How WWE pitched Netflix

When WWE went to Netflix about a possible agreement, how did officials for the sports entertainment company position the pitch?

“It’s up your alley.”

At the time, Netflix wasn’t an outlet for live sports, and that was a “big hill to climb,” is the way Endeavor and TKO President and COO Mark Shapiro described the initial approach.

TKO, WWE’s parent company, talked to Netflix about NXT, but they eventually landed a 10-year, $5 billion deal for flagship “Monday Night Raw,” which makes its Netflix debut Jan. 6.

“Why don’t you dip your toe in? It’s not really live sports,” Shapiro recalled onstage this week at Leaders Week London. “It’s scripted entertainment. It’s fictional. … It’s very serial in nature. It’s every single week.

“It’s shown on Peacock to not just be a huge driver for acquisition but incredible on the retention side of things, because it’s every single week, and therefore churn is reduced, at least given the WWE fans in universe.”

Shapiro acknowledged that the deal took a lot of convincing by WWE.

Since making the deal, Netflix has put more than a toe into live sports.

“We’re expanding into live,” said Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters during the company’s prerecorded earnings call Thursday afternoon, citing Tyson/Paul (Nov. 15), the NFL doubleheader on Christmas Day and the upcoming WWE deal.

Shapiro described the deal as “a great move for us. It’s a first move. It’s a leadership move. It’s an innovative move,” noting that it should give investors the confidence that “the growth is going to be there on the media rights from that standpoint.”

As for any trepidation about being the first recurring live sports property on Netflix, WWE seemingly has none because it doesn’t rely on another company to handle production.

“We’re turnkey.” WWE Chief Content Officer Paul “Triple H” Levesque said earlier this month. “We do everything we do, and then we just deliver the product. They turn on the signal; we deliver it out. It’s one of the key wonderful things about WWE. Not everybody is in that place.”

Netflix and WWE are still working on the length of the show. RAW has been three hours since 2012 until its recent trim to two hours for its final months on USA.