With new TV deals kicking in for WWE, with Raw moving to Netflix in January, SmackDown returning from FOX to the USA Network, and NXT moving from USA to the CW Network next month, there are a lot of changes going on.
In addition to the SmackDown deal that USA has, NBCU still has its streaming deal with WWE for the WWE Network to air in the United States on Peacock. With the new deal, the full past-season library of WWE SmackDown is on Peacock, and new episodes will be available 30 days after airing on USA Network.
New episodes of WWE Raw are also available on Peacock 30 days after airing on USA Network. Regarding the move from NXT to the CW Network and Raw to Netflix, Peacock will no longer have the libraries for these programs after 9/19 and 10/1. A Peacock spokesperson told WrestlingNews.co that fans will notice countdown clocks for NXT and Raw programming to inform viewers that they will expire. That will only include episodes after the dates mentioned above.
While speaking on WrestleVotes Radio, it was noted that NXT Level Up will be ending soon after airing on Fridays on Peacock since February 2022.
WrestleVotes’ co-host, Joey, noted, “While we’re talking about NXT, with the WWE Hulu contract coming up next week, the NXT secondary show Level Up will be discontinued. That’s what we’re hearing. They will no longer continue filming the Level Up show that airs on Peacock, that features a lot of the younger NXT talent. And you know, it is what it is. It’s just a lot of moving parts right now, but we will say goodbye to Level Up.”
It was also said that while it’s unclear whether the entire library of NXT will be gone from Peacock once the CW deal kicks in, “It’s likely everything from NXT 2.0 up until today will disappear and move over to the CW app. With that said, we don’t know if Takeovers are included here. Again, it could be just 2.0 stuff, which would include Deadlines and No Mercy and things like that, could disappear from Peacock, but a lot of the more recent NXT stuff will be gone off of the WWE Network/Peacock.”
WrestleVotes added, “I think it just comes down to the rights of that now that CW is in charge of having the NXT rights. I think that because they were formally in the hands of Peacock and USA Network. How those agreements all are written is definitely playing into why those past episodes will no longer be available moving forward.”
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article, please credit Backstage Pass with an h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription.
