TKO COO Mark Shapiro: I’m Not Suggesting That Netflix Made Any Offer At Any Level For WWE PLEs, But Of Course, They Are A Great Partner…

TKO executives further dive into the ESPN/WWE deal.

A deal between ESPN and WWE was reached to bring WWE Premium Live Events over to ESPN’s direct-to-consumer service.

This was further delved into by TKO executives on the Q2 2025 TKO Earnings Call. TKO Chief Financial Officer Andrew Schleimer and TKO Chief Operating Officer Mark Shapiro spoke about the deal, and Schleimer confirmed that WWE no longer has the contractual obligation to self-produce documentary content as they did with Peacock.

Shapiro went on to state that Netflix did not make an offer for WWE PLEs. A big factor in the decision to go with ESPN is whether their PLE audience would travel with them to the platform or not.

Schleimer: “What’s included in the Peacock deal of $180 million that’s actually not included in the ESPN deal, i.e., what we’ve retained for further monetization are all of the ESPN PLEs, roughly six per year. 250 hours of original programming that historically had been at WWE’s cost and expense, that we no longer have an obligation to produce contractually. Five documentaries over the term. One per year at WWE’s cost and expense which we no longer have the obligation to produce contractually, as well as the content archives.”

Shapiro: “I think another subset of your question, what made us feel okay with walking away from Netflix? And by the way, I’m not suggesting they made any offer at any level, but of course, they are a great partner and they have all of our content, for the most part, and the rest of the world outside of SmackDown. Why wouldn’t they have it here? The ESPN proposition and whether our audience would travel was important to us, and I’d admit it’s best suited to talk about how our audience has traveled and why that gave us — I would say a firm confidence that we were going to be able to build off what we currently have.”

The ESPN/WWE deal was broken down on Fightful’s ‘The Hump’ podcast with Sean Ross Sapp and Jimmy Van.

If the quotes in this article are used, please credit the original source with an H/T to Fightful for the transcriptions.