By
Mike Johnson on 2024-01-23 09:58:00
Ari Emanuel and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson jouned Sqwauk the Box on CNBC this morning to talk all the big TKO and WWE news.
They noted the Raw deal has captured the stock market's attention. Ari Emanuel said that they are in line with the market's expectations of where the 'step up' would be and said they are with Netflix. He said this is the next iteration for Netflix as they move into live programming. He said he believes this is an important step for Netflix for their subscription and ad-supported services. He said it's a ten year deal for Raw and it's a big deal.
Emanuel said the international part of the deal gets Netflix Smackdown and the PLEs and it strengthens the brand globally.
They ran down the existing WWE and UFC deals.
They were asked if they were done for now and Johnson joked, "Just for a moment."
Emanuel said they have a lot of integration to get done after doing that work on the marketing and sponsorship sides. He said they have a lot of work to do.
Johnson said he's excited about the Netflix deal, describing it as 52 weeks a year "live" and that's a "lot of Rock raising the eyebrow" every week.
Returning to the Netflix deal, Ari was asked what this means for linear TV. He said we just saw massive NFL audiences so linear isn't going away but there is a push to streaming. They did that early on with UFC on ESPN+. This is the next step in that. They have linear with Smackdown and NXT. This is their streaming play. It's the golden player in streaming and is a great deal.
Johnson was asked if Netflix makes him think differently about whether he wants his projects placed. He said you want to have your finger on the pulse and things are rapidly evolving, so you want to have the best place for your projects. Emanuel jumped in and you have to go through the process to know where things are best served - theatrical, streaming, etc. It comes down to what you think is a theatrical project. Johnson said it's about whether you believe it can put butts in the seats in the theater. Johnson said if people spend their money to come to a theater, you want to send them home happy.
