Next January, RAW will move to Netflix in a multi-year deal which, overseas, means all WWE content will be streamed on the platform. As of now, RAW airs on USA and that means the scale network frequently steps in to censor promos or even mute chants from the crowd.
With WWE pushing its PG rating since Triple H took charge of creative (much to the delight of fans fed up with Vince McMahon's childish output), much has been said about what the jump to Netflix will mean for the company.
Roman Reigns and Paul Heyman were interviewed by Bloomberg's Kim Bhasin and Scarlet Fu at the Power Players in New York event on Wednesday, and the Original Tribal Chief shared his thoughts on the Netflix deal.
"I think this is the biggest deal of all time, to be honest but the thing that changes the whole landscape for us is that we’ve been on linear television for decades now, and we’ve been the leader of that episodically. So to take our program and to put it on a streaming network like Netflix, it’s just unheard of. I mean, to go all the way back through our history to see where we are now, and the growth that we’ve had really since 2020 when the world was upside down, has just really been amazing. So it’s a big opportunity for us to not only showcase our product, but just what we’ve mastered with live television."
Reigns was also asked if fans should expect an edgier WWE product when RAW is on the streaming service and echoed previous comments about them pushing the envelope while not alienating its younger audience by dropping F-bombs on the regular like, say, AEW.
"I have always enjoyed the challenges of being PG and no offense to our predecessors and the people who came before us and the ratings that they revolved around, but to me it’s more challenging to be able to tell these stories, and then it also allows you a broader audience to connect to, which I just really feel like is always the goal."
"We want to reach as many people as possible and I think there’s a fine limit to when you can kind of cross that threshold to where you push people off of the product. So I think there’s a nice, you know, there’s going to be a nice little range there that we can play with and push the envelope in certain senses, but I think we need to stick to our values and kind of the morals that we’ve set in place and the culture that we have now."
This feels like the right move on WWE's part, especially as they have a huge young audience and forgoing that to go back to the Attitude Era wouldn't exactly help make new fans for the future (an issue for the company in the past has been its struggle to attract the key 18-24 audience).
You can hear more from Reigns and Heyman in the player below.