WWE Clash in Paris 2025 Draws Weak Numbers on Netflix

The Clash in Paris Premium Live Event had a lot of memorable moments and was deemed a huge success. However, it appears that the event didn’t do as well when it came to viewership.

While speaking on Wrestling Observer Radio, Dave Meltzer talked about the weak streaming numbers for WWE’s Clash in Paris on Netflix. The show did not reach the weekly top 10 in any major wrestling country.

In every market he checked, Friday Night SmackDown had more viewers. Even though SmackDown did very poorly on TV in the United States, it still beat Clash in Paris on Netflix around the world.

Normally, SmackDown gets between 800,000 and one million viewers on Netflix. Clash in Paris had far fewer, making it one of the weakest events on the service. The most recent Saudi Arabia event did over one million viewers and even topped SmackDown. Meltzer said that European WWE shows often underperform on Netflix even though WWE is very popular in that region.

“When we looked at country to country, the one thing is in the countries where WWE is the strongest, the SmackDown show, which did not do great in the United States at all—actually did almost a record low—but the SmackDown show on Friday night beat Clash in Paris in every one of those markets. And I did not find one market—I could be, you know, I didn’t check every single country in the world—but I checked every major wrestling country and there wasn’t one where Clash in Paris even made the top 10 for the week. SmackDown made it in a couple countries.

So SmackDown on that platform usually does 800,000 to a million. So this did less than that. So, you know, not a good number… much lower than I—again, we don’t know the number for the Revolution show, and I think the Revolution show probably did worse than Clash in Paris just judging from, you know, other things that I’ve researched on it for comparisons.

But Clash in Paris did do—aside from that—probably the lowest because the last Saudi show did like a million and was ahead of SmackDown. This one was, you know, below SmackDown. So not a big number for this show compared to the others, for whatever reason. The one thing that I’ve noticed is when it comes to WWE, the European shows on Netflix do not perform nearly as well. It shouldn’t make a difference, but it’s happened often enough to where it’s very clear it does make a difference.”

Meltzer also explained how Netflix counts its numbers. He said the views are not real but the hours are. Netflix divides the total hours watched by the length of the show to get a view count, which can make the numbers look bigger than they really are.

WWE shows like Raw, SmackDown, and NXT add to the confusion because they are uploaded twice: once as the original live version with commercials and again as a shorter version without commercials.

“They manipulate the views. We’ve already seen that. The views are fake. The hours are real. It’s easy to track. It’s not difficult at all. Because that’s how it’s tracked. It’s tracked by hours. And then they do the manipulation. They use the hours—and the hours are done—you divide the hours by the runtime. That’s how Netflix does all of its things for all of its shows. The only difference is Raw, SmackDown, and NXT have dual times. They have the live time, whatever it is in between, and then they have the commercial-free time that they put up later. Every other show on Netflix, every single other show on Netflix, I’ve done the math. The math is perfect.”

Even though Clash in Paris had great matches and an excited live crowd, the streaming numbers were weak. This shows that the energy in the arena did not carry over to online viewers. If WWE wants better results on Netflix, they may need to change how they promote European Premium Live Events to fans around the world.

Do you think WWE’s European events struggle on streaming because of timing, marketing, or fan interest? Should WWE change its approach to boost viewership? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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