Netflix promises smooth, family-friendly streams of ‘WWE Raw’ are coming
Netflix promises smooth, family-friendly streams of ‘WWE Raw’ are coming
The streamer is doing its best to put the big glitches associated with the Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson fight behind it.
The year 2024 has seen some monumental shifts in philosophy from the world’s largest streaming service. After years of reluctance to dive into live sports streaming, Netflix has not only struck a deal with the biggest sport of them all in the NFL, it has also agreed to become the global broadcast partner of the sports entertainment show “WWE Raw” starting in January. But after hundreds of thousands of Netflix users reported problems while trying to stream the Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson boxing match in November, the streamer is once again trying to assuage concerns that it’s not up to the task of offering a live event every single week.
Key Details:
- Netflix touts the audience for the Paul vs. Tyson fight and says some of the inherent problems were essentially unavoidable.
- Netflix chief content officer Bela Bajaria says the streamer is “totally ready” for “WWE Raw.”
- WWE and Netflix officials also assure viewers that “Raw” will remain a family-friendly program after a move to streaming.
Netflix has been doing damage control for the Paul vs. Tyson fight for weeks, trying to allay fears that it will suffer similar breakdowns for its upcoming Christmas Day NFL games, or for weekly streams of “WWE Raw” when that show debuts on the streamer on Jan. 6.
The company’s chief technology officer Elizabeth Stone acknowledged the “poor experience” many customers had during the fight, but on Tuesday Netflix’s chief content officer Bela Bajaria did her best to put the issues in the rearview mirror.
“Whenever we do any live events, obviously, we want it to go very smoothly for every single one of our members,” Bajaria said. “That’s really important, I think, also to put it in perspective: It was 65 million concurrent streamers. The scale was very big, which is great. There was a lot of interest in it. When you test and push something to 65 million [streams] at the same time… you can’t learn these things until you do them.”
She promises the company has “done a lot of stuff to learn” and prepare for both the NFL and “WWE Raw,” and the wrestling promotion’s chief content officer Paul “Triple H” Levesque pointed out that if the streamer draws such ratings for “Raw” episodes, he won’t complain much about a small glitch here or there.
“I’ll just say, if it blinks a couple of times and we do 60 million, I’m good with that,” Levesque said.
Executives from the two companies also wanted to tamp down on discussions that “Raw” might feature more adult-forward content, since it won’t be bound to the same restrictive guidelines that it was when it appeared on linear television.
“There’s some online chatter about how it’s going to be ‘R’ rated or, for us old folks, ‘X’ rated. That’s definitely not happening,” said WWE president Nick Khan. “It’s a family friendly, multi-generational, advertiser-friendly programming. It’s going to stay that way.”
“It’s a safe place for families, for kids, for everybody, to be able to view the programming. That will not change,” added Levesque.
The addition of a weekly livestream of the wrestling show is an ambitious jump for Netflix, which until now has only offered live events sporadically. The streamer will no doubt get the technical details of offering live content down eventually but doing so sooner rather than later is definitely in its best interest.
Netflix
Netflix is a subscription video streaming service that includes on-demand access to 3,000+ movies, 2,000+ TV Shows, and Netflix Originals like Stranger Things, Squid Game, The Crown, Tiger King, and Bridgerton. They are constantly adding new shows and movies. Some of their Academy Award-winning exclusives include Roma, Marriage Story, Mank, and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.