Bengaluru, June 7: Rumors of Smackdown Live moving to a new platform is all over the internet for a while now and the television rights for WWE’s weekly programme has also been a hot topic of discussion. In case you didn’t know, WWE Raw and Smackdown Live are the longest running weekly episodic TV shows in the history of entertainment. So, the anticipation of who will win the rights to telecast them should be high as expected.

Also, when it comes to a deal between the biggest pro-wrestling promotion and sports-media entertainment giants, fans should be concerned about it as it happens only once in a while. The previous reports suggested that WWE Raw was able to stay in its home on the USA Network whereas Smackdown could not strike a deal.

Apparently, the owner of USA Network, NBC Universal renewed their deal for WWE’s flagship show. It ranges around $300-$400 million, as per the reports, this is three times bigger than the previous deal. So, we will continue to see WWE Raw on Monday Nights for the next five years in the same schedule.

As far as Smackdown is concerned, it has found a new home in FOX Sports. ESPN were the first to report that WWE has signed a one billion dollar contract with the sports media company to air the so-called B-show of the company. This is the highest rate they could have expected for the blue brand.

Furthermore, the Wrap suggested that the show’ schedule will change starting from next year. It will move back to its original schedule of Friday Nights instead of Tuesday Nights. There’s no update whether it will continue to be a live show or not. New airing schedule will commence from October 2019.

Apart from FOX Sports, there were online streaming media who wanted to acquire Smackdown Live. Amazon and Facebook were in the race, as well. Especially, the latter mentioned company was the favorite since they recently have a successful broadcast with WWE Mixed Match Challenge. WWE earned around $100000 for each of the 20-minute episodes, earlier this year.



But, WWE still settled down with FOX Sports. No such official update was received from WWE’s part. Check out more on this matter from stillrealtous.com,

“WWE declined to comment on the matter after being asked by ESPN. So no specifics were noted concerning the deal but that will likely come out in time. However, the deal is said to be a massive one leading us to wonder what kind of offer WWE agreed on. Therefore it looks like NBC Universal dropping SmackDown Live didn’t hurt negotiations after all.”