Mark Shapiro Admits WWE RAW Netflix Deal Was Difficult to Secure

The news that Monday Night RAW is moving to Netflix has sparked significant discussions in the pro wrestling community, as the shift to the streaming giant could lead to many changes. Mark Shapiro, who was involved in the negotiations, acknowledged that securing the deal with Netflix for WWE RAW was challenging.

It was reported that WWE and Netflix confirmed their huge deal to move Monday Night RAW to the streaming service, which will begin in January 2025. The reported deal, valued at over $5 billion for a duration of ten years, shocked fans all over the world and the deal was announced on January 23rd.

Mark Shapiro, the President of TKO/Endeavor, appeared on The Main Event with Andrew Marchand and talked about how difficult it was to make the deal between WWE and Netflix happen. He explained that it took a lot of convincing from himself, TKO/Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel, and Netflix’s Chief Content Officer to get Netflix’s CEO, Ted Sarandos, and CFO, Spencer Neumann, to agree.

Shapiro said that while Netflix isn’t rushing to add more live sports, they decided to take a chance on WWE because they believed it could bring in more subscribers, help keep them, and even allow them to raise prices and sell more ads. He praised Netflix for being smart negotiators and making sure they got a good deal.

Mark Shapiro also made it clear that Netflix isn’t planning to slowly add more sports through WWE; this deal was just a smart move they decided to make.

”No, I don’t think they’re jumping into that any time quick (Shapiro responded to the question of if he thinks Netflix will bring more live sports into their portfolio) and I will tell ya, this (WWE on Netflix) wasn’t an easy deal. Ted Sarandos is amazing and just an incredible track record of success and frankly, driving change in the business along with Reed (Hastings) and you know, Bela (Bajaria) has just completely reorganized the content team there. Showing the willingness to take chances and big swings and not afraid of risks and has a $17 billion dollar budget behind her. So, they’re in it. If they think there’s something out there, premium, that’s going to bring in subs and keep subs and allow them to raise prices and sell advertising, they’ll jump in so in that respect, if sports is going to do it at a reasonable price, they’ll do it.

But there’s no behind the scenes strategy. Wink, wink — we’re getting into WWE which is close to sports and then we’ll get some NFL games and then we’ll really open up the floodgates. It took ‘em a lot of convincing by Bela and Ari (Emanuel) and me to Ted directly and Spencer Neumann, the C.F.O., to get them all in on the WWE and then they took a shot. But guess what? They drove a hard bargain, they were terrific negotiators. The devil’s in the details and there are a lot of details and they held their ground and I think they got a great deal for themselves as well.”

Triple H is also confident that fans will make the transition to Netflix without any concerns. Regardless, we will have to wait and see how the WWE product will grow once they shift to Netflix in January next year.

Do you believe WWE will change for the better after their move to Netflix next year? Let us know in the comments section below!