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Today will be looked back upon as one of the most historic dates in the history of professional wrestling as at the end of business today, Comcast's exclusive window to negotiate their new deal with WWE ends, setting off a chain of events that will tell the tale of the future of professional wrestling.
Unless a new deal has been quietly made, WWE can now accept bids from other broadcast entities to bid for their programming. As we've noted before, WWE smartly timed this so that all of their cable series - Raw, Smackdown, Total Divas, Main Event - as well as a potentially resurrected Saturday Morning Slam - are part of the negotiations at the same time. That has never happened before and allows WWE the ability to leverage all the shows as one monster package, similar to what major sports leagues such as the NBA and NASCAR do with their material.
Several months back, Variety noted that WWE had reached out or had meetings with A&E, Disney, Viacom, 21st Century Fox and Discovery about potential broadcast partnerships. They will all have a chance to pony up the big bucks if they want to bring WWE on board.
According to reports in NYC media, Comcast will still have the chance to match any outside offers, so they still have a chance to keep WWE under their umbrella.
WWE intends to announce their new deal in April or May. Should their TV programming need to move from Comcast to another broadcast partner, that would come in early October.
Nothing is certain yet, except this: WWE will be receiving the highest premium for their programming ever, which will be a major positive for their bottom line....and could potentially push their stock price even higher.
No matter where this leads the industry, It all started today. Remember that.
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