Dave Meltzer Speculates On Why WWE Possibly Accepted A Financial Loss For Raw Netflix Deal

Earlier this week, it was announced that "WWE Raw" would be moving to Netflix in January 2025, a deal reportedly worth $5 billion over 10 years. Internationally, the new agreement will see WWE's weekly shows — "Raw," "WWE SmackDown," and "WWE NXT" — air on the popular streaming platform, as well as premium live events such as WrestleMania. Despite the enormous figure involved, longtime wrestling journalist Dave Meltzer wrote in the latest Wrestling Observer Newsletter that the significant price, which is up from "Raw's" $265 million a year deal with USA, is modest, given that localized international rights deals have now been eliminated in places like Canada and the United Kingdom.

He added that Netflix got the WWE deal at a lower price than predicted. However, according to Meltzer, WWE believes the partnership will be more beneficial because of the exposure of being the first of its kind to produce live weekly shows on the streaming service. Meanwhile, it was also pointed out in this week's newsletter that the early stock market response was good, but Meltzer felt that the reaction would have been a lot different if WWE had agreed to the same price with another network or online video platform.

Various other wrestling personalities have weighed in with their thoughts on the WWE-Netflix deal this week, with former WCW exec Eric Bischoff commenting that it's a big opportunity for WWE to grow even more internationally because of Netflix's large subscriber count around the world. Elsewhere, WWE Hall of Famer Bully Ray feels that WWE would have carefully planned out the deal, but it would take some getting used to once the red brand show moves over from USA.