Media rights are easily the biggest revenue stream for top wrestling companies like WWE. That’s increasingly been the case in recent years. But rarely have we ever seen the contracts that commit major media partners and wrestling companies to those all-important deals.
Through the WWE merger shareholder lawsuit in Delaware’s Court of Chancery, WWE’s deals with NBCUniversal granting rights to Monday Night Raw and Smackdown to Fox — each from late 2019 to late 2024 — are now fully public, without any redactions.
What the deals paid WWE
The Raw contract is dated May 30, 2018 and covers October 1, 2019 through September 30, 2024. The written agreement confirms what was long-reported: the five-year contract paid WWE an average of $265 million per year for Raw to air on USA Network, with fees escalating over the years. The rates of escalation are in round numbers, increasing by exactly $15 million each year, and totaling $1.325 billion over five years.
The SmackDown-Fox agreement is an executed term sheet, effective June 25, 2018, also covering October 1, 2019 through September 30, 2024. The fees confirm the long-reported average annual value of $205 million, also escalating annually, but by $12.5 million each year rather than $15 million. The five-year total was $1.025 billion.
Non-compete clauses, closing out wrestling competitors
These contracts confirm WWE had exclusivity clauses prohibiting their broadcast partners from airing other pro wrestling programs.
NBCU agreed not to air any other wrestling content on its cable networks or “any of such NBCU Cable Networks’ vertical websites.” The contract defines a competitor as “any person or entity that primarily produces or distributes programming consisting mainly of wrestling matches between professional wrestlers, as that term is commonly understood in the television industry.”
The clause does carve-out the possibility of NBCU broadcasting lucha libre or other wrestling content produced outside the U.S., but only on Spanish-language network NBC Universo. The deal also acknowledges that MMA program Combate Americas was not a competitor by the contract’s definition.
Possibly related to a similar clause in the agreement WWE had to air its monthly pay-per-view events and distribute its library on Peacock: memorably, MLW’s broadcast on the Reelz cable network was blacked out in Peacock’s simulcast stream. MLW’s 2023 antitrust lawsuit alleged that clauses just like the ones we see in these contracts existed in WWE’s media deals, which MLW argued was a monopolistic practice.
The Smackdown-Fox agreement contains a similar provision. It states that none of the Fox networks distributing the program “will exhibit, include advertising for, or otherwise promote, any professional wrestling content, products or services other than WWE.” The Fox version includes its own carve-outs, acknowledging these things don’t apply: MMA, amateur or collegiate wrestling, and other combat sports including UFC, Bellator, and Glory kickboxing.
It’s unclear if MLW being distributed on Fox’s streaming platform Tubi would have violated this provision. MLW’s deal with Tubi, which was cancelled just before being announced, was a central issue in the lawsuit that was settled with $20 million going to MLW.
Creative control
For both agreements, WWE retained final creative and editorial control over Raw and Smackdown. In the Raw contract, NBCU had consultation rights on production and creative elements but the agreement is clear that WWE’s control was final, provided it was not exercised in a way that violated the network’s standards and practices. WWE was also disallowed from making material changes to the basic concept and format of the program without NBCU’s approval. In other words, for example, Raw could not be changed into merely a highlight show of Smackdown; NBCU signed up to pay for a flagship weekly show with new content.
The Fox provision is similar but includes language that aims to protect Fox’s many important relationships with sports properties. In the event that WWE reasonably believed its content could have an adverse effect on those sports relationships, WWE was required to discuss that content with Fox before including that content in an episode. No denigrating the NFL, MLB, NASCAR, or other major Fox partners, apparently.
Notably, these are the contracts that were in place throughout the Covid-19 pandemic. I wrote at the time about my belief, which seems confirmed here, that as long as WWE continued to produce new content on a weekly basis, despite the fact that there were no fans in the seats, and despite the fact that viewership fell considerably, WWE’s payments would stay intact. And there were no specific viewership benchmarks that these programs had to meet, even as ratings suffered without a live crowd.
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Promoting WWE and crossover opportunities
The Fox deal in particular obligated Fox to promote Smackdown “in a manner consistent with how it supports its major sports league partners.” The NFL, MLB, and NASCAR are named. WWE branding and tune-in promotion was to appear across all Fox-controlled platforms, including broadcast, cable (like FS1), digital, and social media.
Fox agreed to promote WWE inside other Fox Sports broadcast windows, specifically certain NFL Thursday Night Football time slots and NFL games on Sunday — among the most coveted placements in U.S. television. Fox also agreed to promote WWE during college football games, MLB, college basketball, and NASCAR.
WWE and Fox would work together to identify opportunities for WWE talent to appear on Fox reality shows, scripted shows, and, yes, Fox News, and sports studio shows.
The promotion value was so significant a dollar figure was attached to it: at least $125 million over the course of the term, or a minimum of $20 million annually. WWE’s rights payments were separate.
NBCU made certain, if less significant guarantees. NBCU’s marketing commitments were handled through the network’s “Symphony” cross-promotional initiative, with one specific commitment per year. The details were left to NBCU’s discretion.
Ancillary content
The Fox deal required the network to produce, at its own expense, two weekly half-hour promotional programs. The first was described as a Saturday late night show airing on Fox broadcast network (which didn’t happen) or on FS1 (which did), focusing on storylines to promote WWE programming. Despite appearing in the signed contract, this show apparently never materialized.
The second show is described as a studio program airing initially on FS1 to emphasize behind-the-scenes material. The studio show is what became WWE Backstage, which debuted in October 2019, soon after Smackdown premiered on Fox. The first two episodes delivered 597,000 and then 426,000 viewers. Then the show never surpassed 200,000 again. It disappeared by June 2020, just seven months into the deal.
The Fox deal also allowed for up to four annual pre-shows on Fox or FS1, airing right before major pay-per-views like WrestleMania, Royal Rumble, Summerslam, and Survivor Series. These were optional. They never happened.
Fox and WWE also contemplated negotiating Saturday prime time live event specials on Fox. Those didn’t happen but Fox did end up airing Tribute to the Troops and King of the Ring Countdown specials in 2021 on Fox broadcast.
Certain documentaries and “Best of” specials also aired on FS1 at various times throughout the deal.
The Fox deal’s discussion of so much content that either didn’t materialize or launched but disappeared less than one year into the deal may point to loftier aspirations than the counterparties were able to realize. WWE had never had one of its flagship weekly programs on a broadcast network of Fox’s stature before. The network and WWE may have believed the deal would be more transformational and would have delivered higher viewership than it did. It should be noted, though, that Covid-19 took away live audiences just under six months into the deal and those crowds didn’t return until July 2021, a period that covered about one-quarter of the whole tenure on Fox.
Re-air rights and YouTube clips
The proliferation of clips from Raw and Smackdown appearing quickly online, published by WWE’s official accounts, naturally raises questions about how that affects these valuable TV deals, particularly when those digital clips generate a fraction of the revenue. Terms about how much and when such videos can be published online are spelled out.
Both agreements gave the media partner the right to air re-runs of the episodes for a window. Until the following episode’s premiere, Fox could re-air each Smackdown episode up to two times each on each of FS1, FS2, and Spanish language channel Fox Deportes. NBCU had similar rights to rerun Raw on Spanish language Universo.
Both contracts carve out that repeats could not run at the same time as Raw or Smackdown or Sunday in primetime, when pay-per-views aired.
The agreements also provide guidance on how video clips could be shared online, including on YouTube and social media. Under the Raw contract, beginning at midnight immediately following the broadcast, WWE could publish clips online, but no more than 50% of the total content of any given episode. And 80% of those clips had to be no longer than three minutes.
The Fox provision is similar and specifies that any clips posted before the program ended at 10 pm could not be longer than one minute, and could not total more than 10 minutes. Longer clips could (and were) posted after the show went off the air, with certain restrictions, including that no more than 50% of the total show could be put online and 80% of the total number of clips could not be longer than three minutes.
Fox had exclusive broadcast rights to WWE
One provision in the Fox term sheet states Fox would be “the exclusive broadcast (i.e., free over-the-air television) partner of WWE programming,” adding as explicit example that Raw could not air on NBC during the term. Carved out of that, however, was NBCU’s (unused) right to air Spanish-language replays of Raw on Telemundo.
Notably, it wasn’t until after the Fox deal expired that Saturday Night’s Main Event airing on NBC (initially, until it was moved exclusively to Peacock) became part of NBCU’s rights when it bought Smackdown from 2024 to 2029. And it wasn’t until the same term that NXT started on lower-profile broadcast network CW.
Renewal negotiation rights
Fox and NBCU each had an exclusive negotiating window. Either network was required to tell WWE in writing by March 15, 2023 whether it was interested in renewing. We don’t have information to show what exactly happened related to Fox, which did not renew. According to deposition testimony, we know NBCU requested and got an extension of the exclusivity period, because March 15, 2023 landed right in the middle of WWE’s M&A negotiating process. Presumably, NBCU wanted to know who they were negotiating with and preferred to hold off until the merger was complete.
As written, if the incumbent didn’t renew by April 30, 2023, WWE would be required to present the partner with a final written offer. If the partner didn’t accept the offer within 15 days, then the rights could go on the open market but with the incumbent retaining the right to match any other offer (“right of first refusal”) for up to three months.
Interestingly, the Raw contract reserved WWE’s right to offer NBCU either a two-hour or a three-hour version of Raw as part of a renewal. It suggests WWE was contemplating whether to pull back on the often-lamented long duration of Raw. Ultimately, Raw went to Netflix where it has a flexible duration often under three hours.
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Brandon Thurston has written about wrestling business since 2015. He operates and owns Wrestlenomics.