According to Netflix’s first-party viewing data, most WWE premium live events had higher viewership so far in 2026 versus the prior year. That includes increases for WrestleMania by 13% and 7% across the two nights.
The degree to which we should account for any VPN viewership that may be happening in the U.S. is anyone’s guess. Since September 2025 in the U.S., WWE PLEs moved from Peacock to the ESPN Unlimited app. Availability of the PLEs on ESPN costs $29.99 per month if you don’t already get access to the app as part of your pay TV service, which is a significant price increase versus Peacock’s price points, enough to motivate many to use VPN services to mask their IP address and watch the PLEs on Netflix, where those events are streamed in most regions outside the U.S.
If VPN viewing is having a significant distortive effect on how the PLEs are measured, I would expect to see lesser positive differences in future year-over-year comparisons against events that happened in September 2025 and after. We should see data on those early next year.
This data was made available as part of Netflix’s every-six-months “What We Watched” report. Note that the viewing data indicated in grey represents later viewing measured for the given event that happened in later six-month periods.
For the second year in a row, the single day of Royal Rumble was again more highly viewed than either individual day of WrestleMania. It’s somewhat surprising given Royal Rumble is thought of as WWE’s second-biggest event of the year after WrestleMania.
A comparison of viewing on Smackdown is more encouraging as a measure of WWE’s popularity on the platform and suggests that VPN use isn’t having an especially strong effect on this data.
Across the first six months of 2026, Smackdown’s global views are up nearly every week compared to the same week in the prior year. There are plausible hedges here, too. This measurement could be helped by WWE content including Smackdown launching in new regions sometime after the initial January 2025 premiere. India and France are at least two of those regions.
Reflecting that, Smackdown’s average in the first quarter of the year was up from the prior year: averaging 1 million in Q1 this year, versus 800,000 last year. But the average for Q2 was flat: 900,000 in both 2026 and 2025. The values here are rounded to the nearest 100,000 because the data Netflix provides publicly is no more granular.
For Raw, Q1 was down in 2026, though that is highly skewed by the debut episode in January 2025. But Q2 was down also, from 3.0 million in 2025 to 2.8 million in 2026.
Note: This part of the report has been corrected. The report initially, incorrectly, showed that Q2 was slightly up in 2026.
NXT appears to be completely flat across time, averaging 200,000 in the first two quarters of this and last year. But Netflix’s data, rounded to the nearest 100,000, makes it difficult to understand changes in viewership over time for programs with smaller audiences like NXT.
Although it’s not unusual for unscripted or reality-style programming to decline in Season 2, WWE Unreal’s second season was down 43% from Season 1. That’s a percentage difference measured after each season had about the same amount of time to gather viewing. In this case, we’re comparing viewing data for Season 2 after 161 days from its release: 2.8 million global views. Season 1 measured at 4.9 million global views when measured 155 days after its release date.
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Although the scheduled trial was cancelled when the parties notified the court that the lawsuit was settled in principle, there are many exhibits and portions of deposition transcripts that were cited in the parties’ pre-trial briefs, which in this notice — filed with the court today — I argue are subject to the presumption of public access. The court records challenged in this notice are not currently available to the public.
The parties and any interested non-parties will have an opportunity to motion to maintain confidential treatment of the material challenged in this notice.
Read the full Notice of Challenge filing and its exhibits using the link below. (I redacted only my personal phone number that appears in the filing.)
Magistrate Judge Patricia Barksdale made a ruling today in response to AEW’s motion to seal Ryan Nemeth’s three wrestler contracts from public view. I had opposed AEW’s motion to seal the contracts.
The judge ruled that AEW can refile redacted versions along with a new motion to seal. AEW can’t fully seal the contracts, as the company had requested. I can then file another opposition at that point, if I believe the redacted versions black out too much information. AEW also has the option of withdrawing the contracts as exhibits, but that would mean the judge can’t consider them as part of AEW’s effort to force the dispute with Nemeth to be handled in arbitration in Florida.
If AEW wants the court to consider the contracts, the company has to file a new motion and redacted versions within 21 days after Nemeth puts his first filing on the docket, which he hasn’t yet. Or, if he continues not to appear, AEW has until 111 days after the date of its June 5 complaint, which is September 24.
The judge denied my request for access to file electronically. I have to continue to submit any future filings by physical mail.
This action is in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida. The federal court district covers Jacksonville, where AEW is headquartered.
I take no position on the merits of the dispute between AEW and Nemeth. I’m only seeking public access to the contracts. My arguments and AEW’s can be read more fully in the filings linked below.
As POST Wrestling reported last month, All Elite Wrestling and Tony Khan filed a petition in federal court to require Ryan Nemeth to litigate their ongoing dispute in an arbitration forum in Florida, as opposed to an arbitration forum in California.
The underlying dispute between AEW and Nemeth relates to Nemeth’s February 2025 lawsuit alleging, among other claims, that he was blacklisted from the wrestling industry after a confrontation with Phil Brooks (CM Punk). (It’s worth noting Nemeth has performed on television for TNA throughout 2025 and 2026, including this past Thursday.) In April 2025, AEW and Nemeth agreed to move the dispute into arbitration. AEW cited a provision in his wrestler contract with AEW, requiring any disputes to be resolved in private arbitration. I reported on these developments for POST Wrestling at the time, when it was moved to arbitration and before that when the case was filed by Nemeth.
But more than a year later there are still disagreements over just where arbitration will take place. AEW again points to Nemeth’s wrestler contract, which they say requires arbitration in Florida with AEW’s chosen arbitration mediator, JAMS. Nemeth, who resides in California, is apparently attempting to arbitrate in his home state. So AEW went back to federal court in Florida last month, asking the court to order that the dispute be mediated in arbitration in Florida, not any other state. Nemeth has yet to submit a filing in this new action. According to AEW, Nemeth has claimed to JAMS that California’s labor laws void the agreement to arbitrate in Florida. AEW argues that California law cannot apply, again citing the contract. AEW is also asking the court to rule that arbitration should proceed under general arbitration standards, rather than those applicable to employment. AEW says that’s because Nemeth was a contractor and not an employee, so employment standards aren’t appropriate.
After AEW filed to seal Nemeth’s three AEW contracts, I argued that the public has a presumptive right to court records. If AEW is going to file the contracts as exhibits in public court, which it seeming must to get the relief the company wants, then the public has a right to view the contracts so the public can evaluate the fairness of the legal action that unfolds. Wrestler contract issues have also long been a significant matter of public concern for the wrestling industry.
I argued AEW has not shown why the contracts cannot be viewed publicly and has only made general claims about the harm that would be caused if the public could view the contracts, which isn’t enough to justify sealing a court record from public view. AEW has already quoted from portions of the contracts in its petition, which shows that some portions of the contracts can be made viewable to the public, I argued. Read AEW’s and my arguments and the judge’s ruling more fully in the filings linked above.
The above table is not an exhaustive list of top owners but a selection of owners who may be recognizable to readers. Some financial institutions not listed likely have a greater share of ownership than executives listed toward the bottom of this table.
Controlling ownership in TKO, and therefore WWE, is held by entities controlled by the private equity firm Silver Lake, which took Endeavor private in March 2025.
At the end of February 2025, TKO completed its acquisition of three former Endeavor businesses: Professional Bull Riders, On Location, and IMG. This transaction increased the portion of TKO equity held by Endeavor and, by extension, Silver Lake.
After that deal, Endeavor entities owned just over 60% of all TKO shares.
Endeavor, now a privately held company, is wholly owned and controlled by Silver Lake. Silver Lake itself is managed through affiliated entities, with voting control held by Silver Lake West VoteCo. Egon Durban, Silver Lake’s co-CEO, is the named individual with voting authority over the shares and serves on TKO’s board of directors.
In terms of TKO’s executive leadership, Ari Emanuel serves as the CEO and the Chairman. President and Chief Operating Officer, Mark Shapiro, though is the primary public face of the company. Under Shapiro, WWE’s President is Nick Khan. “Triple H” Paul Levesque is WWE’s Chief Content Officer, who is primarily responsible for what fans see onscreen.
As of September 2024, Vince McMahon — who used to hold controlling ownership of WWE until 2023 — still had about 4% of all TKO stock. In June 2025, he sold 1,579,080 shares to Endeavor for $250 million. Provided McMahon made no other transactions since the prior September, he would have 3% of all shares after the June transaction.
Stephanie McMahon and Linda McMahon hold smaller but valuable shares of ownership, at least as of the last time they had to make disclosures in 2023. It’s possible they’ve made transactions since then that have changed their amount of ownership. Their percentages of ownership is now likely too small to require future disclosures.
How WWE ownership was structured from 1999 to 2023, before the merger
Before the merger, WWE had an ownership structure that allowed Vince to control the company with a minority stake.
Since going public in 1999, WWE operated with a dual-class stock system, in which class B shares — which could be held only by Vince McMahon, Linda McMahon, and their descendants — carried ten times the voting power of Class A common shares available to other shareholders. This type of structure, which often allows founders to control a company despite holding less than half of all shares, is not unique to WWE. Similar stock structures have been used for some of the biggest companies in the world, including Facebook and Google.
At the time McMahon held just over one-third of all WWE shares. But thanks to his control via class B “super shares”, he held about 81% of the voting power. Even though he resigned from all of his executive and board member roles with the company on July 22, 2022, because of his voting power, WWE could still be subject to his whim if he chose — and, eventually, he did.
Vince decided to return to WWE in January 2023, with the justification that he was seeking to merge or sell the company. His voting power allowed him to effectively reinsert himself into WWE’s Board, bringing himself back as a board member as well as allies like former WWE executives George Barrios and Michelle Wilson. To make room for the new board members, he removed board members Jeffrey Speed (who oversaw the investigation into his conduct and WWE’s corporate culture), JoEllen Lyons Dillon, and Alan Wexler. More board members then voluntarily quit: Man Jit Singh and Ignace Lahoud. And even Vince’s daughter and then-co-CEO, Stephanie McMahon resigned in the days that followed. The remaining board members unanimously approved to reappoint Vince as the board’s Chairman. Surviving members of the board included sole-remaining CEO Nick Khan. Paul Levesque, too, stayed on the board, despite his wife Stephanie’s resignation.
In April 2023, WWE and Endeavor agreed to a merge WWE with Endeavor’s asset, UFC. The two combat sports companies were officially combined when the deal closed in September 2023.
Upon the closing the transaction, Vince and the rest of the McMahon family’s superior voting power was dissolved. Going forward, each of their shares count for one vote, like the equity of all other TKO shareholders.
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The TKO merger effectively removed McMahon family control of WWE for the first time since Vince and Linda McMahon turned the company into the dominant force in the pro wrestling industry in the 1980s.
Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson was added to the TKO Board in January 2024 and received stock compensation as part of his agreement. By the end of 2025, he’s due to receive a total of 386,231 shares, which is worth tens of millions of dollars but is a fraction of 1% of all TKO shares.
Vince resigned a second time in January 2024, after a new lawsuit was brought against him and WWE by former employee Janel Grant. Vince no longer has the same path to return to the company that he used in early 2023. Without control of WWE/TKO, he can’t unilaterally comeback to the company. If he were to return, he would essentially need the cooperation of Endeavor’s leadership.
Endeavor now holds the majority of the voting power in TKO, with a greater than 51% stake in the company, and the same percentage of voting power. That majority percentage increased when Endeavor participated in stock purchases as Vince sold some of his TKO shares. Endeavor’s majority grew again following TKO’s acquisition of Endeavor assets Professional Bull Riders, IMG, and On Location, which Endeavor is selling to TKO in exchange for TKO stock.
Endeavor is led by Ari Emanuel, who serves as chief executive of both Endeavor and TKO. Endeavor essentially controls WWE and continues to control UFC. TKO Chief Operating Officer Mark Shapiro (who simultaneously carries the same title for Endeavor) oversees WWE’s top executives including WWE President Nick Khan, as well as UFC’s leadership including Dana White. Any stock that White may own hasn’t been disclosed and is likely no more than a small percentage of the company.
Notably absent from WWE’s ownership disclosures for about a decade before the merger is Shane McMahon. Vince’s son was a leading executive in the company until 2009. Public filings have shown no disclosure of WWE stock ownership by Shane since around 2013, indicating he likely hasn’t had material ownership since then. Shane was earlier gifted an equal amount of stock as his sister Stephanie throughout the years via a McMahon family trust. Shane seemingly liquidated all his WWE shares by 2014.
Like publicly-traded companies generally, major banks and other financial institutions own significant minority portions of TKO. Lindsell Train Limited, a UK investment firm, was the long-time biggest non-McMahon shareholder of WWE and continues to be one of the largest institutional investors in TKO. Other major institutional owners include Vanguard and Black Rock, which own a significant portion of many publicly-traded companies on the stock market. As part of disclosures required by the SEC, hundreds of other financial institutions routinely report TKO shares as among their investments.
Brandon Thurston has written about wrestling business since 2015. He operates and owns Wrestlenomics.
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.
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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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.
The first two matches of WrestleMania aired on ESPN2 (Saturday) and ESPN (Sunday). The remainder of each show aired on the ESPN Unlimited streaming services. These viewership numbers presumably do not include those who watched the opening matches on the streaming service.
WrestleMania Night 1 (Saturday, Apr. 18) on ESPN2 6:00 to 7:00 pm 1,616,000 viewers (P2+) P18-49 rating: 0.62
The Usos and LA Knight vs. The Vision & IShowSpeed
Jacob Fatu vs. Drew McIntyre (Unsanctioned Match)
WrestleMania Night 2 (Sunday, April 19) on ESPN 6:00 to 7:00 pm 1,822,000 viewers P18-49 rating: 0.65
Oba Femi vs. Brock Lesnar
Intercontinental Title Ladder Match: Penta vs. Je’Von Evans vs. Dragon Lee vs. JD McDonagh vs. Rusev vs. Rey Mysterio
For some context, other sports telecasts airing on ESPN this week:
