TKO Executive Mark Shapiro Elaborates On How Deal Between WWE & Netflix Came About

Ahead of "WWE Raw" moving to Netflix in January 2025, TKO Group Holdings' COO Mark Shapiro shed some insight on the process of getting the deal done. The impending move for the Monday night flagship show was officially announced in January earlier as one of three network switches this year, with "WWE NXT" moving to The CW and "WWE SmackDown" to the USA Network. But Shapiro revealed during "The Main Event with Andrew Marchand" that "NXT" was the property they originally pitched to Netflix. 

"It started with Ari [Emanuel] and I trying to pitch Bela Bajaria [Netflix CCO] on NXT," he said. "That's all it was, and that graduated — to our liking of course — and matured into a conversation of going bigger and going global, and ultimately, that turned out to be Raw and, by the way, all the other properties internationally. So they're in it in a big way." 

He continued, "This wasn't an easy deal... It took them a lot of convincing by Bela, Ari, and me to Ted [Sarandos] directly and Spencer Neumann, the CFO, to get them all in on WWE and then they took a shot. They drove a hard bargain, they were terrific negotiators. The devil's in the details and there are a lot of details, and they held their ground, and I think they got a great deal for themselves as well."

WWE's media rights negotiations might be locked in now, but the status of the AEW's ongoing negotiations remains unclear. Speculation has run rife over the status of AEW's media rights this year as negotiations continue between Tony Khan and Warner Bros. Discovery. Furthermore, WBD is currently pursuing legal action over the NBA's new media rights agreement with Amazon Prime, though it remains to be seen if that situation will affect AEW.