For almost 20 years, I've been accustomed to watching wrestling on cable television. I remember my first experience watching WWE Monday Night Raw on Spike TV, and my mom giving me the side eye for staying up so late on a school week just to watch guys like Triple H and Shawn Michaels tearing the house down. It's not hyperbole when I say there has never been and probably never will be another piece of programming I've watched more on television than wrestling.
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| Monday Night Raw is considered WWE's flagship show |
But then 2014 saw wrestling take its first steps out of the network television space to enter into an entirely different arena with streaming. The WWE launched its own streaming network, much to the surprise of longtime wrestling enthusiasts like myself. No longer were WWE pay-per-views taking a chunk out of my mom's weekly paycheck at $50 to $60 a pop; they would now be at the cost of a Sunday matinee ticket at my local movie theater. For just one monthly payment, I would have access to all my favorite matches, pay-per-view events, and even new documentary series produced by WWE. It not only marked a new era of wrestling but also instilled a feeling of regret for having to pay so much for something that admittedly wasn't on the same wavelength of popularity as other major sports like boxing and UFC.
Several years after the launch of the WWE Network, the rise of streaming services began to significantly affect how people consumed media and when they would consume it. The 2020 pandemic forced many people to stay home and used streaming as a cheaper entertainment alternative. The pendulum switched so far in the other direction that many movie theaters closed their doors for good. Companies such as Disney decided to launch their own streaming services to compete with the heavyweight champion of streaming, Netflix.
What started as a win-win for consumers who just needed to pay a small monthly fee for a seemingly endless amount of content soon became a monthly financial hassle that echoed the days of having to pay hundreds for cable. Every major company suddenly wanted its packaged library to compete with Netflix and get the most from the consumer's wallets.
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| Streaming Services have taken over the world |
After the WWE sold the distribution rights to NBCUniversal Television and Streaming, one question always hovered inside my head: why weren't WWE's main shows live on their own network? At the time of the network's launch, WWE still had exclusive broadcasting agreements with major networks like USA. It meant despite producing the weekly shows, WWE couldn't use them as a persuasion tactic to push their viewers to subscribe to their network. It also meant the network was reliant on the live previously $50 to $60 pay-per-view events, the massive library, and the newly produced documentary shows.
Unfortunately, it wasn't enough to keep the WWE Network alive, yet the idea of watching an weekly programming show that I've watched on television for nearly 20 years on my laptop still percolated inside me. Fast forward to January 23, 2024, and that idea has become a reality as WWE Monday Night Raw officially becomes an exclusive show on Netflix.
The 10-year deal is reportedly valued at over $5 billion and would be Netflix's first major foray into live sports. While the deal itself is quite impressive, the most significant aspect of the whole thing is how this takes WWE's flagship show away from network television and moves it into an ecosystem that isn't dependent on viewership ratings. Even going back to the famous Monday Night Wars between WWE and WCW, the conversation was about television ratings and which wrestling show drew the most eyeballs during a particular timeslot.
With Raw airing exclusively on Netflix starting in January 2025, the conversation will shift to whether the show increased or decreased the monthly subscriber count. In previous years, Netflix was infamous for not revealing viewership numbers for their most popular shows. It wasn't until recently that the gigantic streaming company began to expand its viewership data transparency with the release of its biannual report, which revealed how licensed content performed compared to original produced shows.
Netflix has dabbled in live events in the past, most significantly with the Chris Rock comedy special Chris Rock: Selective Outrage, which aired live on the streaming platform on March 4, 2023. According to Nielson, the special earned the title of the most-streamed comedy special and outperformed the previous title owner, Dave Chappelle: Sticks and Stones.
In terms of live sports, the only other event that's comparable is the 'Netflix Cup' golf tournament, which was a tournament that pitted race car drivers from the Formula 1 documentary series Drive to Survive against golfers from another series called Full Swing. Although Netflix never disclosed the viewership numbers for the 'Netflix Cup,' the event itself was considered a success based on the 250 paid global subscribers reported by the company during its previous quarterly filing. Additionally, Netflix used the live sporting event to promote other content on their service, even going as far as to incorporate branding from one of their most popular shows, Squid Games.
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| Netflix aired the "Netflix Cup" in 2023 |
Netflix decided to dabble in live sports after Amazon struck a massive deal to air the NFL's Thursday Night Football, and Apple struck deals with Major League Baseball and Major League Soccer. The NFL deal became a massive cue for Amazon as many games aired on Amazon Prime Video garnered an impressive average of 11.86 million viewers in 2023, up 24% from the previous season.
So it's understandable why Netflix would be eager to have its own live sports arm that it could flex, especially one that already has a significant amount of muscle and momentum. WWE has seen a growth in popularity over the past year, specifically with their live event attendance. The company also has experienced a shift in leadership, with Endeavor now taking the reigns as the main owner of it and popular competitive fighting company UFC forming the new sports conglomerate called TKO. The latest news of Raw moving off from network television is just another shift away from the days of WWE being the privately owned vision of the McMahon family.
Then there is the demographic data, which could no longer be reported despite being a large part of the viewership data for WWE's shows. Most of WWE's viewership historically comes from those above the 18-34 demographic. According to data sheets from the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, viewership from the 18-34 demographic from 20 years ago was the largest, with the under 17 and 35-49 coming in a close second. With the recent growth of popularity in WWE the average age range of WWE's audience has decreased somewhat.
Yet, these demographics were also broken down per segment and became an measurement of a particular wrestler's popularity at the time. For instance, a segment on Raw featuring John Cena would draw a considerable viewership rating in the 18-34 demographic versus another wrestler who drew less but probably more with the 50 and above demographic. While it didn't mean that Cena would attract more viewers in the 18-34 demographic each week, it did make the company believe they had someone they could rely on for the moment to pull in that particular crowd.
It's unclear whether these demographic datasheets will still be available once Raw moves away from network television, but considering Netflix's history, it's doubtful. Even with a major show like Netflix's Stranger Things, it's challenging to find a clear demographic breakdown on the show itself. The only thing I personally found was a survey in 2017, which found that 31 percent of people between ages 18 and 29 watched every single episode of the show, while another 17 percent of respondents within the same age group reported that they've seen at least some of the show.
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| Stranger Things is one of Netflix's most popular shows |
This all brings up the title of this piece, which is how Raw's move to Netflix will significantly change how we measure WWE's popularity. If the move to Netflix does become a successful endeavor, then it could mean we'll have fewer findings and measurements on who on the show is popular and how each segment is performing. Netflix currently has its "What We Watched: A Netflix Engagement Report" that explicitly measures the total hours viewers spend watching a particular show between months. However, the streamer doesn't go in-depth with who is watching.
What Netflix would have to do is something similar to how Amazon reports viewership of NFL's Thursday Night Football on Prime Video. An article from Sports Journal last year broke down a game between quarterback Josh Allen and the Buffalo Bills versus quarterback Baker Mayfield and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The article revealed that the game did better in viewership than a game involving famous quarterback Tom Brady the previous year. Amazon also struck a deal with Nielsen to provide ratings for the Thursday Night Football games, which put it on equal footing to the games broadcasted on television.
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| NFL's Thursday Night Football airs on Amazon Prime Video |
Netflix does have an agreement with Nielsen to measure audience engagement in their ad-supported tier. This allowed Netflix advertisers to validate ad performances on the platform and better understand how well certain ads are reaching subscribers. In January 2023, Netflix partnered with Nielson to provide streaming audience data across the U.S., Mexico, and Poland. However, it still needs to be determined how the agreement will provide numbers for Raw segment by segment.
This certainly won't be the end of WWE measuring the popularity of wrestlers. They still can rely on merchandise sales and the reaction from the live crowd. Also, wrestlers who appear on other WWE programming, such as SmackDown, will still have the chance to be exposed to traditional television audiences. Still, the watch hours of a typical Monday Night Raw episode may be more important than how well a specific segment of the show performs or how 'over' a wrestler is.
Furthermore, there might be times when I watch a live episode of Monday Night Raw where I suddenly get promotional ads for the next big Netflix series. Similar to the "Netflix Cup," branding for shows like Stranger Things may appear during episodes of Raw but not other WWE programming. For comparison's sake, imagine all the Marvel content on Disney+ and characters that exists as part of the Marvel brand. It would make sense for Disney to put all their promotional efforts towards the Marvel characters featured on the streaming service but not the ones they either don't own or are not featured on the service. A wrestler who only appears on Raw will be featured heavily on the Netflix platform, while a SmackDown wrestler would basically cease to exist.
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| We may be seeing the true WWE brand split |
In many ways, it's the next true incarnation of the brand split, with SmackDown stars featured on traditional television and Raw stars featured only on streaming. Thankfully, Netflix will become the home for all WWE events and specials outside of the U.S. beginning in 2025. It's only in the U.S. where WWE fans will feel the brand media split. How longtime WWE fans will react to the move remains to be seen. One thing for sure is that streaming continues to reshape the very fabric of how we consume all types of media. Raw's move to Netflix means that the wrestling industry will be on the same playing field as other sports brands used to pull viewers into this new streaming direction.
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