After years of speculation over Netflix getting involved in live sport, the streaming giant entered the ring at the end of 2024 with two Christmas Day NFL games, and this year became the exclusive home of the WWE’s weekly shows and live events in more than 90 countries.
Whether the wrestling franchise constitutes live sport is a perilous discussion for another time, but for Netflix the brand is a major pillar of its live strategy. Rather than contending with the “extremely challenging” economics of full-season sports rights, Netflix Co-CEO Ted Sarandos said in the company’s Q4 2024 earnings call that it would pursue investments that brought sports brands “a big audience, a young audience, a more global audience than linear television.”
And viewing data released by Netflix suggests this strategy is bearing fruit. Citing VideoAmp figures, the streaming firm said its debut episode of WWE’s flagship show RAW drew a higher audience “than any other Monday Night RAW broadcast in the past five years.” However, the difference in methodologies between VideoAmp and Nielsen, which provided the ratings for WWE’s linear TV audience, makes this a case of comparing raw apples and pears.
But Netflix’s pivot to sports coincided with another change in direction for the streaming business, namely the introduction of ads. And by tracking the addressable audience size for advertisers looking to reach consumers interested in WWE, ad tech firm Quantcast was able to shine more light on the efficacy of the strategy.
Tracking interest across the open web, Quantcast found that in Q1 2025, the UK addressable audience for WWE RAW was 34 percent higher than in Q4 2024. And this marks the first time the ad tech company had looked into the addressable audience for wrestling, suggesting the transition to Netflix could indeed be putting the WWE on global advertisers’ radars.
Bouts of nostalgia
When measured up to Netflix’s strategy, the findings also suggest the streaming service is generating interest from a larger audience – but not necessarily younger. According to Quantcast, interest in the WWE among the 21–24 age group fell 40 percent between Q4 and Q1. Interestingly though, that decline was countered by an increase in interest among older audiences, with the 50–54 age group now 15 percent more likely to engage with the WWE than the UK average.
“This upward shift is likely driven by nostalgic fans,” comments Quantcast CMO Amit Kotecha, “those who grew up with WWE and are now re-engaging with the content, possibly due to legacy stars, classic rivalries resurfacing, or broader cultural nods to wrestling’s golden eras.”
And the show has grown up alongside its audience; WWE CCO Triple H has said the franchise will have less in the way of broadcast restrictions on Netflix – although swearing that sneaks out uncensored on the live stream is later bleeped out on the platform. But the unpredictable nature of wrestling does pose challenges for advertisers, as Domino’s discovered during a 2021 All Elite Wrestling broadcast on TNT, which cut to a Domino’s ad immediately after Chris Jericho was attacked with a pizza cutter. The company reportedly threatened to pull advertising from the show.
“It’s a whole new medium, and all these moments will be lessons for other brands,” says Quantcast’s Amit Kotecha. “It’s fascinating because it’s building another sport on a global scale. It’s got the reach, and it’s just going to gain in popularity.”
Playing the long game
Where Netflix has plenty of experience is in the documentary side of sports content, most notably Formula 1 series Drive to Survive, which has reportedly borne out the streaming company’s strategy of not only growing the sport’s audience, but changing its demographic and geographic makeup. According to Nielsen, the doc has driven the popularity of F1 in the US and the Middle East, particularly among female and younger viewers.
In February, reports emerged that Netflix was considering a bid for live F1 rights in the US, effectively using Drive to Survive as an on-ramp for audiences to watch live, ad-supported sport. Minal Modha,
“The WWE deal was attractive because it comes with weekly live content plus a whole host of shoulder content in the form of highlights, documentaries etc. so it means that Netflix is able to push people to both live and non-live content within the WWE ecosystem,” comments Modha. “Netflix already has an engaged F1 audience through Drive to Survive so the live would then be an extension to that.”
And with Netflix having changed its earnings reporting to focus on revenues and advertising instead of subscriber numbers, the streaming giant is increasingly looking to extract value from its viewers – and live sport “would be a great way to monetise them,” according to Modha.
“Live sport is one of the last pieces of content which can guarantee large audiences, obviously depending on the popularity of the competition,” she says. “The regularity of sport also means that audiences keep coming back, which is again attractive for advertisers.”
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