Friday Night Smackdown will return to the USA Network in October 2024 after a new media deal was announced on Thursday with NBC Universal. The contract is reportedly a 5 year deal worth $1.4 billion per the WSJ.
The new deal represents a 40% jump from its last deal with Fox. The incumbent appeared to not want to move beyond its negotiation number with WWE as one might assume that Fox could easily replace the Network Prime Time spot with B1G 10 Football on Friday nights next fall. Currently, football games air on FS1 and a move to the network would likely mean more overall viewers including those in the key 18-49 demo. Despite WWE doing well in this important segment, college football could easily replace the sports entertainment brand.
Notably, the WWE Raw brand has yet to secure a new media deal. But, the TKO stock saw a drop in price as a result of the news. This could be due in part to the return to cable and the inference that one of the streaming services did not step up to bid for WWE.
Smackdown originally started on the USA Network in January 2016 and move to the Fox Network in October 2019.
According to Sportico, the 18-49 demo viewership is up 14% compare to last year. This equates to stronger potential for ad buys. The two-hour telecast is averaging 785,000 viewers in the 18-49 demo. But, ad sales had been cheaper than usual prime time spots. A 30-second spot has ranged between $50,000 and $55,000 over the course of the last 4 seasons which is cheaper than ABC’s $85,000 per unit for its Shark Tank show.
WWE will produce 4 primetime specials each year that will air on NBC Flagship (perhaps a return of Saturday Night’s Main Event).
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