WWE's Hulu Deal Set To Expire Soon
WWE's contract with Hulu is set to expire on Saturday, September 24 and all of the current available WWE content will be pulled, according to PWInsider's Mike Johnson.
It was noted in the report, that talks to negotiate a new deal are still ongoing. WWE and Hulu have been working together since around September 2012.
The WWE content that is currently on Hulu are episodes of "Raw," "SmackDown," "WWE NXT 2.0," "WWE Main Event," "WWE Superstars," "Slam City," "NXT Level Up," "205 Live," and the reality TV shows "Total Divas, "Miz & Mrs," and "Total Bellas."
Disney is the majority owner of Hulu with a 67% stake in the company, while Comcast, through NBCUniversal, has a 33% stake in Hulu. According to CNBC, Comcast has a mutual agreement to sell its Hulu stake to Disney as early as January 2024.
WWE's main and current streaming partner is NBC's Peacock. It was first announced in January 2021, that NBCUniversal had acquired the exclusive United States distribution rights to the WWE Network. While the WWE content was moved to Peacock in March, it didn't officially become the main streamer of WWE content and live events in the U.S. until the WWE Network app was deleted on April 4, 2021. WWE first launched WWE Network in 2014.
In more recent broadcast partnership news, as noted at the beginning of September, WWE agreed to extend its major broadcast partnership with C&W Communication. The deal means that Flow TV will become the new home of the WWE Network across the Caribbean.
Stay tuned for the latest on WWE and Hulu's partnership.