News broke on Monday that WWE and NBCU had reached a streaming rights deal to the WWE Network in the United States that will see all WWE programming – PPV events, archives, and new series – move to the Peacock service come March 18th.
Fightful Select has some notes on the backstage reaction to the news. One WWE star said they hadn’t heard of the news before it broke and said the company’s profit would be massive. The first impressions were the additional eyes on the product with this new deal.
Another wrestler stated they didn’t care where the shows aired, but would if it affected their pay. There is no negativity among those in WWE but did consider it a big move for the company.
Talks about such a move to a different streaming service have been ongoing since last January. Fightful notes they were not able to confirm that one of the companies was Peacock at the time. ESPN had been one of the players in these talks.
Several people within the company said they actually expected a move much sooner than this, but understood it was easier said than done from a negotiating standpoint.
This topic was also discussed by Dave Meltzer and Bryan Alvarez on the latest episode of Wrestling Observer Live this afternoon.
It was also reported that the move to Peacock caught the WWE Network employees off-guard and word is that WWE Network employees did not know about the actual move to Peacock as of one week ago.
