The WWE and Netflix deal comes with a pretty hefty price tag, with the streamer paying $5 billion (with a “B”) over the next 10 years. Sure, they gave Ryan Murphy over $300 million for a five-year deal only for him to immediately jump ship and head over to Disney once the contract expired, but this is FIVE. BILLION. DOLLARS. Roman Reigns makes an estimated $5 million a year with WWE, so this is the equivalent of renewing his contract for 1,000 years (and they’ll keep a belt on him the whole time, I swear to god). As a wrestling fan, it makes perfect sense, because WWE is absolutely worth $5 billion considering its built-in global audience and the fact the company’s live productions are already a well-oiled machine. WWE has been providing shows on cable TV for decades, but also buy-in PPVs, on their former WWE Network streaming service, and now with Peacock.
This is a welcome change for wrestling fans because while the WWE Network was a sincerely great app, the move to Peacock has been less-than-stellar as the search function isn’t great and the live event stream crashes due to the massive swells in viewership. Netflix can definitely handle the volume. This is also yet another savvy business move from WWE because, despite the endless list of unethical or questionable decisions made over the years, the folks in charge aren’t stupid. They realized early on that the money was not in making your own streamer and trying to compete with an increasingly congested landscape, but instead hopping onto an already established success story. In the world of streaming, that’s Netflix.
But this deal certainly deserves an eyebrow raise coming from the streamer who cancels shows constantly and helped elongate the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes because they don’t want to pay more in residuals. You’ve got $5 billion for WWE but not season 3 of “GLOW?” I see how it is …