Ari Emanuel Says WWE Raw Being On Netflix Is The Next Step For Them

During his appearance on CNBC (per Fightful), Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel discussed the agreement between TKO and Netflix that will see WWE move Raw to the streaming service starting inJanuary 2025. Here are the highlights:

On the deal: “All I can say is that we are in line with the market expectations and where our step up would be. The only other thing I would say is it’s Netflix. They’re the global leader. They’re the best company with regard to sports entertainment whether they’ve done it with Formula One or Tour De France, this is the next iteration as they go to live and moving into live. This is an important step for them in their SVOD and subscription service and live is important for them,” he said “The word Netflix is important for this. Ten year deal, with Raw, it’s a big deal.”

On Netflix doing more live sports programming: “We just saw, two weekends ago on Peacock, how big football played. 27 million people. I don’t think linear is going away, I don’t think cable is going away, but there is a push to streaming. On this deal, we did that early on with the UFC on ESPN and ESPN Plus. From our perspective, this is the next iteration of where this goes. We have a linear play with SmackDown and NXT. This is the streaming play. For us, it was the next step. It’s a great deal for Netflix, in our opinion. They get 150 hours of programming over $5 billion dollars. It’s like two and a half movies for 150. For us, it’s the global player in streaming. It’s a great deal.”