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WWE President Nick Khan appeared today on The Town podcast with Matthew Belloni discussing WWE's big week, the Netflix deal and more.
The Netflix deal coming together:
"A couple of things to the best of my recollection, and I'm not suggesting this is the exhaustive list, but two companies were saying publicly for a long period of time. It's just a matter of time before they get into live. One of those companies was Endeavor. One of those companies was WWE. So lo and behold, everything that I think everybody thought is proving to be true to grow the subscriber base. You have to do something in addition to what you're currently doing, especially if you sell ads, and live is it, especially for ads, as you just articulated. So the way it went down, we were making the rounds for Monday night raw. We felt it was a robust marketplace. Ari Emanuel, Mark Shapiro. We're in touch with Netflix. The initial feedback to them was, 'Hey we don't really want to get into live and we don't want to produce and get production trucks.' Matt, WWE is a turnkey operation. We produce all of our own content. So I got a call from Ari and Mark saying, Hey, let's just go in and see them. once you're in the room, you have a chance to get people to do things that they might not otherwise do. So it was a quick process. Bella Bajaria, Gabe Spitzer, a bunch of other folks there across it, and ultimately approved by all of the heads of Netflix."
On reported conflict within Netflix over whether to go with WWE or not:
"I think they managed their internal disagreement at the time quite well. They kept it away from us, and all we heard once we all went in for that initial pitch meeting, Ari, Mark, myself, Andrew Schleimer, who's the CFO of TKO, and Triple H, once we went in for that initial pitch meeting, it was clear that there was a path here. We never heard anything negative."
Giving up international rights:
"So two things. Number one, there's a Netflix executive who's in charge of unscripted content named Brandon Riegg. Pre-COVID, Brandon, Stephanie McMahon on behalf of WWE and I sat down with a couple of Brandon's colleagues. CAA representing WWE. So let's say it was five years ago. It was certainly pre COVID. So let's say it was five years ago, give or take. And I thought Brandon gave us salient advice that WWE followed, which was, Hey, if we ever are going to get into business with you guys. It's not going to be Netflix gets into the live business with WWE in Malaysia. It's going to have to be a big deal. So Brandon, his suggestion was. Get your international rights lined up. So if we're there one day it's boom, we have a global deal, at least 80 percent of the globe and this and that. So we followed that advice. Number one, number two on international, it's a heck of a lot easier for us. So assume the big markets, Australia, we have a big deal with Foxtel, a United Kingdom with BT, but assume, and not to pick on Malaysia, like I don't know how to sell in Malaysia the way that I'd like to think we can sell in the United States and the other countries that I mentioned. So this gets us into those are global. They've been dead. Everyone loves men in speedos. Listen, we're been in 180 countries. We have had success in many of those countries, but it makes us a lot easier to simply say, subscribe to Netflix get your WWE. So we're hyped. We're also doing far more international, big live events. So in 2024, for example, we're in Perth, Australia. Coming up as Lyon, France, we have Berlin, Germany. These are for the biggest events in addition to obviously the United States. So we think we can grow the product that way."
"I feel like we didn't give up that much money. Okay. Yeah. That's for anyone to determine on their own. I thought it was a robust deal. I thought Netflix did not play around in the best of ways."
Whether Netflix was the goal all along:
"It was one of the goals, but there were a number of suitors for the property. We had tried free to air broadcast with Fox. We have been in business with NBCU for decades, which has been a successful partnership. And the opportunity to get into business with Netflix was obviously quite appealing to us."
Dealing with Netflix:
"Everything we said to them, they accept it as true. Sometimes with buyers who have been doing a long thing for a long period of time, there's a bit of a doubt when you say something to them about the veracity of what you're saying. I felt that at Netflix in particular, if we said, and by the way, keep in mind, we're a publicly traded company, it's different. When I was, let's say, just an agent, if there was puffery, your words, if there was puffery, inflation whatever it was, that's all part of that game here. It's different if you make representations, especially for officers of the company, like Ari, Mark, Andrew, also board members, Ari, Mark, myself. They have to be truthful. So we made representations to them. They accepted our representations. We proved it out that they were all correct after the fact to them, which I'm sure they appreciate it. And they made a robust offer that needed to be worked on, of course. They always want to pay a little less. We always want to get paid a little more. We got into a room with a number of them and decided we're not going to leave the room until all the issues are resolved. They got resolved over, I think it was like a 12 or 15 hour meeting."
More on Page 2.
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