In a move that should surprise nobody who has been paying attention, WWE will be pulling much of its content library from Peacock in January. The relationship between WWE and Peacock began 5 years ago when the professional wrestling promotion made Peacock the home of WWE premium live events (PLEs) and an extensive collection of WWE programming including a chronilogical library of events from WWE, WCW, documentary content and more.
WWE unceremoniously ended its PLE arrangement with Peacock in September shortly after announcing that it had secured $1.6 billion agreement with ESPN to stream its content via the ESPN Unlimited service. The agreement was originally set to last into 2026 but the wrestling promotion argued that because it had streamed multiple events that lasted two days, the organisation had met its programming obligations.
Comcast/NBC Universal has not raised much of a stink about the issue at least publicly. It could very well be that the arrangement has done what both parties wanted it to do as Peacock moves forward as a major streaming partner for the NBA.
The relationship between Peacock and the WWE is not over by a long shot though. The NBC hub will stream WWE’s quarterly special, Saturday Night’s Main Event going forward as WWE continues to evolve its media partnerships. The WWE also airs its weekly Friday program SmackDown, on the Comcast-owned channel, USA Network.
WWE’s media portfolio has diversified like the NFL or NBA, which sell multiple rights packages to separate networks and streaming platforms. It includes ESPN Unlimited, Peacock, USA Network, Netflix, and the broadcast network The CW.
There is no reporting to indicate exactly where the content will go next, but it can be logically concluded that it will move to either Netflix, which is the home of WWE internationally or to ESPN, which, as mentioned earlier, has already made a major investment with the organization.
