Dave Meltzer Breaks Down WWE PLE Viewership On Netflix Through First Half Of 2026

Netflix publicly released the viewing figures for all of WWE's Premium Live Events that have taken place so far in 2026, and in the latest edition of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, Dave Meltzer broke down all the facts and figures, as well looking for trends to see how these figures might change in the second half of the year and beyond.

Meltzer made sure to note that, much like the previous reports, these number consist of views, not viewers, and that the United States isn't included in these figures. However, he did note that the number of homes where the shows are available has risen by nearly 17% in new countries.

As expected the top three shows were the Royal Rumble and both nights of WrestleMania 42, with the Rumble taking first place like last year while night two of WrestleMania pipped night one to second place. The Royal Rumble was the only PLE to go above 3 million views, coming in with 3.1 million views, though Meltzer doesn't see that small of an increase as much of a success considering how many more homes had access to the show. However, Meltzer would call the increase on viewership for WrestleMania somewhat of a success as night one did 2.7 million views, a 12.5% increase on last year, and night two did 3 million views even, a 7.1% increase on 2025 which had John Cena and Cody Rhodes in the main event, something Meltzer points out as being a big plus point as a lot of people expected Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson to be involved last year.

Meltzer rounded out by factoring in what the United States viewership would do for the Royal Rumble and WrestleMania considering the U.S. is WWE's strongest market. He believes the Royal Rumble would top out at around 4.65 million views, while night one and two of WrestleMania would have around 4.05 and 4.5 million views respectively.

As for the rest of the WWE Premium Live Events, the Elimination Chamber took fourth place with 1.9 million views, Clash In Italy placed fifth with 1.6 million views, Backlash followed up with 1.4 million views, and rounding out the list was Night of Champions with one million views even. Meltzer broke down the pros and cons for each show, and it seems that while some shows were up from last year, the aforementioned higher access to WWE programming does mean that interest in the product might be down. 

For example, Elimination Chamber being the same as the 2025 number is a plus as last year's event featured John Cena's infamous heel turn that saw The Rock and Travis Scott involved as well. However, Backlash was down from 1.5 million views in 2025 to 1.4 million in 2026, which would definitely be a negative as viewership dropped despite easier access. Due to scheduling, Meltzer compared Clash In Italy to the last Clash event, Clash In Paris in August 2025. The Italian event saw a 23% increase in views compared to the French card, with Meltzer crediting the increase on the star power for this year's event. Night of Champions is the biggest disappointment as only doing one million views might be equal to the 2025 event, but with easier access, it's actually a bigger drop than originally expected.

As for "WWE SmackDown" and "WWE NXT," the two WWE products that are on American television but Netflix internationally, "SmackDown" saw a big increase from 2025 of just under 26%, but again, due to the increase in homes that have access to the show, the only countries where "SmackDown" does anywhere near the numbers that "WWE Raw" does weekly are Canada and the United Kingdom. "NXT" however has suffered and is averaging between 175,000 and 200,000 views per show, with the recent Great American Bash event that went head-to-head with AEW x NJPW Forbidden Door 2026 doing somewhere in the region of 87,000 and 104,000 viewers.

Meltzer rounded out by stating that the only shows that topped what an average episode of "Raw" would do on Netflix were the two nights of WrestleMania 42 and the Royal Rumble. Other than that, only Canada and the United Kingdom really have strong views for WWE weekly television. He was also unclear if the next set of figures will be released in January or next July as Netflix recently announced that viewing figures will now be released annually.