Tag: WWE Premium Live Events

Nick Khan gives update on WWE’s plans for international PLEs

Posted on by Joseph Currier

While speaking at the World Congress of Sports convention on Wednesday, WWE President Nick Khan gave an update on the company’s plans for future premium live event locations.

Khan said WWE’s big five PLEs (WrestleMania, Royal Rumble, SummerSlam, Survivor Series, and Money in the Bank) will be held in either the United States or Canada. The goal is for other PLEs to be held in international locations.

“We sat down together a few years ago and decided, so the big five premium live events … should be in the United States or Canada,” Khan said. “All of the other events, the goal is to have them from international locations.”

In the coming months, WWE has Backlash (May 4 in France), King & Queen of the Ring (May 25 in Saudi Arabia), Clash at the Castle (June 15 in Scotland), and Bash in Berlin (August 31 in Germany) being held overseas.

Toronto is hosting Money in the Bank on July 6. SummerSlam will take place from Cleveland on August 3.

Khan discussed the importance of the international PLEs: “There’s a halo effect on those big deals. Merchandise sales, relevancy goes up, and who knows — is the next Yao Ming of that country watching [WWE] and wanting to do it in 10 years.”

Also at the convention, Khan noted that WWE isn’t ready to announce the location for WrestleMania 41 yet.

TKO executive: ‘Insatiable demand’ exists for ‘underpriced’ domestic WWE PLE rights

Posted on by Josh Nason

Even though they have closed the book on WWE Raw’s next TV home, TKO leadership is already gearing up for their next big payday: the domestic rights package for WWE’s monthly premium live events.

Speaking at the Morgan Stanley Technology Media & Telecom Conference, TKO COO Mark Shapiro said that the current five-year deal with NBCUniversal to air the PLEs on Peacock is “underpriced.”

He didn’t blame either WWE or NBCU, saying that “the market catches up” but that the monthly events are “massively performing” for NBCU and higher than the expectations NBCU leadership had when they signed the deal.

Shapiro stated there is “insatiable demand” for the rights when they come up in 2026 and that they will look to renew with NBCU who has been a great partner who knows how to market WWE. 

However, it will be a “hotly-contested property.”

In April 2023, WWE CEO Nick Khan said the timing of the rights coming up was “interesting” to them.

In January 2021, WWE announced that WWE Network would be heading to the Peacock streaming service in the U.S., later revealed as a five-year deal in the ballpark of $1 billion total.

When asked about whether Netflix would be interested in bringing on the domestic rights given they will have the international rights starting in January 2025, Shapiro said that with Netflix, Apple and other providers, the conversations always started with the question of when the PLE deal was up.

He said they want to walk before they run with Netflix, get out of the gate strong with Raw, and see how things go before talking about the domestic PLE rights if NBCUniversal doesn’t renew.

That wasn’t the only newsworthy comment Shapiro made at the conference, answering questions about Vince McMahon’s recent stock sale in addition to the interesting fact that Netflix was originally interested in NXT.