It’s been almost four months since WWE burst onto our Netflix screens, but how is the viewership so far? Why is RAW the only show that gets featured in the top 10? Is Netflix promoting the franchise well? What stats do we have? Let’s dive in.
It’s important to note that to understand the WWE’s performance on Netflix, you have to understand that the rights to the various subdivisions are a bit tangled (to say the least). Some regions have access to everything, some have only access to partial amounts, and others have access to absolutely nothing! We’ve got a full breakdown on the WWE rights and where they’re a bit sticky in a previous post excellently put together by our own Drew Ryan.
To simplify, though, Netflix has access to several key live events that are, for now, essentially in two buckets. Those buckets also include vault items that are often restricted to the location of the live events.
- RAW (Available in the most amount of regions including the US)
- Special Live events like Wrestlemania, SmackDown, and NXT (Available in most international territories but notably excludes the US)
You can see an example guide to a month’s worth of WWE live content here, but for some regions, you’ve got new WWE to watch on Mondays, Tuesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays.
How Well Is RAW Performing on Netflix?
Now, it’s important to note that the traditional way of calculated views (or completed viewing equivalents, as we’ve dubbed it) works slightly differently from the WWE because of the nature of it being a live event. For all over programming on Netflix, you divide the hours watched by the runtime. While that’s mostly the case here, it works slightly differently. As exclusively reported by Wrestlenomics with the help of Netflix, they break down exactly how it differs with the WWE, which uses a blended views calculation. That means it considers the different runtimes depending on whether you watched live, in the DVR period, or the SVOD cut.
With that in mind, and the fact that RAW has amazingly featured in the weekly top 10s (provided by Netflix) in the TV charts, let’s take a look at how it’s performed from week to week. While the streamer pulled out all the stops to make the first live event a big event, things have seemingly settled rather quickly there after with average views across the nine weeks worth of data we’ve got so far sitting at 3.32M views (3.0M excluding the first event which appears to be an outlier).
| Week Period | Hours Viewed | Views / CVE | Weekly Rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jan 5th to Jan 12th, 2025 | 17,700,000 | 5,900,000 | 4 |
| Jan 12th to Jan 19th, 2025 | 8,200,000 | 3,700,000 | 4 |
| Jan 19th to Jan 26th, 2025 | 6,600,000 | 3,000,000 | 7 |
| Jan 26th to Feb 2nd, 2025 | 6,600,000 | 2,900,000 | 9 |
| Feb 2nd to Feb 9th, 2025 | 6,100,000 | 3,100,000 | 7 |
| Feb 9th to 16th, 2025 | 5,500,000 | 2,800,000 | 8 |
| Feb 16th to Feb 23rd, 2025 | 5,500,000 | 2,800,000 | 10 |
| Feb 23rd to Mar 2nd, 2025 | 5,500,000 | 2,600,000 | 8 |
| Mar 2nd to Mar 9th, 2025 | 6,300,000 | 3,100,000 | 7 |
Putting the views in graph form, it looks like this:
We don’t have Nielsen stats that measure US viewing. WWE, unlike sports, qualifies to be in the weekly Nielsen top 10s, but as of right now, it hasn’t been featured.
So how well is it performing? Entertainment Strategy Guy, a former executive at a larger streamer and friend of What’s on Netflix, wrote in a post in mid-February 2025 (paywall) with the rather dull conclusion, “I think WWE Raw on Netflix is basically flat in the US. Or maybe down. That’s boring, but what the data indicates.” He cites Samba data and a few other sources to support that conclusion. The Samba data indicated that 664K households watched the January 6th livestream, which is just shy of what the USA Network pulled in the year prior.
How well are other WWE Events performing?
While no other WWE event has managed to get into the global weekly top 10 titles, we can look at which ones are doing what business elsewhere so far, courtesy of data provided by FlixPatrol. Their data allows us to see which WWE events have picked up the most points in the daily charts in individual countries.
As of March 13th, the top-performing WWE events are:
- WWE RAW (3,774 points)
- Featured in 63 countries’ top 10s – US and UK top performing with 28 and 24 appearances in the top 10s, respectively.
- WWE SmackDown (1,982 points)
- Featured in 38 countries’ top 10s – Australia, Bolivia, and Canada among top-performing countries with 14 days, 19 days, and 18 days, respectively.
- Royal Rumble (690 points)
- Featured in 59 countries’ top 10s – one-off event
- WWE Elimination Chamber (535 points)
- Featured in 52 countries’ top 10s – one-off event
- WWE NXT (114 points)
- Featured in 17 countries’ top 10s, Canada is the top-performing country in 10 days.
Are the streams working well on Netflix? How about as a product? Are there any growing pains? Let’s get more into some opinion (feel free to disagree/agree in the comments):
The Good: The Streams Are Mostly Stable and Look Good
Given the number of live stream blunders Netflix had throughout 2024, particularly with their most streamed live event in history, WWE has been relatively bug-free. I found occasional people complaining about audio problems and infrequent buffering on social media, but it was nowhere near the magnitude of some of the other events. I give a thumbs up on that part!
The Bad: Netflix’s Marketing, Discovery, and the Vault
Netflix seems hamstrung in its WWE advertising right now. Although most countries have their own bases of PR and marketing operations, Netflix still seems very much guided by its US operation. Take the main Netflix socials – that’s only for the US, but it also has to balance being a global account. But if that account, which has the most followers and engagement by a mile, begins advertising some of the WWE events not on Netflix US, there’d be mass confusion, so its hands are tied.
When they have advertised WWE on their socials, I always get the impression that if you had to put the WWE audience and your average Netflix social follower looking for news on shows and movies in a Venn diagram, there wouldn’t be a ginormous overlap.
WWE ultimately excels at marketing itself for its established hardcore fans. It’s been doing this for decades, but at the moment, when Netflix tries to jump in on it, it often feels a bit clunky and out of place. Maybe that’s just me, but it was most apparent during a live stream for Next on Netflix 2025, with the WWE opening to a ripple of applause and awkwardness.
As for discovery in the Netflix app, if you watch WWE, you’ve got a permanent row or two with easy access, but if you didn’t check it out in the first few weeks, I’ve found that organically, without searching, is pretty hard. That issue could be seen in two different lights, of course. Sure, I was given the schedule and a chance to interact, but I didn’t engage the first, second, or third time, and the algo maybe decided it’s not for me. It’s nice not to have it shoved down my throat each time I boot into Netflix, but on the other hand, that’s the primary way I’m going to be exposed.
Given the size of the investment, one could argue that it should be a permanent fixture in the left-hand menu on TV or even next to Games on mobile, but for the moment, it’s purely driven by the algorithm.
Ultimately, the WWE on Netflix is a marathon, not a sprint. There is much work to do to get all Netflix regions on a level playing field. We’ve also got to wait for more official figures to come in. We’ll get a good read of what’s going on when the 2025 H1 Netflix Engagement Report releases, which will be during the Q3 earnings later this year.
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