Why The CW Didn’t Place A Bid For WWE Raw Or SmackDown

WWE will be making some big moves in the months to come as all three of their weekly television shows will be moving to new networks. Raw will be moving to Netflix, SmackDown will be moving to USA Network, and NXT will be moving to the CW.

CW Network President Dennis Miller recently spoke to Variety about the network’s negotiations with WWE and he noted that they weren’t looking to bid on Raw or SmackDown because the two shows were beyond their budget.

“We knew that ‘Raw’ and ‘SmackDown’ were a little bit beyond our budget here. Then if you look, we have a lot of sports where we have kind of that next tier moving into the first tier here, whether it’s the Xfinity races leading into the Cup, or it’s NXT leading into ‘Raw’ and ‘SmackDown.’ So it just started to fit. Then over the course of a couple of months, we went back and forth and got the deal done.”

Current NXT is set to make the jump to the CW in October of 2024. The network recently issued the following press release confirming that NXT will remain on Tuesdays:

“Launched by WWE Chief Content Officer Paul “Triple H” Levesque, WWE NXT has aired weekly since 2012 and features the brightest young talent in sports entertainment. Nearly 90% of the participants in last year’s WrestleMania were developed under the NXT banner. Led by WWE Hall of Famer Shawn Michaels, NXT is popular with younger audiences, ranking No. 1 in cable primetime on Tuesday nights among Adults 18-49 and 18-34. WWE Superstars such as Roman Reigns, Seth Rollins, Charlotte Flair and Becky Lynch have come up through NXT.”