News on What Pushed WWE’s Television Deal Announcement Back

It was reported on Thursday WWE had agreed to a new deal with NBCUniversal to keep three shows, “Monday Night Raw,” “Friday Night Smackdown” and “Total Divas” within the company’s networks. Word had been for some time the sports entertainment behemoth was looking to offer up all of its shows at once to networks in order to acquire a sweetened deal, similar to the $800 million deal NASCAR had acquired this past year.

However, an announcement had been expected for some time, but did not come until Thursday. Variety reports the reason for this was directly related to the WWE Network.

The WWE Network features multiple features to offer WWE programming. One of these is the ability to watch past episodes of “RAW” and “Smackdown.” According to the outlet, one of the biggest hangups in getting a deal done sooner was the inability to come to an agreement on redistribution terms for the shows. The episodes are not made immediately available on the WWE Network, and WWE was attempting to shorten the time between broadcast and streaming.

Alongside, it was said that mobile-streaming on phones and tablets was a part of the disagreement as well.

Ultimately, the two sides came to some sort of agreement, where no details have  been given out as of yet. As noted earlier, WWE’s stock has plummeted since the announcement was made on Thursday of the new deals, which are expected to be well short of the goals that were set forth.

Editor’s Note:

The re-airing is something that is important for the WWE Network. If someone misses an episode of a show, they should be able to re-watch it on the WWE Network as soon as possible. I’m not surprised this was an issue.

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