WWE Is As Valuable As The NBA| Bobby Burack

Over the next two years, the NBA and WWE will negotiate new rights deals with broadcast partners. Both brands seek substantial increases, which they expect to receive.

Currently, Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) pay the NBA $2.6 billion per year. According to CNBC, the NBA hopes to triple said fee to around $7 billion.

The NBA is willing, unlike nine years ago, to add a third or even fourth broadcast partner. The deals with Disney and WBD expire following the 2025 NBA Finals.

Meanwhile, USA Network and Fox pay WWE a combined $470 million to, respectively, air Raw and SmackDown. Both deals expire in October 2024.

WWE also earns around $200 million annually from NBC's Peacock to exclusively air its content, including premium live events (PLEs) like WrestleMania, in the United States.

The NBA is a "real" sport. Thus, is an easier sell to blue-chip sponsors. No one can honestly dispute that. However, the gap between the NBA and WWE ought not to be as large as it is. All in all, WWE provides as much value to a broadcaster partner as the NBA.

Per week, more viewers watch WWE on USA and Fox than the NBA on ESPN, ABC, and TNT.

Monday Night Raw has averaged 1.8 million viewers year to date. Friday Night SmackDown has averaged 2.2 million. By comparison, the NBA averaged 1.6 million viewers last season.

The NBA is seasonal. WWE is year around. Networks have to pay for production to air the NBA. WWE includes production at no extra cost.

INGLEWOOD, CALIFORNIA - APRIL 02: (L-R) Cody Rhodes wrestles Roman Reigns for Undisputed WWE Universal Title Match during WrestleMania Goes Hollywood at SoFi Stadium on April 02, 2023 in Inglewood, California. (Photo by Ronald Martinez/Getty Images)

What's more, both brands will look to capitalize on streaming money during their next negotiations -- an area WWE holds an advantage over the NBA.

Last Saturday, WWE SummerSlam drew between 2 million and 3 million viewers on Peacock. Though SummerSlam is on the high end, the second biggest wrestling event of the year, Peacock streams a WWE PLE each month.

As OutKick reported last year, the partnership with WWE helped stabilize Peacock as a streaming alternative to Netflix:

"Nearly all of WWE Network’s former 1.1 million subscribers have converted to Peacock, and more than three million Peacock subscribers have watched WWE content since March 2021. Most notably, more than half of those three million subscribers say that they signed up for Peacock “because of WWE.”

The NBA could not draw 2 million viewers on streaming unless it were to stream the conference finals or NBA Finals, which it will not.

And even if the likes of Amazon Prime or Netflix cannot wrest away WWE PLEs from Peacock, the rights of Raw or SmackDown would behoove a streamer more so than a package of the NBA regular season.

Sports fans have shown a willingness to pay extra to stream an event of consequence: the NFL on Amazon, UFC on ESPN+ PPV, and boxing on DAZN.

Yet fans have been less inclined to subscribe to events that lack urgency: MLB on AppleTV+, MLB on Peacock, and NHL on ESPN+.

SmackDown and Raw are urgent. The NBA regular season is not. Star players sit out games as if they are mere exhibitions.

Of course, the NBA would prove more glamorous to Netflix or Amazon than the WWE. However, WWE would prove more useful.

INGLEWOOD, CALIFORNIA - APRIL 02: (L-R) Roman Reigns after defeating Cody Rhodes for Undisputed WWE Universal Title Match during WrestleMania Goes Hollywood at SoFi Stadium on April 02, 2023 in Inglewood, California. (Photo by Ronald Martinez/Getty Images)

The same can be said of their JV packages. NXT is WWE's C-show. It airs on Tuesdays on USA Network. The NBA equivalent to NXT is what it airs on NBATV, matchups featuring teams and players of less name value.

NXT and the games NBATV often go head-to-head. And this year, NXT has averaged 617,000 compared to 297,000 for games on NBATV.

The NBA is also tainted politically. The NBA was the original Bud Light, the first marquee brand consumer boycotted over its potential messaging that ran afoul to at least half of the country.

Even NBA broadcasters inject political messaging into the product. Specifically, bigoted dirtbag Mark Jones still calls weekly matchups.

The intersection of sports and politics is damaging. A YouGov / Yahoo News poll found that nearly half of American sports fans have changed viewing habits because of social justice messaging.

WWE is one of the few brands of entertainment that is not bent politically. WWE's apolitical approach to programming is uniquely valuable ahead of the 2024 election, in which social tensions are sure to worsen.

Ultimately, both the NBA and WWE will receive increased broadcast fees. But given the disparity in price, weekly ratings, and streaming upside -- WWE is just as valuable of a property as the NBA.

And networks should consider that when the NBA tried to strongarm them into overpaying for the declining property that is professional basketball.