SWERVED
WWE Network was a subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service and digital television network owned by the American professional wrestling promotion WWE, a division of TKO Group Holdings. The service primarily carried the company's library content, including past television programming and pay-per-view and livestreaming events from the promotion and other companies that had been acquired by WWE (such as World Championship Wrestling), original programming (including documentaries and in-ring programming), as well as streaming of WWE pay-per-view events at no additional charge.
The service relied on technology developed by MLB Advanced Media and BAMTech, prior to Endeavor Streaming assuming technical operations of the service in 2019. Although it operated primarily as a standalone service, the distribution model of the WWE Network varied by market, where it could have been available as an integrated service through licensing agreements with third-party providers, depending on the markets. The standalone service contained a premium and a free tier.
WWE Network launched on February 24, 2014, in the United States, as a digital successor to the WWE Classics on Demand service. It launched in Canada in July of that year and expanded to the Asia–Pacific region and select European countries in August. The United Kingdom received the service in February 2015, and was made available in the Middle East and parts of Africa that March, and to India in November. It was launched in additional European and Asian countries in January 2016. Upon launch, the WWE Network was met with positive reception of its content library, but was criticized for technical problems. The service had 1.5 million subscribers by October 30, 2020.
Beginning in 2021, WWE began to phase out the WWE Network, as the company reached multiple agreements with streaming services as domestic rightsholders (such as Peacock in the United States, Binge in Australia, and Abema in Japan) to carry its content instead. In 2024, WWE then announced an agreement with Netflix, under which it will hold the streaming rights to its content internationally beginning in January 2025; the agreement was part of one that granted Netflix the rights to WWE Raw in the United States and internationally. WWE Network ceased standalone operations in the vast majority of its remaining countries as of January 1, 2025. From 2024, WWE started uploading library content including full shows and other archive content to YouTube via the WWE Vault channel, and in 2025 started uploading World Championship Wrestling library content and NXT library content to their own dedicated YouTube channels.
The WWE Network permanently shut down on April 1, 2026, after Austria, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland, the last four counties that still had the standalone service, transitioned to Netflix.
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