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WWE open to moving Smackdown to Amazon on a different night of the week

Aaron Rift

While speaking at the MoffettNathanson’s Inaugural Technology, Media, and Telecom Conference, WWE CEO Nick Khan talked about the possibility of WWE programming moving to 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 produced it because obviously it needed to look great if they were going to have big programming. 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 Saturdays. For us with Friday Night SmackDown, which was on Thursdays prior to going on Fox and Tuesdays 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.” (quote courtesy of Jeremy Lambert)

Khan also talked about WWE Smackdown potentially moving to Amazon last month…