WWE and AEW likely nearing the negotiation period of their current U.S ‘Television Streaming’ deals
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WWE and AEW might start their TV rights negotiations soon.
The Television broadcasting rights are a very important term for any company dedicated to deliver entertainment among the fans through their shows. When it comes to pro-wrestling, then the value of these deals increase by a mile. This can be put together taking many points into consideration. First of all, if you’re a pro-wrestling company you undoubtedly will have a target audience of people aging from 18 upto 49 years, which is usually the target base-market for most of the broadcasters nowadays.
Speaking on the current Television Rights of both WWE and AEW, Brandon Thurston of Wrestlenomics broke down some valuable information regarding the negotiation period coming up for both the companies whose deal is set to expire in late 2024. Speaking about AEW, they recently moved to a much bigger American Pay-TV network, the TBS network for their weekly shows to air upon at. They were recently doing their shows on TNT network which had a smaller audience reach as compared to their current home.
TBS is usually the top rated cable network in terms of total audience. It is also the number 1 channel on cable among viewers aged 18-34 years. It is owned by Turner Entertainment Network (Warner Bros. Discovery). AEW’s current TV deal with TBS runs through December 2023 and allows 4 TV specials (PPVs) on a yearly basis. Dave Meltzer termed this deal as “increased TV compensation” among brands.
On the other hand, WWE airs their two flagship shows namely Monday Night Raw and Friday Night Smackdown on a weekly basis. The USA Network airs WWE Raw every Monday at 8/7c and same goes for Smackdown too in terms of starting time but with a much different broadcasting network, and that’s the Fox Network, which is usually a bigger place in terms of audience reach than the USA Network used for WWE Raw.
Back in 2019, WWE announced that they’ve come to a multi-year agreement deals with both the USA Network as well as the FOX network for the USA distribution of their flagship shows. This deal had an announced time-period of 5 years being effective from October 1, 2019.
We are in May 2022 and there’s still around 2.5 years left for the deals to get expired completely. However coming up to the negotiation part, WWE can extend up their agreements at any given time keeping the networks happy.
Brandon Thurston breaks down what could be the next step in these TV deals for both the companies
On the latest edition of Wrestlenomics YouTube channel, Thurston along with Chris Gullo gave some beautiful insights about what these broadcasting television deals mean to the investors and what did the networks want to see in their programming if they’re taking a particular program(or show) of any company under their umbrella. Talking about the next possible landing spots for both of the companies, Thurston said the Fox could renew their deal with WWE Smackdown as the show is doing good TV numbers and is often the top rated show for the night, sometimes behind NBC’s Shark Tank.
In a dream scenario, he added that what would it look like for AEW if Fox splits up and goes after securing Tony Khan’s own AEW? He said he doubts it but it would certainty drew some massive eyeballs upon the product than they’re doing it currently. He gave an comparative example about how WWE Smackdown was doing when they used to be on Fs1 prior coming full-time on Fox. Recalling that period, Smackdown was not doing over a million viewers that frequently as compared to huge numbers they’re generating right now. So, clearly the availability of network in the people’s household matter a lot.
He also provided a chart based on the new projected annual values of next TV Deals for both the wrestling companies.
Concluding with this stuff, I would like to say that seeing the growing trend of online content streaming platforms, you should not be shocked if they actually sign their shows to stream on platforms like Amazon Prime Video and some more of their subsidiaries.
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