Sky Sports Extends WWE contract
Sky Sports this morning announced securing six long-term rights agreements, including a deal to extend their coverage of WWE programming on a five year deal starting in 2015. The statement in full read:
The new agreement with WWE, the worldwide leader in sports entertainment, includes the popular weekly programmes RAW®, SmackDown®, WWE Main Event®, and WWE Experience®, which is due to feature all the WWE superstars, including John Cena, Randy Orton, CM Punk, Big Show and Daniel Bryan.
Sky will also offer 12 special events a year on a pay-per-view basis, including WrestleMania®, Royal Rumble®, SummerSlam®, Survivor Series® and Money in the Bank®.
It is unclear, at this stage, whether this will impact on the WWE Network as and when it arrives in the UK. It should be said that there is no guarentee that any UK version of the network would carry pay per view events as will be the case in the US. Also, Sky usually offer a few select pay-per-view events "free" each year (to people who subscribe to Sky Sports) that statement suggests that from next year all shows might be exclusive to Sky Box Office.
TNA Impact Airing Live
While TNA is on their UK tour, tonight will see Impact air live in the UK as it's being recorded in Glasgow. The show will air from 9pm-11pm on Challenge TV. In the US, unless special provisions have been made to air the show in the middle of the afternoon on another network, it would appear that tonight's show will air in it's usual time-slot at 9pm on Spike on a tape delay.
