WWE News: New Report Reveals How FOX Got SmackDown Live

Since it was revealed that WWE and FOX had reportedly agreed on a 5-year, $205 million/per contract to bring SmackDown Live to the network in 2019 (you can find that story here), we’ve all been awaiting a formal announcement or confirmation from either FOX or WWE on the deal.

However, a new report by The Hollywood Reporter has shed some light on how the move to FOX from NBC Universal came about for WWE’s blue brand. According to Marisa Guthrie, NBCU had expected to keep both RAW and SmackDown Live for 10 years at $360 million/per, but when NBCU’s negotiating window lapsed on May 16th at 4:59PM EST. The next day on May 17th, a meeting took place that included Stephanie McMahon and Triple H in order for FOX to give their pitch. It’s being said that on top of the larger bid to WWE for SmackDown, FOX executive Rupert Murdoch stated to WWE that NBCU was “embarassed by your product”, offering up that FOX would “fully embrace” WWE. Additionally, FOX sold WWE on promotion across all their sports programming on all nights of the week, plus a weekly studio show on the FS1 channel. By the end of it, there was a handshake and an agreement made.

A week later, the UFC to ESPN deal was announced (which you can see here), as FOX let the programming go now that their agreement with WWE was in place.

The Hollywood Reporter also added that with NBCU still expected to retain the rights to RAW, the deal is looking to be worth an estimated $265 million per year. This is lower than the majority of speculation that’s been floating around, as estimates on the RAW/NBCU contract have been anywhere from $300-$400 million.

For the full report and more information, go to The Hollywood Reporter

EA’s Take: There’s a lot to take in there, but if anything I think this gives fans a real look inside the business world and it’s at least interesting to read the tactics used by FOX. They probably had WWE at “$205 million”, but they really put on the full-court press to acquire SmackDown Live by going above-and-beyond. It’s a great investment by FOX as some may complain about the WWE product, however they’re still more of a constant than UFC, who has really been unimpressive the past few years. I also find how much NBCU is paying for RAW to be intriguing as well, since it’s only $60 million/year more than SmackDown. Since RAW is the “A-show”, I along with most others expected SD to be worth about two-thirds of RAW. So to me this says, WWE just wasn’t able to get as much as they believed for the red brand or else they would have taken it.

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