Beginning April 1, Netflix will become the exclusive new home for WWE in India. And with it will end a 23-year “love affair” that Indian television viewers have had with the scripted sports entertainment powerhouse.
As part of Netflix’s long-term partnership with the property owned by Endeavor’s TKO, Indian fans will be able to stream all of WWE’s weekly flagship shows — Raw, NXT, and SmackDown — as well as WWE’s Premium Live Events including SummerSlam, Money in the Bank, Royal Rumble and the upcoming WrestleMania.
With a devoted fanbase, India has been one of WWE’s most engaged international markets pretty much since Ten Sports brought WWE programming to Indian television in 2002. And it was with Ten Sports that WWE remained, through the sports network’s sale to Subhash Chandra’s Zee Group in 2006 at a $228 million enterprise valuation, and subsequently to Sony Pictures Networks India (SPN) in 2016, in a deal worth $385m.
Sony broadcast events, marketed WWE aggressively, organized live shows, and built the brand locally.
Sony’s current five-year extended and expanded deal, announced in March 2020, was worth $190 million, per SportzPower’s understanding. The expanded partnership also included the rights to the WWE Network streaming service, which hosted thousands of hours of content that was made available for streaming to audiences in India exclusively through SPN’s OTT platform SonyLIV.
On the streaming side, Netflix has ambitious plans for the property, for which it secured global exclusive rights to WWE content in a $5 billion deal spanning 10 years in January 2024. Per the streamer, “Created for fans and presented live and in living colour, Netflix steps into the ring with WWE, showcasing serialized storytelling and high-adrenaline action three times a week (Raw, NXT, and SmackDown), 52 weeks a year. Blending the best of scripted content with unpredictable live entertainment, members in India will also enjoy live Hindi commentary.”
To commemorate the occasion, WWE chief content officer Paul “Triple H” Levesque made a special announcement video welcoming Indian fans to the “Netflix era”.
The streaming major further stated: “Through this partnership, WWE fans in India will have seamless and immersive access to all WWE programming. Netflix will also feature new and exclusive archival content from the WWE vault, and the ability to stream live or on demand.
“Through Netflix, WWE will reach even more fans with its unmatched combination of athleticism, drama, and larger-than-life storytelling.”
For Gaurav Banerjee, meanwhile, who took over at the helm of SPN in June 2024, these are certainly challenging times for his network’s sports broadcast ambitions. Left out of the “mainframe” by JioStar as far as big ticket cricket goes (read IPL, BCCI and ICC rights), SPN has now lost Indian television’s “safest bread and butter” sports content offering, which ensured viewer engagement through the year, to Netflix.
