WWE, the major US professional wrestling promotion, has further expanded its international broadcast partnership with Netflix, which will now showcase top-tier ‘premium live events’ (PLEs) in Germany and Austria.
Content will be migrated to Netflix on April 1, but the partnership will begin in earnest on April 18 with the iconic 42nd annual WrestleMania event, also encompassing future PLEs such as SummerSlam, Money in the Bank, and the May 31 Clash in Italy, which will naturally be of interest given it takes place in the European time zone.
These broadcasts will also be available on demand with German-language commentary.
WWE’s flagship weekly programming, Raw, SmackDown, and NXT, will remain with linear broadcast partners BILD and ProSieben MAXX, with Netflix only taking on the rights to the PLEs that had previously been shown on the WWE Network direct-to-consumer service.
With this move, WWE Network will shut down, marking its final closure, having been phased out in favor of Netflix in all international markets.
The promotion has already notified WWE Network customers that they must migrate to Netflix to continue having access to WWE content going forward.
The initial Netflix-WWE agreement came into effect in January 2024, with Netflix now broadcasting the weekly Monday Night Raw WWE program across a large number of global territories, including the US and UK, while it also acts as the dedicated broadcaster of WWE's Friday Night SmackDown and NXT weekly shows outside the domestic market.
This expansion should not, therefore, come as a surprise, and simply comes as an add-on to Netflix's increasing hold on WWE action internationally.
Overall, Netflix's presence in the world of sports coverage has ramped up significantly over the last 12 months - the latest example of this came as the streaming giant secured record viewing numbers for its coverage of American football's NFL on Christmas Day (December 25).
The fixture between the Detroit Lions and Minnesota Vikings became the most-streamed NFL game in US history, drawing an average of 27.5 million viewers in the US.
