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WWE President Nick Khan appeared on the Varsity podcast today, discussing a number of different topics.
Wrestlemania 43: "Yes, it's never been outside of the US or Canada. It's going to be in Riyadh. It's going to be a significant show. We're already across the creative, of course that's, you know, subject to any injury. We're already across the creative, and in addition to that, we announced two shows from the MSG Theater. WrestleMania Saturday, we'll have a watch-along party followed by either NXT or AAA, and the next day, MSG Theater, a watch-along party followed by either NXT or AAA, whichever one didn't go on the Saturday night. So, we're also going to do viewing parties and all of these things in the US and other countries, and we think, you know, ultimately the fans will uh will go home happy."
On WWE's current media deals: "So, Netflix has our weekly show, Monday Night Raw, globally. It's been terrific. We think you know, you have to get a little bit of luck in life and in business, John. The luck we had there was Netflix saying, after many years of saying they were not going to get into the ad-supported business, all of a sudden getting into it. And I've mentioned this previously, there's an executive there named Brandon Riegg, who, when I was in my prior profession and I had the good fortune of representing WWE, this is pre-COVID, you know, seven, eight years ago, told myself and Stephanie McMahon at the time, "Hey, I'm not saying we'd ever get into live, but if we did, you should probably line up your international rights at WWE, because Netflix is not in the business of, 'Hey, guess what? Big news, we're announcing a deal with WWE in two small countries.'" They wanted global rights, so we did that, WWE did that, and boom, the Netflix deal was born. So far, so great. In September of last year, we shifted our premium live events, events like WrestleMania, over to ESPN Unlimited. That's a new service, different than ESPN+. So, it's going to take a moment in time for the consumer and the fan to understand, okay, what's the difference between ESPN and ESPN2 and ESPN+ and ESPN Unlimited and Hulu and Disney+? We think that's all been clarified now, off to a great start. Our Friday show, SmackDown, is with our long-time partner USA in the United States, it's with it's with Netflix internationally, and that has been doing quite well for Versant. They've continued to be terrific partners who are accessible at all times. And then, we bought a Lucha Libre company called AAA about a year and a half ago. We have that intentionally on YouTube outside of Mexico, where it's on Fox Mexico, and that's the Rupert Fox, not to be confused with the other Fox where there's, you know, some litigation and stuff that we have nothing to do with. So, part of being on Fox Mexico is being on Tubi, that's free to air in Mexico, we love that for that country, and YouTube is obviously free globally, so you're seeing significant audience growth in our Lucha Libre AAA product. And oh, by the way, we also have our other weekly show, NXT, on CW in the United States, which is where our wrestlers develop before ultimately being called up to the main roster. So, so far so good, we're about a year and a half or so into most of those deals, and about six months or so, no, a year now, pardon me, into the ESPN deal, and we have multiple years left on those to grow and maintain the quality that we think that we have built."
Breaking down Netflix data worldwide: "We're interested in all of it. We want to know live viewership, we want to within the first 24 hours, viewership within the first week. WWE is one of the unique products where you actually don't have to watch it live because it's not simply as you know with let's say the NBA, you must watch it live or between X and social media and texting and this was established, you know, decades ago, if you didn't watch it live then someone would tell you the score and it blew the whole experience for you. WWE's different because it's not so much just about, "Oh, Roman Reigns won this match." It's how did he win the match, what's the storyline involved with it, what was the outcome after the match, that matters for WWE viewers. It's part of why our presence on social media is so significant, the numbers I mentioned earlier, so we want live viewership, we want ad, what are the ad space going for, again, we want the delayed viewership, we want what countries is it working in. For example, Netflix gave us a great note a year or so ago, John, they said, "Hey, when when you go to Spain for a night, obviously viewership spikes in Spain, but if you stay in Spain for over a week and you do two to three shows there, then we think a lot of that spiked viewership will sustain because it'll acclimate the country to knowing, hey, WWE is here, boots on the ground, it's not just an American company piping out American content," which I no longer believe that we are, it's a global company looking to have a global footprint, which I'd like to think we've accomplished a lot of that, with of course a lot of room for growth."
Whether he is satisfied with the ESPN-WWE deal thus far: "Great, but we always want growth. So, we knew going into the deal that the Comcast distribution deal was not done. ESPN promised us it would get done, it got done. We knew YouTube, as you just mentioned, that deal wasn't done. You have Justin Connolly over there, he he obviously knows this space, you know, quite well considering all of his experience at Disney that he's now taken over to YouTube. Well, that deal wasn't done, they promised us that it would get done, it got done. So, now we have the distribution that we needed from the outset, that we knew was going to take a minute. And by the way, in terms of complaints, sports fans in general, it's sort of why Twitter, now X, was created. It's almost like when you and I, John, were much younger, do you remember like comment or complaint cards? Like restaurants would have them, airlines would have them. You know, rarely, yeah, you you got the nice person who would put in a comment card of, "I just want to let you know how exceptional the service was tonight and this and that," when you're leaving a restaurant, but that that's not what that medium was created for. What it was created for was, the service was terrible, the food was terrible, I didn't like it, so you'd only get complaints. And by the way, those complaints, some of them we look at and we say, "Hey, there's some truth to this, let's make a little adjustment here, this or that." But you cannot cater You've seen this in politics, if you believe what social media says, you will incorrectly predict so many outcomes. And without bringing Democrats, Republicans into this, you just saw it in the Michigan Senate primary. The gentleman who won that primary was down 11 points, 11 points the day before the election. He had been outspent, I think it was 7 to 1, 10 to 1, something like this, and boom, he comes in and wins with a close victory, again, in the primary, but he comes in and wins when all of the polls and everything online was saying that he had no chance. So, for companies that that read it and believe it and react to it, it never, ever works, even if you see some of these companies that took some of these far-right or far-left positions, that's not what most people are looking for. Most people are looking for left of center, right of center, they're looking for the same thing in the sports space, so you cannot be reactive to that sort of thing thing, you have to rely on your team to know we have the best creative in terms of all of wrestling in Triple H, real name Paul Levesque, we have the best live events team in my opinion, we have the best merchandise, consumer products team, they're able to monetize it, and if you've seen the growth at TKO, that's, you know, UFC, WWE, On Location, IMG, PBR, each of these continue to grow every year. It's not easy, but it's not supposed to be easy, so you got to continue to develop and redevelop what you do, and you got to make sure that you have the right team in place that can help you make the right decisions."
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