WWE to Netflix, Network presumably doomed

[garynysmon]

56 minutes ago, WyattSheepMask said:

Ideally I’d have liked The Network to have survived as its own seperate archive and newer stuff go on there after a delay with whatever Netflix would’ve wanted, be that 30 days, 60 or whatever.

Tbh that would be the perfect scenario. 

I’m sure there wasn’t a major audience for old episodes of TNT, WCW Saturday Night etc, but seeing that its all been digitised anyway, putting them out there is clear profit other than server hosting costs.

Not having any sort of slimmed down network of classic archive stuff, and let’s face it the things that Netflix won’t give a fuck about, is leaving money on the table.

Netflix won’t want to clog up their service with 10 years worth of WWF Superstars episodes, realistically those are never going on there in their entirety.

Netflix have bought WWE for weekly content but that doesn’t mean all the other stuff is worthless.

 

Edited January 1, 2025 by garynysmon

[davertfnewman]

5 hours ago, FLips said:

Naturally put Wrestlemania 17 on first to check if My Way was there and it is. 
They seem to be leaving the WWF logo on their stuff now as well, here and on the Vault.

My personal test is to see if Rush is on after Gene has told someone to put their cigarette out.

[WyattSheepMask]

44 minutes ago, Devon Malcolm said:

How do you know that? Why do people keep saying that? This is only just happening, give them time to sort something out or for someone to sort out a comprehensive pirate site.

I’m just speaking in broad terms. Whether they do something with all of that footage or not remains to be seen. Maybe they’ll do something, maybe they won’t, but they know that there’s an audience out there that want that kind of content, that’s why they put on the network in the first place. Granted, it’s probably not a massive audience, but there’s still an audience for that stuff.

I just can’t envision them going,
“Right, we’ve got practically the entire history of Wrestling at our disposal. All these historical moments, the biggest names, biggest characters, the greatest matches that anyone could want to see, we’ve got it. Now let’s lock it all away in a cupboard and not do anything with it ever again”

[Browser Brady]

The wwe vault account has around 1m subscribers. Its top 3 most popular videos have approx 10 million views between them. 
 

Is the channel likely to be making serious revenue ?

i dont know how youtube finances work. 

[2Xtreme_lives]

11 minutes ago, Browser Brady said:

The wwe vault account has around 1m subscribers. Its top 3 most popular videos have approx 10 million views between them. 
 

Is the channel likely to be making serious revenue ?

i dont know how youtube finances work. 

It'll be making more money than the vintage stuff was attracting as subs on the network 

[JNLister]

20 minutes ago, Browser Brady said:

The wwe vault account has around 1m subscribers. Its top 3 most popular videos have approx 10 million views between them. 
 

Is the channel likely to be making serious revenue ?

i dont know how youtube finances work. 

It's very hard to estimate as there's no fixed revenue-per-view rate. It depends on the length of the videos (longer = more ads shown), the type of video (people want to advertise to specific audiences, eg financial advice videos get more ad money) and the location of the audience (some wrestling stuff gets millions of views in India which earns hardly any ad revenue). The best guess seems to be, based on views so far, that WWE's annual revenue from the channel will be in the single millions rather than in the hundreds of thousands or the tens of millions.)

[jm29195]

I was thinking about this, and I'd also be supportive of them just keeping the Network as it is up there now. By all means remove the ongoing/new stuff but it's sad we don't appear to have ECW or WCW anymore, which were the main things I watched on the network anyway, apart from any new ppv if I liked the look of it.

I already have a Netflix subscription, so I'm saving £9.99 a month now, and bizarrely this will be the first time since 2000 when I'm not regularly paying WWE direct for some sort of content. Funny times, but I absolutely would pay for an archive only Network if it was still there, and I can't be bothered with registering for foreign accounts etc.

[CleetusVanDamme]

I've broke and signed up for the German WWE Network already, it was thankfully pretty easy, I'm still to set it up on the Fire Stick later but at least on laptop everything's defaulted to English already. I'm delighted, I really couldn't go back to not having everything, ever conveniently a few clicks away. Even if someone went to all the hassle of downloading everything (fuck that!) and stuck it on a hard drive for me, it'd be no fun to browse.

 

[The Dart]

PWInsider have suggested Netflix will add additional classic content every month, but that most likely just means the rest of Raw, Smackdown and NXT and maybe more WWE stuff.  Hopefully they just expand the WWE Vault YouTube channel for everything else.

[TheScarlettChad]

1 hour ago, CleetusVanDamme said:

I've broke and signed up for the German WWE Network already, it was thankfully pretty easy, I'm still to set it up on the Fire Stick later but at least on laptop everything's defaulted to English already. I'm delighted, I really couldn't go back to not having everything, ever conveniently a few clicks away. Even if someone went to all the hassle of downloading everything (fuck that!) and stuck it on a hard drive for me, it'd be no fun to browse.

 

Won't they shut that down too?

[WyattSheepMask]

13 minutes ago, TheScarlettChad said:

Won't they shut that down too?

Not till March 2026. Germany, Austria and Switzerland all have it till then until their deal with ProSiebenMAXX expires

[DavidB6937]

I don't need it right now but at least we have downloads now! Can't believe they never had the option on the Network. Madness.

[AndyUK]

The slow release of the content works out alright for me. Bit shit if you were half way through watching something of course, but it'll make it easier to decide what to watch and also to go through things at your own pace.  

Edited January 1, 2025 by AndyUK

[wandshogun09]

34 minutes ago, AndyUK said:

Bit shit if you were half way through watching something of course

To be fair though, we all knew this day was coming well in advance. This thread was started just shy of a year ago. So we’ve had a year to get watching those shows and matches that we might’ve been putting off. Even knowing this I still never got started on WCW 94 so that’s on me. I think if I’d been halfway into a full Nitro rewatch or something when the Netflix deal got announced I’d have just given up on that.

But yeah, a slow release is fine by me as well. Had a bit of a browse through Netflix earlier and there’s more on there than I expected on day one. Between that and the Vault it’ll do me for now. 

[AnotherCrapUsername]

How easy is it to get the German network?