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What's the story?
According to The Hollywood Reporter, WWE is closing in on a deal with FOX which will see SmackDown Live move homes from NBC Universal, and the 5-year deal will see WWE receive over a whopping $1 Billion for the blue brand's weekly show.
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In case you didn't know...
As first reported by ESPN, WWE is set to sign a deal with FOX to air SmackDown Live. The deal will be effective from October 2019. From the look of things, it seems that NBC Universal only wanted Monday Night RAW on their Network.
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The deal is definitely set to be a game changer. The sheer amount of money is going to change the entire structure of Pay-Per-Views, and the primary focus will be on television and not necessarily using television to build to a PPV, like how it used to be.
The heart of the matter
The Hollywood Reporter stated that WWE will be receiving up to $205 Million a year for their deal with SmackDown Live. They also reported that WWE even received a higher bid, but chose to stay with FOX with the trust of them highly promoting SmackDown Live and also being on the same platform as several other major sports leagues such as the NFL and Major League Baseball.
Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter said that it would only take an $80 million to $160 million-per-year deal for SmackDown Live for WWE to be able to smoothly run live events and other things while still heavily profiting. From the look of things, WWE got a very good end of the bargain.
What's next?
SmackDown Live will still be on USA Network for the next fourteen months or so. It's going to be very interesting to see how things change with the new TV deal.
Author's take
There are definitely a lot of questions heading into this new TV deal, but one thing we can be sure of is that the entire viewership experience of WWE is going to change for a long time. Will it be for the good or bad?
Will SmackDown Live also become 3-hours or will it stick to 2? Will the big money deal hamper WWE's efforts and result in a rather stale product? Only time will tell.
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