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While most of the headlines coming out of Mark Shapiro's Wednesday comments have revolved around Vince McMahon, the TKO COO did reveal an interesting fact about the initial WWE/Netflix talks.
Speaking at the Morgan Stanley Technology Media & Telecom Conference, Shapiro said that in the company's talks with the streaming giant, NXT was the original point of discussion.
The two sides eventually came to a five-year, $5.2 billion deal to bring Raw to Netflix domestically starting in January 2025 in addition to all WWE programming, including PLEs, to Netflix internationally.
Shapiro said with the deal, they "cracked the code" with bringing live sports to Netflix and that the partnership alone "de-risked" the UFC/WWE merger that spawned TKO.
Shapiro is bullish on the deal that was driven by WWE CEO Nick Khan and TKO CFO Andrew Schleimer, mainly because of his confidence in Netflix's marketing. He specifically mentioned WWE being highly visible when users log in to the service. He said it's a good neighborhood to be in with Netflix and WWE, NBCUniversal and WWE, and UFC with Disney/ESPN.
He said the plan with Netflix is to be "very innovative" with the partnership, but that things are in the laboratory phase with possibilities. He wants to bring innovation to the deal with new technology, discussing how when he was with ESPN, they did the same with any new properties that came to the network.
"Netflix is very incentivized to bring the same technology innovation and disruption to WWE and we welcome it," he said.
Other notes:
Speaking at the Morgan Stanley Technology Media & Telecom Conference, Shapiro said that in the company's talks with the streaming giant, NXT was the original point of discussion.
The two sides eventually came to a five-year, $5.2 billion deal to bring Raw to Netflix domestically starting in January 2025 in addition to all WWE programming, including PLEs, to Netflix internationally.
Shapiro said with the deal, they "cracked the code" with bringing live sports to Netflix and that the partnership alone "de-risked" the UFC/WWE merger that spawned TKO.
Shapiro is bullish on the deal that was driven by WWE CEO Nick Khan and TKO CFO Andrew Schleimer, mainly because of his confidence in Netflix's marketing. He specifically mentioned WWE being highly visible when users log in to the service. He said it's a good neighborhood to be in with Netflix and WWE, NBCUniversal and WWE, and UFC with Disney/ESPN.
He said the plan with Netflix is to be "very innovative" with the partnership, but that things are in the laboratory phase with possibilities. He wants to bring innovation to the deal with new technology, discussing how when he was with ESPN, they did the same with any new properties that came to the network.
"Netflix is very incentivized to bring the same technology innovation and disruption to WWE and we welcome it," he said.
Other notes:
- Shapiro said they have not yet made a combined sponsorship pitch for WWE/UFC deals, but the team to do that just came into place in January so it's early. He has a lot of confidence they will be able to grow the WWE sponsorship money in the same way they did with UFC, but possibly quicker given WWE's "best in class" standing.
- To that end, he reiterated they will focus on activating advertising inside the arena and that McMahon didn't do things like selling ads on the mat. He did say that UFC's ads on the Octagon mat are "arguably too muddy."
- He said the recent Anaheim WWE/UFC weekend was a great test for their dual threat approach of holding two shows in one venue and loved the "unplanned synergy" of athletes from both brands appearing on the other. They will look to replicate that, but it will be more of a long-term play with select situations.
- He added that WrestleMania will see a big influence from WME (Endeavor's talent agency) with "big celebs" coming.