Speaking during the Netflix Q4 2024 earnings call, co-CEO Ted Sarandos was full of praise for WWE and the great start Raw had on their streaming service, adding that the company will help to grow WWE’s popularity outside the United States.
Sarandos said that the day after Raw airs live, they see about a 25% jump in viewership coming from countries outside North America. Raw airs in the very early hours of the morning for European countries and later in the morning as you move to time zones in the east.
“All these years that WWE has been on television, very successful,” Sarandos told investors. “Good example about the kind of X factor that is Netflix, we did a press day to kind of introduce the press to the sport because the press didn’t pay much attention to it — to the sport until it got to Netflix. So they basically — we had a huge attendance of reporters from all over the world who were learning what this game, what this is about. So to me, I think that’s the first step of the X factor that is Netflix for that sport, and people will see that applied.”
He also compared the strategy they are using with WWE to that they used for Formula 1 with the Drive to Survive series which catapulted F1’s popularity in America.
“So I feel like we have the ability to do that with WWE. We give a bigger audience for it in the U.S. and blow it up outside of the U.S.,” he continued. “We also like it because for a sport, it also has a 40-person writer room. So it’s much closer to our core wheelhouse of creating and storytelling.”
Netflix also announced a price hike to their service in the United States after reporting nearly 19 million new subscribers to the service. This was the largest subscription jump ever during a three-month period and sends the total of worldwide subscribers to over 300 million.
The new prices are $7.99 per month with ads for the standard account, ad-free subscriptions are $17.99, and the premium plan with 4K is $24.99.
Discover more from Wrestling-Online.com
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.