It’s WrestleMania season, so things are frantic in the WWE Universe – but Stephanie McMahon, WWE’s Chief Brand Officer, still carved out some time to join Moose & Maggie Monday to discuss WWE’s newest deal: licensing the streaming rights to the WWE Network in the United States to NBC Universal’s new Peacock service.
“This year, WrestleMania is two nights, so it is certainly atypical, and I think the pandemic, plus the fact we just did a huge licensing deal for our WWE Network content on NBC’s Peacock, adds an extra layer of trying to keep everything going seamlessly,” Stephanie laughed.
WWE and NBC Universal have long been partners, dating back to Saturday Night’s Main Event airing on NBC in the 1980s, and currently have a deal that has both Monday Night Raw and WWE NXT airing on USA Network.
Now, with Peacock, the WWE’s OTT streaming service has been amalgamated into the fold, giving WWE fans even more for their money.
“From a fan perspective, there are three different tiers on Peacock – a free tier, an ad-supported tier for $4.99 a month, and an ad-free tier for $9.99 a month,” McMahon explained. “WWE Network was comparable at $9.99 a month, but not only do you get all the WWE content, you get everything on their service. It’s really a huge content offering for our fans, and if they wanted to pay less and get the same content with ads, they can.”
The WWE Network launched in February 2014, just in time for WrestleMania XXX, and now, seven years later, the official move to Peacock is set for the first week in April – just ahead of WrestleMania 37, which, like last year’s event, will be held over two nights, on April 10 and 11.
It’s a long evolution into the SVOD and OTT world from the original WWE 24/7 On Demand services that launched on cable systems in the mid-2000s, but staying ahead of the curve is what has helped WWE become, and remain, the dominant global brand in sports entertainment.
“Seven years ago, we were one of the first to launch. Vince’s philosophy – yes he is my dad, but Vince McMahon, chairman and CEO, is also my boss – is to always be ahead of the curve, and he was credited with helping pioneer pay-per-view in the 1980s,” Stephanie said of the beginnings of the service. “We were pretty far down the pike with a linear deal (back in 2013) but they wanted to lock up our rights for 10 years. We did more research and found our audience was five times more likely to watch online video, so we decided to do that, and did it in eight short months thanks to an incredible team. Now, here we are, slightly ahead of the curve again, licensing that content on Peacock.”
Long gone is the choice between Netflix and Hulu, as Peacock is one of several new services to launch over the last 15 months, a group that includes Discovery Plus, Disney Plus, and CBS’ rebranding or All Access into Paramount Plus, among others.
Streaming is only growing more popular in all realms – as evidenced by some of the changes in the next NFL media rights deal that was broken by Craig Carton last week – and WWE, which has long been the standard-bearer in sports-entertainment but has a lesser track record in other business ventures, sees the Peacock move as the best of both worlds for the company and their fans in the United States.
“From WWE’s perspective, we’re not a technology company, so it doesn’t make sense for us to continue to invest in the tech side of the WWE Network, when all of these major players have this expertise,” Stephanie said. “It makes sense for us to focus on the content side of things and have that much more reach. Over 30 million people have already signed up for Peacock, and that’s only growing.”
And perhaps that means more synergy and sponsorship opportunity for WWE, which can ultimately lead to a stronger product?
“We have a lot of focuses internationally with our global localization strategy, but in the States, we’re focusing on our content rights and growing that space, and amplifying our sponsorships,” Stephanie said. “We want to go to market with more of a league-type approach than the media approach we’ve been dealing with.”
Listen to Stephanie McMahon’s entire segment with Moose & Maggie below!
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