Photo: Afghan National Police
Netflix has bought the rights to the popular wrestling show. Starting next year, the streaming platform will have exclusive rights to broadcast World Wrestling Entertainment's (WWE) live Raw event for ten years. Bloomberg News reported, based on informed sources, that the deal involved $5 billion (4.6 billion euros).
Netflix hopes to attract more subscribers through streaming, and the deal with WWE is the first big step in this area. Raw is a recurring entertainment program in which wrestlers showcase fights. The theatrical fights, which attracted about 1.5 million viewers, were, among other things, a springboard for wrestler Dwayne Johnson to become a movie star.
Raw will be available to Netflix subscribers in the US, Canada and Latin America starting January 1, 2025. Until then, streaming rights still belong to Comcast Media Group. Outside the US, Netflix streams all other WWE shows. This also includes shows that wrestling fans still have to pay per episode, like WrestleMania. Netflix subscribers don't have to pay extra for it.
Investors seem to think the deal represents mainly good news for TKO Group, which owns WWE. That company's shares rose 19 percent in premarket trading in New York. Documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission also showed that actor Johnson, nicknamed The Rock, became a member of the board of directors of this company.
