WWE RAW‘s historic move to Netflix was not an easy deal to make, according to TKO President and COO Mark Shapiro.
WWE RAW will move to Netflix in January 2025. The agreement between the two sides was valued at over $5 billion, and it is a major step for the wrestling business.
Speaking on The Main Event with Andrew Marchand, TKO President and COO Mark Shapiro discussed the deal to bring WWE RAW to Netflix. He stated that it was not an easy deal. (H/t Andrew Thompson of POST Wrestling for the transcription)
“No, I don’t think they’re jumping into that any time quick (Shapiro responded to the question of if he thinks Netflix will bring more live sports into their portfolio) and I will tell ya, this (WWE on Netflix) wasn’t an easy deal. Ted Sarandos is amazing and just an incredible track record of success and frankly, driving change in the business along with Reed (Hastings) and you know, Bela (Bajaria) has just completely reorganized the content team there.
“Showing the willingness to take chances and big swings and not afraid of risks and has a $17 billion dollar budget behind her. So, they’re in it. If they think there’s something out there, premium, that’s going to bring in subs and keep subs and allow them to raise prices and sell advertising, they’ll jump in so in that respect, if sports is going to do it at a reasonable price, they’ll do it. But there’s no behind the scenes strategy.”
Mark Shapiro: They Drove A Hard Bargain
Mark Shapiro went on to comment on the negotiations. He stated that it took a lot of convincing to get the deal done. Shapiro noted that those with Netflix drove a hard bargain.
“Wink, wink — we’re getting into WWE which is close to sports and then we’ll get some NFL games and then we’ll really open up the floodgates,” he said. “It took ‘em a lot of convincing by Bela and Ari (Emanuel) and me to Ted directly and Spencer Neumann, the C.F.O., to get them all in on the WWE and then they took a shot. But guess what? They drove a hard bargain, they were terrific negotiators. The devil’s in the details and there are a lot of details, and they held their ground, and I think they got a great deal for themselves as well.”
Click here to see what John Cena had to say about WWE RAW coming to Netflix.
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