Monday Night RAW Is Moving To Netflix In January 2025
Wow. This is truly the end of an era.
Monday Night RAW is the longest running episodic show on television (as Michael Cole always loves to reminds us), and has been on television every week since 1993, but starting in January 2025 - RAW will be exclusive to Netflix.
Truthfully, I don't even know how to react to this news, because the concept of a live three hour wrestling program on Netflix (and only Netflix) is just hard to compute - but my gut says I don't like it. Our monthly Netflix bills have been creeping up and up and up for years now, and the fact that they're paying WWE $5 billion over the next 10 years makes me think the price gauges are only getting started. Could this mean no commercials, though - or is Netflix cookin those in to make up for that $5bil price tag?
Also - Peacock still has the rights to "Premium Live Events" (aka pay-per-views) and the WWE's whole video library....you'd imagine Netflix may want those in the future to have the whole WWE package, no? Or possibly the UFC rights that are up next year? Maybe they wanna double dip with TKO? It'll be interesting to monitor over the next few years.
Hopefully Netflix's interface is better than Peacock's - I'm still so fucking annoyed every time I try to find old shows on there. To watch something like the 2007 Royal Rumble, you have to select the Royal Rumble, Season 20 Episode 1 (because that was the 20th Royal Rumble in history). It makes no sense, and Peacock has been listening to YEARS of complaints from wrestling fans about it, but refuse to do a damn thing. At least their TED show rocked.
Oh, and side note in this whole press release/announcement: Dwayne Johnson has been appointed to the TKO Board of Directors and given full ownership of "The Rock" name....
Expect "The Rock" merch to start getting produced Spaceballs style now!
Roots of Fight and Under Armour probably have new lines already in development.