Monday January 6 marks the highly-anticipated debut of WWE Raw on Netflix.
The streaming giants have reportedly paid a massive $5bn (£4bn) for a 10-year deal to air WWE’s flagship show.
For many, this marks a new era, breaking new ground and challenging preconceptions about what the true ceiling of professional wrestling is.
Speaking to The Athletic about the partnership, Netflix Vice President of unscripted and documentary series, Brandon Riegg, opened up about how the deal came to be.
“I think WWE president Nick Khan had really identified Netflix as probably his preferred partner years prior,” he explained.
“I told Nick, ‘It’s tough when you’re so fragmented as an entertainment programme’” referencing how the franchise has so many worldwide television deals with various broadcasters.
“But I think he took that on board and started positioning those deals around the world in as many countries as possible so that they would come up for renewal within a fairly short proximity.”
Since the deal’s announcement, much focus has been on how the WWE product may change or adapt while being aired on Netflix.
Lots of the company’s archival content has already been uploaded to the streaming platform, with fans raving about certain new features.
Such tweaks have whet appetites when it comes to what can be expected from live shows, with Reigg lifting the lid on three big opportunities for the brand.
Promoting wrestlers from other regions
One of the major benefits of bringing WWE Raw to Netflix is the sheer size of the audience opportunity.
Netflix boasts a 283 million-strong subscriber base, presenting WWE with the perfect foundation to attract new viewership.
“You’re now going to have a much bigger, more diverse audience out there. And so you’re going to get different types of feedback,” Reigg emphasized.
“I think because we’re in so many of these countries where they haven’t had a real distribution before, there’s an opportunity for them to build up wrestlers from major regions that they have not explored fully in the past.”
This is certainly familiar territory for WWE, with the company having previously steered into its large Indian following by putting the world heavyweight championship belt on Jinder Mahal.
That particular experiment yielded mixed results, but the options to further trial wrestlers from all corners of the world in top programming slots is abundantly clear.
More behind-the-scenes documentaries
“We already know that we’re going to look to explore other ways of people engaging with WWE fandom,” says Reigg. “Those could be more documentaries like a Drive To Survive.”
Netflix’s VP was the person responsible for commissioning the aforementioned F1 series, which has propelled the motorsport to new levels of popularity.
“I see the opportunity [with WWE] to be similar. I think we have a real opportunity here to grow the audience and the awareness of the brand.”
WWE is no stranger to creating documentaries to complement its live broadcast offering, having gone big last year on WrestleMania XL: Behind the Curtain.
“Netflix has this incredible reach and the trust of its members, who are willing to try things that they might not otherwise have sampled, and we’ve seen that time and again,” expanded Reigg when discussing further documentaries.
“We can give Raw a turbo-boost.”
Helping the Hollywood crossover
WWE wrestlers transitioning into acting is a well-trodden path.
From the likes of ‘Hollywood’ Hulk Hogan to more recent stars like Dwyane ‘The Rock’ Johnson, many of the company’s top superstars have made the jump into the movie business.
The challenge this has historically presented, however, is the split between filming and wrestling commitments. Which is often tricky to juggle.
As Reigg divulged: “We’ve seen this with people like John Cena or Dave Bautista, right? There is precedent for talent going from being in the ring to parlaying that into TV and film.”
Netflix can help smooth this transition, ensuring any film commitments are aligned with WWE scheduling, so characters can be written out of storylines as and when they’re shooting Netflix originals.
From increased fandom across the globe, greater in-depth storytelling around centralized programs, and improved relations between wrestling and Hollywood, it seems WWE’s Chief Content Officer Paul ‘Triple H’ Levesque and co. are fully set to break the next frontier in sports entertainment.