WWE CEO Nick Khan took part in the MoffettNathanson inagural Technology, Media and Telecom conference on Thursday and discussed several topics, including the potential of WWE airing content any night of the week, as well as WWE property ending up on a streaming service.
“We like broadcast, but if you look at what Amazon has done with Thursday Night Football, and folks can say that viewership is down, it’s worked because it keeps people engaged in Prime, and obviously they went out and got a high-priced, capable broadcast team, they are having NBC produce it, because obviously it needs to look great if they were going to have big programming and it’s worked great for them.
What we believe Amazon is looking to do, is they want to program nights of the week. If you look at the PAC 12, if we were advising the PAC 12 and we’re not, we’d say, go full-in on Amazon. Yes, you may get smaller viewership, but if you can get the right deal in place for the PAC 12, which is primarily West Coast based, you can do East Coast prime time games that start at 5 O’Clock local, and get people engaged on Saturday’s.
For us with Friday Night SmackDown, which was on Thursday’s prior to going on FOX, and Tuesday’s before that, we could go any night of the week. For entities looking to program any night of the week, we think we’re attractive to them as well.”