This year, Netflix will broadcast Rafa Nadal and Carlos Alcaraz’s match on March 3. A first commitment, seriously, to live sports. And it looks like it will be a big trend for the future. Netflix wants to participate in the succulent market that sports broadcasts represent, and for this reason, it has acquired the rights to the WWE RAWwhich will be broadcast live on the platform starting in 2025.
This is the first serious commitment to sports content (with all the sporting nuances that WWE includes) from Netflix. In fact, RAW will air exclusively on Netflix in the US, Canada, Latin America, and who knows if it won’t also take it to more countries where this type of content is not broadcast.
In addition, with this move, Netflix also takes over the exclusive rights to broadcast all WWE programs and specials outside the United States, including some of the most popular ones like Smackdown and NXT. It also happens to be the owner of the programs that are currently part of the PPV, such as Wrestlemania, SummerSlam and Royal Rumble. According to Bloombergall of the latter, which require additional payment, will be broadcast included at no additional cost to Netflix users.
Netflix will broadcast WWE Raw live in 2025
In this way, starting next year, Netflix will offer three hours of live wrestling per week. The company’s idea is twofold: on the one hand, to continue expanding the content catalog of its platform, and incidentally, to attract current viewers of WWE, which was broadcast on cable, to its platform.
So far, Netflix’s foray into streaming has been fairly discreet. It has limited itself to broadcasting a live comedy special and a golf game. All loose content, similar to the Nadal and Alcaraz match that will be broadcast in March; something that he wants to remedy with more live content, and with the regularity that something like WWE RAW entails.
Netflix is the latest to bet on this segment, that of live sports content, but it is not the only one: The National Football League sold the rights to Amazon Thursday Night Football, the playoffs are broadcast on Peacock and Apple has the MLS Pass. And in Europe DAZN has soccer, motorcycles and F1. Streaming, which came to kill cable, is increasingly similar to the latter.