Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos Excited About WWE Raw Deal, Says They Can Help Each Other

Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos weighed in on the service’s new $5 billion deal for the rights to WWE Raw. As reported, Raw will begin airing on Netflix starting in 2025 in a deal announced on Tuesday. Sarandos talked about the deal during the company’s Q4 earnings call, and you can see some highlights below (per Fightful):

On the deal to bring Raw to Netflix: “We are thrilled to bring WWE live programming to our members around the world. WWE Raw is sports entertainment, which is right in the sweet spot of our sports business, which is the drama of sport. Think of this as 52 weeks of live programming every week, every year. It feeds our desire to expand our live event programming. Most importantly, fans love it. For decades, WWE has grown this multi-generational fanbase that we believe we can serve and we can grow. We believe WWE has been historically under distributed outside of North America, and this is a global deal. We can help them, and they can help us build that fandom around the world. This should also add some fuel to our new and growing ad business.”

On if spending that much fit into their programming spending plans: “Expanding the live event programming is something we’ve talked about for a while and this has been in the works. This fits inside our $17 billion programming spending. In terms of building on it, you should think of Formula One, this is almost the inverse of Formula One, which is a very big and passionate US fanbase and a lot of room to grow outside of the US. We can build that, as we have with Formula One and other sports, through our shoulder programming like Drive to Survive, Full Swing, Break Point, and Quarterbacks. The events itself are the storytelling in WWE. This is a proven formula for us and we’re excited to jump into. This is sports entertainment, very close to our core, the deal is long-term, we’re super excited about it.”