Television ratings have always been a topic of debate among pro wrestling pundits and fans, and that’s continued to be the case as the biggest company in the history of the business moved its flagship show to streaming. With multiple major shows now available via streaming — some exclusively — we get even less official data and see a lot more interpretation of what is available.
WWE Raw is one such show, which starting this year has made Netflix its home worldwide. There are Netflix and Nielson reports
on how Raw performs each week, but those numbers can be even harder to analyze and compare than demographic ratings... and a lot of wrestling folks seem to barely grasp those.
Quotes from people in power at Netflix (or Warner Bros Discovery’s HBO Max, where AEW Dynamite and Collision are simulcast) may not necessarily be more reliable (they certainly have their own bias). But they’re another piece of information we can use to gauge performance.
And based on what Netflix’s VP of Sports Gabe Spitzer told Joe Otterson of Variety in a glowing piece published today (July 23), the streamer is pretty happy they paid billions for the rights to WWE:
““It’s everything we could have hoped for and more. We knew going in that we’re not going to change WWE. It was more, how can we add to it in small ways, and that’s what we’ve seen so far.
“[WWE’s] distribution has been pretty fragmented up to this point, and the hope was ‘Let’s combine the power of what you guys do with the power of what we do with our global distribution, and get our marketing teams together … and try to lift this.”
Spitzer didn’t want to comment on the possibility of Netflix getting U.S. rights to WWE’s entire library when their deal with NBCUniversal-owned Peacock expires next March, but he used the opportunity to praise the WWE product again:
“For us, it’s still early stages. We want things that are going to create global conversation. And I think with WWE, we already know they have that. … So we’ll continue to have conversations with the leagues that have rights coming up.”
Netflix can opt out of their ten-year deal with WWE after five, and we’re a long way from that (roughly four-and-a-half years). But there doesn’t sound like there’s much buyer’s remorse happening at the streamer.
Of course, Spitzer isn’t going to badmouth a partner they’re counting on being a part of their global growth at such an early point in the relationship. So maybe we can debate these kinds of quotes...
Do so in the comments below, if you so choose.
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