Netflix's WWE investment and the future of live events on the platform: 'We're learning as we go'

Tonight, Netflix will take another step into live broadcasting by launching its coverage of WWE’s flagship programme, Raw. It is the first show of a decade-long agreement.

This is a high-value deal, one reported to be worth $5billion (£4bn) by Deadline, a U.S. entertainment news outlet — but it came together rather easily.

“By industry standards, it was quite quick,” Brandon Reigg of Netflix tells The Athletic. Reigg joined Netflix in 2016 and is now its vice president of unscripted and documentary series. He has led the team responsible for sporting content such as Drive To Survive and The Last Dance — and struck the deal with WWE.

From today, January 6, WWE’s popular weekly wrestling show Raw will stream exclusively on Netflix in the United States. Netflix also holds exclusive rights to Raw in Canada, the UK and Latin America, and can stream it globally.

Having first launched in 1993, Raw is a wrestling institution, but this change marks the first time in 30 years the show will not be broadcast on traditional television. WWE chief content officer and former wrestler Paul ‘Triple H’ Levesque said the switch to Netflix — which says it has 283 million global subscribers — will be a “game-changer” for the franchise.

Timing was critical to the speed of the agreement. “On their side, they knew that this window of opportunity was coming up to take Raw to the marketplace,” explains Reigg. “I think WWE president Nick Khan had really identified Netflix as probably his preferred partner years prior.”

There was tentative dialogue between them, but the prospect of a deal was slim. “At that time, we didn’t have live content and we weren’t really entertaining this sort of programming,” says Reigg.

But there was another barrier: typically, when Netflix engages with a piece of content or IP (intellectual property), it wants global exclusivity. WWE’s international TV rights had been diversified over a variety of different deals, each with its own timespan.

“I told Nick, ‘It’s tough when you’re so fragmented as an entertainment programme’,” says Reigg. “But I think he took that on board and started positioning those deals around the world in as many countries as possible so that they would come up for renewal within a fairly short proximity.”

At the end of 2023, WWE reached out to Bela Bajaria, chief content officer at Netflix. Before long, Reigg was part of the conversation.

“It was something that intrigued us, I think, for all the reasons that fans or followers of the sport understand,” he explains. “The Netflix and WWE teams came together in December and within a couple of weeks, the broad outline of an agreement was struck.

“It’s quite incredible, given the magnitude of the deal and the size of the jump for WWE, taking their flagship show and moving it to a streaming platform. Similar for us, this is our first foray into this big sports entertainment space.”

For Netflix, that foray was made more comfortable by what the E in WWE is short for: entertainment. Although Reigg refers to professional wrestling as a sport, it has just as much in common with the scripted content with which Netflix is more familiar.

“I think that made it a more manageable step for us,” says Reigg. “The athleticism, the sporting presentation, is there, but for all intents and purposes, it is a soap opera. It’s a ton of telenovelas. It can tell stories and create characters that are no different from our scripted shows.

“And yet it’s on weekly. And there are very few programmes, outside of soap operas and telenovelas, that provide that sort of steady drumbeat of content, entertainment and storytelling throughout the year. And WWE happens to be one of those parties.”

The acquisition of the Raw rights also sees Netflix taking another step. Raw’s debut follows hot on the the heels of the streamer’s inaugural Christmas Day broadcast of two marquee NFL games. “I’ve been lobbying for live for a few years,” says Reigg. “It started with a Chris Rock stand-up special in March 2023. I’ve always believed that, down the road, things would come to us that required a live functionality.”

Netflix’s commitment to Raw is considerable — the deal is set to run for 10 years, with that reported cost of $5billion. So what does success look like? “At its core, it’s no different to any other entertainment programme,” explains Reigg. “It’s a case of saying, ‘What does it cost?’ and then, ‘What’s the return of that investment in terms of how many people are watching it and their level of engagement?’. It’s no different to (dating show) Love Is Blind, (dramas) Black Doves or Stranger Things. We look at it through that same lens.”

By virtue of the global nature of this deal, Reigg sees a chance to expand WWE’s reach into markets it has not yet penetrated.

“I see the opportunity to be similar to when I commissioned Drive To Survive, our F1 series. I think we have a real opportunity here to grow the audience and the awareness of the brand. Netflix has this incredible reach and the trust of its members, who are willing to try things that they might not otherwise have sampled, and we’ve seen that time and again. We can give Raw a turbo-boost.”

Netflix has already demonstrated its viewers’ appetite for live content.

In November, 108 million worldwide tuned in to watch a boxing event headlined by Jake Paul vs Mike Tyson and Katie Taylor vs Amanda Serrano. Though that success was offset by widespread reports of customers encountering technical difficulties with the stream. “What went wrong is also what went right,” reasons Reigg. “The sheer number of people that watched was beyond anything we could ever have predicted or imagined. That was great. What wasn’t great was that a certain percentage of them experienced technical issues.

“The good news is those are engineering or maths problems that can be solved. You have to stress-test the system sometimes — and we certainly got the stress-test of all stress-tests. And we have a great engineering team, they’ve already identified what we could have done differently and they’ve made adjustments. We feel totally confident and capable.”

The two Christmas Day NFL games averaged over 30 million viewers globally, with viewers in 218 countries and territories.

Netflix’s chief executive Ted Sarandos said in October 2023: “We’re not anti-sports. We’re just pro-profit.” Despite this expansion into live broadcast — and indeed sport — some of those reservations remain.

“I think a lot of the challenges with sports leagues — or any external IP that we don’t own — is that if you’re a partner in helping grow it, at a certain point, at the end of its term, there’s always a risk someone else could come in and take on the deal,” explains Reigg. “That’s unlike our scripted shows. For example, Black Doves will be on Netflix forever.

“With the NFL, what felt compelling to us is that it was a single day of games. It was a holiday. It felt like an event, a noticeable moment. It was a case of the NFL saying, ‘We’re going to make Christmas a thing. Would you like to do that with us?’. And we felt we could help. And that’s that’s a much more disciplined and focused approach than just saying, ‘We’re getting into sports’.”

The strength of WWE’s IP — and the longevity of the deal — gave Netflix the confidence it needed to proceed. Despite the astronomical sums of money being reported, the streamer regards it as a reasonable investment.

“We have this large content budget each year,” explains Reigg. “The amount we’re spending on this (WWE) is a very, very, very small percentage. You’re getting two to three hours a week, 52 weeks a year. You’ll see what the viewership is in terms of the actual numbers. If you look at what we spend on some of our biggest movies over a quarter, it’s comparable.”

“On the term side, as this is a third-party IP, we wanted to feel there was a good faith investment on both sides. That to me is so expressive. We have a long runway ahead of us. At the end of that, then we’ll be in a better position to understand more clearly what the value or impact of the programme is.”

Reigg does not expect Raw to dramatically change once it launches on Netflix. “It’s a really enduring, resilient brand with a very strong, loyal and vocal fanbase. Just because it’s on Netflix doesn’t mean we’re going to reinvent the wheel.”

He does, however, expect some opportunities to naturally arise. “You’re now going to have a much bigger, more diverse audience out there. And so you’re going to get probably different types of feedback. I think because we’re in so many of these countries where they haven’t had a real distribution before, there’s an opportunity for them to build up wrestlers from major regions that they have not explored fully in the past.”

Partnering with a streamer also opens up the possibility of different forms of storytelling around the WWE IP. “We already know that we’re going to look to explore other ways of people engaging with WWE fandom,” says Reigg. “Those could be more documentaries like a Drive To Survive.”

If a wrestler catches the public’s eye, Netflix is also perfectly positioned to help them cross over into acting. “We’ve seen this with people like John Cena or Dave Bautista, right? There is precedent for talent going from being in the ring to parlaying that into TV and film.”

Despite speculation that moving to a streamer could see the tone of Raw become more adult, it will remain a family show. “It’s a family-friendly brand,” confirms Reigg. “They have been very clear. It’s PG, and that’s what they want it to be. And we are not looking to turn this into an R-rating.”

Before Netflix, Brandon worked on notable series such as The Voice, America’s Got Talent and Dancing With The Stars. “Those shows really work out because you can watch as a single person, as a couple, as a family, and all people can be engaged,” he says. “That’s a rarity. Yet that’s what certain shows and certain sports offer. Raw hits that sweet spot.”

A steady stream of WWE’s archival programming will also be making its way onto Netflix’s platform. It aspires to become “a singular one-stop-shop hub for fans of WWE”.

WWE has other television properties, but for now, any suggestion these will also move to Netflix in the U.S. is “speculative”. “I would hope that when they come up, they would want to come to us,” says Riegg.

So can Netflix subscribers expect to see it streaming more live sports in future?

“As with everything, we remain sort of open-minded and opportunistic,” says Reigg. “We’re looking for events that have big viewership, are very buzzy and drive a lot of conversation.

“And we’re learning as we go. Between the fight, the NFL and having Raw, we’ll certainly be testing the sports audience. In terms of more traditional sports, it will depend in terms of what opportunities come up.”

(Top photo: WWE/Getty Images)