Netflix reached an agreement with the WWE to stream their wrestling program “Raw”. This deal will go from 2025 for 10 years. Now Netflix will be able to stream the events life on their platform. This deal costs Netflix a total of $5 billion. Moreover the company hopes to increase their revenue with that move.
The numbers of the agreement between Netflix and WWE
The company reached a multibillion-dollar deal to stream the show for a decade. This deal will bring the wrestling show to Netflix from next January on and the company has the opportunity to extend the contract for another ten years after that. The WWE and their partner company said in a statement that Netflix can also stream their other shows outside of the US. The wrestling show “Raw” is very popular and brought out a lot of popular personalities.
In a regulatory filing WWE’s partner company TKO Group announced that the deal will cost Netflix about $5 billion and it will last for 10 years. After 5 years they will have the chance to cancel the partnership. After 10 years Netflix will be able to extend the contract with WWE for an additional 10 years.
A few hours after the announcement the Netflix announced that they added 13.1 million subscribers in the Q4 of 2023, which is up from 7.7 million a year ago. Therefore the streaming platform now has a total of 260 million subscribers worldwide. On top of that the revenue of the company grew last quarter by 12.5% from a year earlier. It is now at $8.83 billion and the net income stands at $938 million or $2.11 per share for Netflix. These numbers are an increase of 1.658% from a year ago. Netflix exceeded the numbers estimated by Wall Street by about $0.11 billion after the estimates were at $8.72 billion.
According to the WWE the show “Raw” has a total of 17.5 million viewers. If the majority of those viewers will go to Netflix it will lead to a massive increase in revenue for the company.
Netflix’ strategy with live events like “Raw”
The company announced that it will not change the strategy on live events. Furthermore Netflix’s co-chief executive Ted Sarandos said on the fourth quarte earnings call that the “WWE is sports entertainment, which is right the sweet spot of our sports business, the drama of sport”. The agreement with WWE seems to be part of their annual $17 billion content budget.
With the deal Netflix expands their live programming. Viewers had mixed feelings in the past though due to disruptions of the reality show “Love Is Blind”. And even though live events do not have the best reputation on Netflix, a recent live comedy special with Chris Rock went very well.
However, the company recently focused om sport documentaries rather than live sport events. This move might bring Netflix back into the live stream game. After Amazon reached a deal to stream night NFL since 2022 and Apple signed a $250-million-per-year deal with the American football league Major League soccer and Major League Baseball Netflix wants to compete in the business now as well.
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