WWE Coming To Free-To-Air TV In The UK
Great change to the UK professional wrestling scene...
Jan 21, 2020
At the start of January, WWE ended its 25-year partnership with Sky Sports and moved to BT Sport. While many believed BT Sport would be the exclusive home for WWE programming in the UK, this is not the case.
Channel 5 confirmed on Twitter
that they have come to an agreement with WWE to air one-hour highlights shows of Monday Night Raw and Friday Night SmackDown. SmackDown will air on Saturdays at 10:30 am while Raw will be broadcast on Sundays at 10:30 am. Both shows will also be available on My5. The new deal will begin on February 2.
NXT UK will also head to free-to-air TV on a six-day delay as episodes will be available on the Paramount Network on Wednesdays at Midnight.
This will be the first time WWE has aired on Freeview TV since 2001 after their brief partnership with Channel 4 ended.
https://twitter.com/Channel5Sport/status/1219575368333455360
With the deal, WWE is seemingly looking to increase its competition to AEW on both sides of the Atlantic. Currently, Dynamite is the most-watched professional wrestling show by a significant margin in the UK because of their TV deal with ITV.
The move also further cements Channel 5 as an unlikely hotbed for wrestling on British TV. IMPACT Wrestling already airs on 5STAR on Friday nights, and the channel used to air episodes of WCW Worldwide from 1999 to 2001.
