WWE became a pop culture powerhouse over the years thanks to its near-ubiquitous cable TV presence, particularly on USA Network — where “Monday Night Raw” was a staple. Moving the flagship series to Netflix, which is still getting its feet wet with live programming, was seen as a bit of a risk.
Turns out, instead of being siloed behind a paywall, WWE was just going where the viewers already are. Since its move to Netflix on Jan. 6, “Monday Night Raw” has been on a world champion-level run. The franchise immediately became a constant presence on the streamer’s global Top 10 English-language TV charts. The week of July 7 marked the 27th straight week that “Raw” hit the Top 10 globally. It is averaging about 6.3 million hours viewed per week and just over 3 million views per week, with a view defined as total hours viewed divided by total run time.
“Netflix has been amazing, in every sense of the word. They are phenomenal partners,” says WWE chief content officer Paul “Triple H” Levesque. “And we can’t say enough about WWE fans. They’ve shown up in full force, as passionate and engaged as ever.” The so-called Netflix bump seems to have helped “Raw” since its jump from linear cable, specifically that last run on USA (which continues to air WWE’s “Smackdown” series). It’s difficult to make a direct viewership comparison between Netflix and USA (where in fall 2024, it averaged 1.65 million viewers a week), because linear channels measure their viewership differently than Netflix does. But the disparity is still stark.
Along with joining Netflix, WWE has benefited from storylines like John Cena’s retirement tour/heel turn, Jey Uso’s World Heavyweight Championship run, Dominik “Dirty Dom” Mysterio winning the Intercontinental Championship and Lyra Valkyria winning the inaugural Women’s Intercontinental Championship. “It’s everything we could have hoped for and more,” says Gabe Spitzer, vice president of sports at Netflix. “We knew going in that we’re not going to change WWE. It was more, how can we add to it in small ways, and that’s what we’ve seen so far.”
Spitzer adds that WWE content has been popular across a wide range of countries: “Raw” has made the Top 10 list in Canada for 26 weeks, the U.K. for 23 weeks and Mexico for 22 weeks. “[WWE’s] distribution has been pretty fragmented up to this point, and the hope was ‘Let’s combine the power of what you guys do with the power of what we do with our global distribution, and get our marketing teams together … and try to lift this,” Spitzer says.
That fragmentation is still an issue for WWE fans. Besides “Smackdown” airing on USA, the developmental show “NXT” airs on The CW stateside. Both shows air on Netflix internationally. Likewise, WWE’s premium live events, like “WrestleMania” and the “Royal Rumble,” stream on Peacock domestically, but began airing on Netflix in the rest of the world with the launch of the “Raw” deal. PLEs in particular are a hot commodity. Major WWE events like “Money in the Bank” and the “Elimination Chamber” have made the Top 10 in 37 countries, seeing the greatest popularity in Bolivia, Canada, the U.K., Egypt, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. This year’s “Royal Rumble” also made the English-language TV Top 10 list the week it aired despite not being available on Netflix in the U.S.
There’s speculation that Netflix will become the new streaming home for the PLEs domestically once WWE’s deal with Peacock expires in March 2026. Should that come to pass, it would fit well into Netflix’s sports and live-event plans. The streamer has had major success with the Mike Tyson-Jake Paul boxing match, Chris Rock’s live comedy special and the Christmas Day NFL doubleheader. “For us, it’s still early stages,” Spitzer says. “We want things that are going to create global conversation. And I think with WWE, we already know they have that. … So we’ll continue to have conversations with the leagues that have rights coming up.”
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