Why FX is a contender for WWE’s broadcast rights

News: The WWE has finished its exclusive negotiating window with Fox and Comcast/USA Network without a new deal, The Post has learned.

This is not surprising, because most major deals go to the open market, even if the incumbents remain the favorites. We would maintain at this point that Fox, with “Friday Night Smackdown,” and USA, with “Monday Night Raw,” remain most likely to re-up; that is usually the common thought at these points in deals that have been wins for both sides.

However, to quote the Million Dollar Man, Ted DiBiase, “Everybody’s got a price.”

The current deals are each five years. Comcast pays $265 million per year to put “Monday Night Raw” on USA Network, while Fox doles out $205 million per year for “Friday Night Smackdown.” These contracts run until Oct. 2024.

It is still early in the process, but one party that does have interest in adding the WWE is Disney, according to sources. The potential cable placement would not be ESPN, but rather FX.

Let’s take a closer look at what, and who, is in play…

What about streaming? Peacock’s five-year, $1 billion WWE streaming deal is not in play for this round, as it is not up until March 2026, right before Wrestlemania 42. So we will put that to the side for now.

Numbers: WWE is 52 weeks a year and draws. Last week, Fox picked up 2.563 million viewers (955K were 18-49) for Friday night. Last week on USAN, “Raw” had 1.828M viewers.

Who else could have big interest: Besides FX, the biggest new player could be Amazon Prime Video.

We would also add Warner Bros. Discovery and Apple as dark horse candidates. CBS is not expected to be in on WWE rights. Netflix is always mentioned in these types of stories, but shouldn’t be until they show any willingness to spend big on these sorts of deals.

Let’s provide some context on the contenders:

Disney/FX: The reason FX makes more sense than ESPN is ESPN can’t guarantee a night of the week to WWE. It has too many game commitments, so it can’t just say Mondays are for WWE.

Furthermore, ESPN is a sports network, while I would describe wrestling as athletic entertainment. It doesn’t fully work on linear ESPN.

When Peacock’s streaming deal is up, though, ESPN+ could be a contender again. ESPN+ was in on the last WWE streaming rights negotiations.

As for TV, the audience WWE draws could be a boon for FX, which has had to manage around the growing reality that scripted programs largely continue to migrate to streaming and commercial-free TV.

The potential Disney-WWE partnership makes some sense due to connections, as well.

ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro leads sports acquisitions for Disney. This is important because WWE recently joined forces with Endeavor. WWE’s CEO Nick Khan has a strong relationship with Pitaro and ESPN president of content, Burke Magnus, while Endeavor’s leaders, Ari Emmanuel and Mark Shapiro, already have a bond with ESPN over its UFC deal.

Money rules, but relationships matter.

Amazon: Amazon Prime Video will be in talks for WWE, and you can see how it fits in their strategy. They have shown a willingness to pay for big, standalone events. The biggest, of course, is “Thursday Night Football” for a billion dollars a year. It’s exclusive and brings in an audience that exceeded 10 million streamers in some weeks. Amazon tried to pair Big Ten Football on Saturday nights with it, but lost out to NBC.

While WWE might be hesitant to turn its broadcast distribution over to a streaming service, its programming has a sticky audience that finds its shows wherever they are.

During the 2022 Olympics, “Raw” moved from USA Network to SyFy and kept 87 percent of its audience as compared to the average on its main network in the four weeks before the shift, according to Nielsen.

If Amazon got it, Al Michaels enthusiastically reading WWE promos on a Thursday into a Friday makes some sense as a promotional tool.

Dark horses: At this point, we would put both Apple and Warner Bros. Discovery in this category. They both seem more focused on the NBA, but one nugget I was told that may interest wrestling fans is that Warner Bros. Discovery does not have to stay exclusive to AEW. It would be something if it got in on WWE. But I don’t see it yet.

Takeaway: Fox and USA want to keep WWE, but Disney and Amazon could each make a strong run at it. That is where things stand, but it is still early.

Quick clicks

CBS has made its Champions League coverage special and forged such a long relationship with club soccer’s most prestigious tournament that it feels as if it will become synonymous with it. What has been pretty incredible is that CBS totally nailed its studio show by pairing Kate Abdo, Jamie Carragher, Micah Richards and Thierry Henry. For Saturday’s final, in which Manchester City won the title, the crew was pitchside for the match. The group has tremendous chemistry that just makes it a fun hang. “Inside the NBA” has been too successful and has been on too long to make a full comparison, but that is the vibe. Getting these shows right only helps to make a huge investment pay off more. Plus, CBS/Paramount+’s six-year, $1.5 billion deal extends through the 2029-30 season and it just feels as if the attention on it will continue to grow. … Mark Ingram II is on the verge of replacing Reggie Bush on Fox’s college football “Big Noon Kickoff” because Bush was looking for an exorbitant raise, according to sources, as we reported last week. Ingram II nearly replaced Bush last year after the same predicament, but wanted to try to win a Super Bowl with New Orleans. Even though you could question thinking the Saints could make it to the Super Bowl, there are some smart folks who think Ingram could be really good. Bush has star power in the college game, but these types of spots don’t pay the tens of millions that lead NFL TV game analysts, like Tom Brady, Tony Romo, Troy Aikman, Cris Collinsworth and Greg Olsen receive. …

The ESPN roster continues to change with Neil Everett leaving SportsCenter. ESPN has been pruning the salaries of longtime hosts, like Everett, and at 61, with nearly a quarter century at ESPN, he said it was time. Everett was good on the air, but the way his colleagues sincerely felt about him is an even greater legacy. … With John Ourand off, Colin Cowherd was my guest co-host for the “Marchand and Ourand Sports Media Podcast.” Cowherd made a lot of news, from saying his company, The Volume, is valued at more than $100 million to the fact ESPN made a run at him last time his contract was up to chiming in on the Shannon Sharpe and Skip Bayless situation. But the most important thing he said had nothing really to do with sports media and more about life. Cowherd spoke about being happy in others’ success. He mentioned how in sports media, he has often seen the opposite. I have as well. And those are often the most outwardly successful, but miserable people. The moral of the story: With Ourand off the pod for a week, we all received life lessons. John is going to have to step up this week.

Memo: Messi Monday nights

As we wrote this week, the signing of Lionel Messi to play for Inter Miami is a huge win for MLS and Miami. Messi didn’t turn down more than a billion dollars over three years without getting seriously paid. The fact that reportedly he is receiving a cut of Apple’s MLS subscriptions and Adidas sales could probably make his full outlay more than a billion.

It also could be a game-changer for Apple with its MLS deal.

Inter Miami now has the most followers on Instagram, with nearly 8 million — outdoing the Patriots at almost 5 million — of any team in North America. Not everyone will pluck down $99 for the full season pass, but with the subscriptions being sold globally, the numbers figure to rise significantly.

As I noted the other day: Call it a hunch, but I could see Apple — who won’t reveal their total subscribers right now for the new MLS service — could let it slip when Messi has his boots on the ground in Miami.

However, MLS and Apple need to make a change. Messi must be in standalone games to sell the rest of the league.

I understood what MLS and Apple were trying to do by having a set schedule on Saturday nights, but it doesn’t fully work. It makes it hard to watch the whole league — and it’s a big ask on Saturday night if you don’t bleed Dynamo orange (that’s the name of Houston’s team, by the way).

What we would do is create “Monday Night Football” for MLS. They can pick another night of the week if they want, but we like “Monday Night Messi.” You can’t put every Messi game on Monday, but we would schedule him a lot. We may have two games on that day, just for some coverage if he doesn’t play, but Messi can’t be on a schedule all the time at 7:30 p.m., with seven other games kicking off at the same time.

MLS has a good in-stadium experience. When Messi is in any town, it will be a story. Kind of a Taylor Swift effect. The prices on the secondary market for Inter Miami games have already exploded.

These tech folks love saying how they pivot. Apple and MLS should do that on the schedule, figuring out how to make every Messi game an event. When you are selling subscriptions around the globe, and nearing the end of Messi’s career — though he can still play — you have to get all the juice out of it.