Published: Jun 12, 2023 by Dave Adamson | Last Updated: Jun 12, 2023 by Dave Adamson
Dave has been a website writer for WrestleTalk since October 2022, having previously written for Den of Geek, among a number of wrestling, movie and television-related sites. Dave has been around the independent wrestling scene for more than a decade, including behind-the-scenes.
WWE
Update: An update can be found here on WWE’s interest in a partnership with Disney.
A major streaming platform could be in talks with WWE as its broadcast media rights are up for negotiation.
With recent reports that Disney could be interested in security broadcast rights for FX, another name has been thrown into the mix as a future home for WWE.
According to the New York Post, when Peacock’s streaming deal with WWE is up, the Disney-owned ESPN+ could be a contender for streaming rights having held talks during the last round of streaming negotiations.
Elsewhere in the article, however, Andrew Marchand shares his belief that “Amazon Prime Video will be in talks for WWE”.
Marchand notes that Amazon Prime Video have a “willingness to pay for big, standalone events”.
He goes on to use the example of Thursday Night Football, stating that Amazon Prime Video pay a billion dollars a year for the games.
Furthermore, Marchand says that “it’s exclusive and brings in an audience that exceeded 10 million streamers in some weeks.”
Previously, Amazon Prime Video had hoped to pair Big Ten Football on Saturday nights with the Thursday night offering but lost out to NBC in negotiations.
As Marchand writes, however:
“WWE might be hesitant to turn its broadcast distribution over to a streaming service, its programming has a sticky audience that finds its shows wherever they are.”
To back up his channel hunting theory, Marchand notes that during the 2022 Olympics, WWE Raw was moved from USA Network to Syfy and was able to maintain 87% of its audience compared to the four weeks before the channel shift.
Comcast pays $265 million per year to put WWE Raw on USA Network and Fox pays $205 million per year for WWE SmackDown.
Both contracts are set to expire in October 2024 and negotiation is well underway for new contracts.
Marchand concludes that Apple are a “dark horse” in the race for media rights with their focus being on NBA.
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