9 months ago
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The wrestling world is still trying to settle down after the big news yesterday, where WWE not only revealed that Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson had rejoined the promotion as a member of TKO's board of directors, but that they had agreed to a 10-year, $5 billion deal with Netflix. The agreement will see "WWE Raw" airing on the streaming platform starting in 2025, while "SmackDown," "NXT," and WWE PLEs will also stream on the service internationally while maintaining their deals with USA, CW, and Peacock in the United States.
Shortly after the announcements were made yesterday morning, Johnson and TKO/Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel sat down with "CNBC" to discuss the Netflix deal. Emanuel confirmed many of the particulars of the deal, and that there was still work to do in regards to preparing for the WWE/Netflix partnership. Much like everyone else involved with the deal, Emanuel was quite positive about it, believing it was important for WWE, and in some ways more important for Netflix.
"All I say is we're in line with the market's expectations of where our step up would be," Emanuel said. "And the only other thing I would say is it's Netflix. They're the global leader, they're the best...company with regard to sports entertainment. Whether they've done it with Formula 1, whether they've done it with Tour de France, and this is kind of the next iteration as they go to live and start moving into live [content]. I think this is an important step for them...in their subscription service. So I think life is important for them, yes."
If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit "CNBC" and provide a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription
