Up against the ropes, WWE Network hands exclusive U.S. streaming rights to Peacock
Aux Features Professional wrestling
Niche streaming platforms tend to be a hard sell, even for ones dedicated to wildly popular properties like WWE. Despite its millions of fans worldwide, the WWE’s dedicated, over-the-top streamer, WWE Network, has only managed to secure 1.1 million subscribers since its inception in 2014. While it certainly managed to last longer than other streaming services, the premium wrestling digital hub is calling it quits and tagging Peacock as the new home for its theatrical, sweaty, wonderfully violent content, per a joint announcement.
“NBCUniversal has a long-standing relationship with WWE that began nearly 30 years ago with Monday Night Raw on USA,” said Peacock’s executive vice president and chief revenue officer Rick Cordella in a recent press release. “WWE has always tapped into the cultural zeitgeist with spectacular live events and larger-than-life characters, and we are thrilled to be the exclusive home for WWE Network and its millions of fans across the country.”
The new multi-year deal allows Peacock to run all WWE Network content on-demand and via a new 24-hour channel, which includes all live events, original content, and a stocked library. (Live events like Wrestlemania will still be available by traditional Pay-Per-View means, if you’d rather purchase them individually.) Peacock will launch WWE Network on March 18 with a rollout of over 17,000 hours of content and will stream its first live event, Fastlane, set to stream three days later at no additional charge. All of this will be available on Peacock Premium—which was previously sold based on the availability of The Office content—at $4.99 monthly. (That’s half the price of a WWE Network subscription.) Details regarding whether or not existing members will immediately have Peacock Premium access are not available as of yet.
30 Comments
I have Peacock premium thanks to Xfinity, I now get WWE Network for “free” as well or is it a separate charge like Showtime through Hulu?
Well alright then!
Should the NBC/WWE relationship date back almost 40 years to Saturday Night’s Main Event that was on NBC back in the 80’s?
Bah Gawd, that’s the NBC jingle!(It’s the one wrestling meme I remember from when a friend tried to get me to watch in college…but it applies to every situation.)
“The Peacock is in the ring and business has just picked up!”Side question, what’s The Peacock’s finishing move?Edit – My own guess: The Three Tone Taketown.
It’ll be tagging with the Gobbledygooker within weeks.
“It’s still real to me, dammnit!”
Does this mean ads?
You can get it on the ad-free tier too. You’ll need to pay $10 a month for Peacock Premium ad-free, and another $5 for WWE.
“NBCUniversal has a long-standing relationship with WWE that began nearly 30 years ago with Monday Night Raw on USA,”Are we just going to pretend Saturday Night’s Main Event never happened?
That was just NBC. NBC and Universal was were still singles competitors. They wouldn’t be put together as a tag team until the early aughts.
Well then NBCUniversal doesn’t have a 30-year relationship with WWE then, DO THEY?
I just feel bad for whoever has to tell Vince that The Office wasn’t really a documentary.
Well this is weirdly written, or maybe just a headline gone wrong.It’s a five year licensing deal. For a billion bucks. WWE Network keeps running outside of the US with plenty of subscribers.WWE took the network launch 5+ years ago to jump their stock price from the mid-teens to 50hsomething right now, more before the pandemic, and oh yeah, another billion dollar 5 year deal for a show on Fox. Seems like a pretty clear success? The on screen product is rough as hell often enough but the business side is rakin’ it in.
The product is horse shit from what little I’ve sampled. They can’t get out of their own way to make stars, they won’t let the talent be themselves, and they don’t listen to the audience. It took them 6 years and a pandemic shutting the live events down for them to finally turn a guy the fans rejected from good to heel. Tone. Deaf.
That’s pretty much been the E all along. Sometimes Vince will go kicking and screaming into change, but he mostly wants to dictate what is and isn’t good to the audience.
Just out of curiosity I tuned into RAW last night. A match ended by DQ in under a minute, then there was a run-in, then when we came back from commercial the match became a six-woman tag that ended in a countout, then after the next break it had been restarted again. Later Sheamus beat someone clean, and during the break the match was restarted as a 2-v-1 handicap against him. I didn’t make it the full three hours.
Sounds like a hot mess. In fact, it sounds almost as bad as AEW.
AEW doesn’t constantly start and restop matches, tends to have feuds with a beginning, middle, and end, actually builds up wrestlers instead of telling the audience “no, you don’t like this guy, you like THIS guy”, etc.
I suppose they get some of that right. But they get very wrong one of my favorite aspects of watching matches. Selling. I love all kinds of selling. HBK vs Hogan. Hilarious. Flair’s face plants. His top turnbuckle spots. Curt Hennig was probably my favorite. I LOVED Paige’s short career. She’d throw a headbutt and sell it hurting her own head. Loved it. Every time I saw the Young Sucks take a mild bump, then get up and throw a superkick I wanted to start smoking again just to put one out on a puppy.
You realize that there are other wrestlers on the show than just the one team right? Most of them sell quite a bit, at least as much as normal.
Their archives are amazing. You can likely spend years watching content there and none of it is WWF/E.
They were making a profit on the Network so this headline is kind of click bait
This ends up being a good deal for subscribers. Not only is it cheaper than the old Network, but now you also get Peacock’s other offerings as well. Its one of the rare deals where the customers win (which means it probably won’t last long but still)
The bad part of all this is this is another way that WWE gets a ton of money without actually trying to appeal to the people watching their shows. They’ve got the Fox deal which was mostly because Fox needed content as they were transitioning away from original comedy/drama, they’ve got the Saudi Arabia shows which are worth millions just to promote KSA and we’re not a brutal dictatorship I swear, and so the fact that ratings are down and live attendance was going down pre-Covid and just in general fans are not satisfied with the product doesn’t matter. Keep throwing Lana through tables, sure. Randy Orton vs. The Fiend forever. I mean I’ve been tempted to go back to the Network just for the Archives despite Vince’s general scumminess, and the Peacock deal may just be enough for me to justify it. I was engaged in a long journey through the WWF New Generation era and Nitro’s ascendance and would like to get back to that.
$4.99 WITH commercials. Is that there just to make people shell out the extra $5 for premium. You’re a fucking over-the-air, free broadcast network.
Dick Ebersol must still have a lot of pull at NBC.
Cool, I was thinking about getting Peacock; can I get a discounted “no wrestling” package?
We Peacock WWE!
All I want is the classic stuff!! 1985 to 1992 or I’m outta here. LOOK AT THAT BODY MCMAHON