s going to bring in subs and keep subs and allow them to raise prices and sell advertising, they’ll jump in so in that respect, if sports is going to do it at a reasonable price, they’ll do it. But there’s no behind the scenes strategy. Wink, wink — we’re getting into WWE which is close to sports and then we’ll get some NFL games and then we’ll really open up the floodgates. It took ‘em a lot of convincing by Bela and Ari (Emanuel) and me to Ted directly and Spencer Neumann, the C.F.O., to get them all in on the WWE and then they took a shot. But guess what? They drove a hard bargain, they were terrific negotiators. The devil’s in the details and there are a lot of details and they held their ground and I think they got a great deal for themselves as well.
On September 25th, Netflix is going to be rolling out a docuseries about former WWE CEO, Vince McMahon.
McMahon is in the midst of a sex trafficking lawsuit that was filed by former WWE employee Janel Grant. Grant nor her team were interviewed for the docuseries.
If the quote in this article is used, please credit The Main Event with Andrew Marchand with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcription.
