Netflix Takes Raw Bite, But Vince McMahon's Goose May Be Cooked

As I write this there’s big news in the WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment) and it ain’t good. A woman has accused WWE co-founder Vince McMahon, the WWE and former company executive John Laurinaitis of sex trafficking, physical and emotional abuse, sexual assault and negligence according to a lawsuit filed by Janel Grant. Talk about art imitating life or is it life imitating art? In any event, this lawsuit has rocked the wrestling world at the very moment when a huge new TV deal was announced.

Full disclosure…I’m not a wrestling fan, but there’s a member of my household (my son Dylan) who is. So, due to osmosis, I’ve learned a great deal about its place in the so-called "Sports Entertainment” world. The reason it’s called Sports Entertainment is because at its core, WWE and its counterpart, AEW (All Elite Wrestling) is peak TV drama with its very athletic actors dressed-up in tights, leotards and costumes. They’re basically TV characters whose storylines WWE fans religiously follow.  

I had not even heard the term Sports Entertainment until Dylan cajoled me into watching WWE’s two weekly shows, "Monday Night Raw” and "Friday Night Smackdown”. I don’t watch that often, but I have come to understand the role that wrestling, and particularly WWE, plays in its millions of fans across the world. When I first started watching, I thought it was a bunch of very large men and women, throwing each other around in fixed matches, watched by mostly testosterone-filled young males. Boy, was I wrong about it being for boys.

While the company averaged 1.7 to 2 million viewers in 2022 and its streaming service, the WWE Network, has millions of subscribers, the real surprise for me comes in demographics. Magna Global conducted a recent study for SportsBusiness Daily Global, and they found that 40% of WWE fans are female. They also discovered that the median age of pro wrestling viewers has vastly increased over the past 16 years. The median age has doubled in that time. In the year 2000, the median age — the midpoint of the spread of viewers watching pro wrestling — was 28. The median age in 2006 was 33, and in 2016, the median age jumped all the way up to 54. While wrestling continues to do well in the TV ratings in its core 18–49-year-old demographic, its aging viewership over the years is starting to cause some concern.

Time to Jump Into the Stream

The January 23rd announcement that Netflix is taking the broadcast rights to one of WWE’s two flagship weekly shows, "Monday Night Raw”, is both shocking and makes all the sense in the world. When Raw first debuted on USA Network in 1993, it was a totally different TV world. USA Network was just 13 years-old and Cable-TV was taking control of more and more play-by-play sports. For purposes of this post, I’m lumping WWE with Sports broadcasting. Over the 30 years that Raw has been on the USA Network, TV viewing has undergone a second revolution. Just as Sports was moving from over-the-air TV to Cable in 1993, today, it’s moving from Cable to Streaming.

We’ve already seen MLB move some games to Apple+ and Peacock Networks and the NFL air its Thursday Night Football on Amazon Prime. And while Comcast/Universal, owners of USA Network, does air pay-per-view events on its streaming service Peacock, both of WWE’s weekly shows were always available on what’s known as linear (over-the-air or Cable/Satellite) channels. However, the money from streamer Netflix was just too good to pass-up. So, in 2025, "Monday Night Raw" will no longer air on Cable or Satellite TV as it moves to Netflix. This leaves only one WWE show, "Friday Smackdown, on the good old Fox Network.

Did I say the money was too good to pass-up? How about 500 million dollars a year over a ten-year period? Even I can do that math. That’s a mind-numbing 5 billion dollars in rights fees. Now that includes a lot more than one weekly Raw show. There are things like pay-per-view events, documentary programming and worldwide TV rights. But, anytime you put a "B” in front of "illion”, that is some serious money. Not bad for a soap opera. Moving to a streaming service has one other residual benefit; It allows WWE to fish where the 18–49-year old’s do most of their fishing – in the stream. As noted above, those aging demographics are an issue and this move may help.

What does this mean to people who couldn't care less about watching men and woman in tights, throwing each other around? As it happens, a whole lot. Which brings me to the term "Tent Pole”. In TV, a tent pole is what NBC used to call, "Must See TV”. We recently saw the first NFL playoff game move exclusively to the Peacock streaming service. According to Nielsen, the January 13th Kansas City Chiefs/Miami Dolphins AFC Wild Card Game was the most-streamed event in U.S. history, The game averaged 23 million fans of those teams, the NFL and/or Taylor Swift. And while NBC paid a handsome 113 million dollars for that single game, both the league and the network were happy with the outcome – Not the game’s, but the cash register's.

That happiness is bad news for us because the cost of tent poles is about to go up. If one streamed NFL playoff game worked, why not two or three? Hell, why not the Super Bowl? Why not the Olympics – oh yeah, that’s already going to happen for some events during the upcoming Paris games. And while Sports seems to have the most content built for this (56 of the top 100-rated shows in 2023 were Sports), there are a few other tent poles out there. How about award shows like the Oscars, Emmys or Grammys? Or maybe an alternative or even real ending to a long-running show?

It wasn’t that long ago when all Sports programming was broadcast on free, over-the-air TV. Then, the great migration to Cable began as networks like ESPN, FS1, TBS and TNT took over the national rights to MLB, NBA NFL, NHL and college games. Later, local teams moved their games to Regional Sports Networks (RSNs). Speaking of which, repercussions are being felt on many of those regional networks as teams start streaming games directly to their fans. Some RSNs have recently declared bankruptcy or even completely shut down. I’ll have a post about that subject in the next few days.  

The next move has already begun with games moving to streaming services like Amazon, Apple+, ESPN+ and Peacock. With over 90% of U.S. households having access to home internet, streaming services are jumping at the chance to acquire more content. Sports TV is sort of the canary in the coalmine as to how much pain consumers are willing to endure when it comes to paying for what used to be free. As they say, "Watch this space.”

Suffice it to say, it’s hard to keep up with all the changes in how we watch TV, access the internet and pay for cellular services. Since I retired from Radio, I spend a lot of time doing just that. That’s how I’ve been able to save households from hundreds to even thousands of dollars per year on those costs. For a free "Tech Check” look at your bills, email hmwellsradio@gmail.com or visit lowertechbills.com because you may not have the time to keep up with this stuff, but I do.