WWE Looking at New TV Deals, May Tape Smackdown Live

A report from Variety claims that WWE is ready to auction off its programs for a high price as part of new television deals in 2014. It then says that the company is very much looking into potentially making Friday Night Smackdown a live program under a high-paying deal.

WWE is ready to to acquire a large new television contract as its current ones come to a close. But for the first time in company history, it will get to market all of its shows at the same time in effort to get a network or networks to invest greatly into the product. WWE worked over the last few years to ensure that all of its deals would expire at once so the package would be more profitable in the future.

Regarding Smackdown becoming live, the report has the following.

“To make its show more attractive, WWE is considering a live version of its two-hour “SmackDown,” which currently is taped on Tuesday before its Friday airing. To do that, costs to produce the series would increase, due to scheduling, and the show would likely need to move to a new night. But WWE would be willing to make the switch in return for a better fee for the series.”

It should be worth noting that Smackdown used to air on Thursday prior to moving to Friday nights in the mid-2000s.

According to Variety, WWE is looking at NASCAR as a similar example of a sport with declining ratings but still capable of pulling a mega-television deal. NASCAR received more than $800 million in its most recent deal. The company feels that it can draw similarly to the major sports in America, and thus have staggered its past television contracts to all expire at the same time.

Monday Night Raw and Friday Night Smackdown currently air on USA and Syfy respectively, but the new deals would also include Main Event and other programming, according to the report.

There is a high precedence on live programming in the television market today, as made evident by the increasing rights dished out by ESPN and Fox Sports over live sports events rights. The same may be one of the reasons why a live Smackdown would be appealing to a network.

The report states that WWE cannot begin negotiation new deals until Feb. 15 after NBC can reject or accept WWE’s counteroffer. The company will then announce its new deals by March 4.

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