Steve Carrier on January 21, 2025
WWE’s Monday Night Raw is proving to be a massive hit on Netflix, pulling in some eye-opening numbers in its first week on the streaming giant. Co-CEO Ted Sarandos revealed during today’s Netflix earnings call that Raw brought in 5 million views, doubling its traditional TV audience and solidifying Netflix’s gamble on live wrestling.
“WWE is off to a great start,” Sarandos said. “Our first week, we drew about 5,000,000 views, which is about two times the audience that Monday Night Raw was getting on linear television, pretty consistent with how we modeled it, how we’d hoped to build the audience for the league.”
The numbers didn’t just spike during the live broadcast—Sarandos also pointed out a major jump in next-day viewing. “We also saw that the non-live viewing, so in the day after the live event, our viewing grew by 25%, mostly outside of the US time zones. So this is a new viewing in the UK and Canada, Mexico, Australia, Brazil—particularly big markets.”
But international fans aren’t the only ones tuning in. Raw’s U.S. audience is thriving as well. “In the US, our viewing of Monday Night Raw was as big as the Monday Night Raw viewing has been in five years,” Sarandos confirmed. “So we’re super thrilled about how that’s going and how that’s coming out.”
Sarandos also made it clear that Netflix is thinking about long-term sustainability, especially when it comes to big sports deals. “We are going to be mindful of the bottom line… it’s really important that those economics do work,” he said. “We want to be able to bring value to the sport like we have to date with WWE, but that has to be reflected in the deal as well.”
With Raw thriving on its new platform, it’s clear WWE’s move to Netflix is paying off—but the real test will be whether they can keep this momentum going.
Do you think WWE Raw on Netflix is the future of wrestling, or is this just a hot start? Let us know your thoughts in the comments!
January 21, 2025 7:14 pm
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