NBCUniversal’s CEO says WWE programming is perfect for Peacock.
On Tuesday, January 26, United States WWE Network subscribers found out that their time with the WWE Network app is coming to an end as WWE will be migrating to Peacock which now owns the exclusive streaming rights of WWE in the United States.
The terms were not disclosed, but a person familiar with the deal told the Wall Street Journal that the deal runs for five years and is worth more than $1 billion.
“We feel great about the financials. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have done the deal. To have WrestleMania in particular — which is our Super Bowl — available [for no extra cost] on Peacock is quite different from other models you’re seeing,” said Nick Khan.
Now, Jeff Sell, the CEO of NBCUniversal, has weighed in on a recent conference call (via TheWrap) on WWE programming coming to the streaming service and why he feels it is a perfect match.
“(The streaming deal includes) thousands of hours of programming that were behind a paywall that we’ll now put up as a free service on Peacock, which will not only enhance the brand of WWE but we can monetize (through) advertising,” Shell said. “We get the events that were behind the paywall that used to be pay-per-view to drive our $4.99 premium version of Peacock.”
NBC and WWE have had a long-standing partnership spanning decades including WWE's first global expansion headed by Hulk Hogan and Saturday Night’s Main Event.
The current plan calls for WWE to migrate all of its content and subscribers over to Peacock on March 18 and host the first-ever pay-per-view of the Peacock era with WWE Fastlane on March 21.
If you would like to learn more about what this shake-up could potentially mean, Sean Ross Sapp recently spoke with Brandon Howard Thurston of Wrestlenomics in a discussion that you can see at this link.
