Where can I watch WWE wrestling in Canada in 2025?

World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), the largest and best-known professional wrestling promotion which has made stars of performers like Becky Lynch, John Cena, and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, has long been available on Canadian television — most recently through Rogers Communications' Sportsnet 360 channel, as well as the Rogers-distributed Canadian version of the WWE Network.

However, starting in 2025, there will be a big change in how Canadians, and much of the rest of the world, will get WWE programming.

Effective January 1, 2025, the only place that Canadians will be able to access all televised WWE programming will be via the Netflix streaming service. If you're in Canada and you want to watch Monday Night Raw or Friday Night SmackDown in a way authorized by WWE, you will have to watch it through Netflix. Netflix will also be the primary, if not exclusive, Canadian home of WWE's premium live events like WrestleMania, the Royal Rumble, and SummerSlam, as we explain below.

[Note: Although Netflix's contract begins on January 1, it's our understanding that the episode of SmackDown on Friday, January 3 will be available in Canada only on WWE's YouTube channel. Netflix will begin airing WWE programming with the January 6 edition of Raw, and will air all subsequent editions of NXT and SmackDown in Canada.]

The only WWE in-ring programs available on traditional (non-streaming) TV in Canada will be those also available on American broadcast networks like NXT on The CW and the quarterly Saturday Night's Main Event specials on NBC — and these should all be available on Netflix as well. A few WWE documentary and reality-competition programs will also air on the A&E cable channel in both the U.S. and Canada.

What's this Netflix deal all about?

On January 23, 2024, WWE announced a multi-year partnership with Netflix. The headline that many focused on was WWE bringing its flagship weekly series, Monday Night Raw, exclusively to Netflix as existing agreements expire — with the deal taking effect in January 2025 in the United States, Canada, and a few other countries.

But in fact, in every country where Netflix is available other than the U.S. — including in Canada — the service will be "the home for all WWE shows and specials [...] inclusive of Raw and WWE’s other weekly shows — SmackDown and NXT — as well as the company’s Premium Live Events., [...] award-winning documentaries, original series and forthcoming projects."

"Premium Live Event" (or PLE) is WWE's current name for what were traditionally called pay-per-view events, back when viewers had to pay individually each month to their cable or satellite provider if they wanted to watch. They include major annual events like WrestleMania, the Royal Rumble, and SummerSlam, among others — approximately one per month for WWE's main roster, plus an extra event approximately every three months for the NXT developmental roster. And yes, they will all be available on Netflix for those in Canada.

The deal has a nominal length of ten years, with Netflix paying US$5 billion to WWE over that time — but Netflix has the option to either curtail the deal after five years, or extend it to twenty years. So depending on how things go — and Netflix's financial appetite — the deal could run until either the end of 2029, the end of 2034, or the end of 2044.

So it's not just Raw that will be leaving cable TV in Canada?

That's correct. Netflix clarified in a December 2024 blog post that SmackDown and NXT would also be moving to that service in all countries other than the U.S. where it was picking up Raw rights in January 2025.

The Sportsnet+ website has also been updated, in various locations like this page, to indicate: "Effective January 1, 2025, WWE content will no longer be available on Sportsnet+." We also know for certain that the version of WWE Network available through Canadian cable providers will no longer be available after December 31, 2024, as has been confirmed by a number of providers including Rogers itself.

The most recent announcement regarding Sportsnet's WWE rights stated its agreement ran through 2024, so we are not surprised that Rogers' WWE rights in Canada expire at the end of that year.

At the risk of splitting hairs, we note that while for Raw, WWE said Netflix would be its exclusive home in Canada, WWE's announcement did not say that Netflix would be the exclusive home of its other programming in Canada – just "the home". But that might just be accounting for spillover from U.S. broadcasts (as we get into in a bit below).

Do I have to be on a particular Netflix plan to get WWE weekly programs or PLEs?

No, any plan will do. Netflix says that "all live events on Netflix are included in all plans," and "[p]remium live events are also included with your Netflix subscription when available."

So if you are in Canada with any Netflix subscription, whether it's the basic ad-supported plan or the premium 4K ad-free plan, you will be able to watch all WWE events. (However, there's no indication of WWE events being produced in 4K — at least not yet.)

Will that remain the case forever? Only time will tell. But Netflix's current approach is consistent with other partners like Peacock, which offers all WWE premium live events to all of its paying subscribers in the United States.

Will WWE programs be commercial-free if I'm on an ad-free plan?

We're not sure yet, but the possibility of having to sit through ads, at least while the event streams live, has not been ruled out. Netflix says that "[l]ive events, special events or other new features may contain commercial breaks across all our plans", but that "[f]ollowing the end of a live event, commercial breaks will be removed on ad-free experiences."

For example, during its recent Christmas Day NFL games, viewers on all plans saw ads (at least in the United States).

To accommodate ad breaks for Peacock, there are already extended breaks between matches on PLEs; viewers on Peacock's ad-free tier (and internationally) see match hype videos or other unrelated WWE content. WWE and Netflix could do the same for these weekly programs, but they might take another approach, especially considering these shows will continue to air on traditional broadcasters (which will expect their own ad breaks) in some countries for the time being.

What about WWE's non-wrestling programming on A&E and Disney+?

For those unfamiliar: from time to time, WWE has produced reality series related to its performers, like Total Divas and Total Bellas which aired on E! from 2014 to 2021.

More recently, it has partnered with A&E for a set of (mostly) documentary series under the "Superstar Sunday" banner — including WWE Rivals and Biography: WWE Legends. For a time, many episodes of these series also repeated on Sportsnet 360 and other Rogers channels. The Disney+ (and Hulu U.S.) series would be Love & WWE: Bianca & Montez (as in Bianca Belair and Montez Ford), which premiered in February 2024.

In December 2024, A&E announced that WWE Rivals has been renewed, and that two new series, WWE's Greatest Moments and an in-ring competition series, WWE Legends & Future Greats (LFG), would premiere in early 2025. The announcement said that the series would "air exclusively on A&E platforms" and were (or would be) distributed by A&E's parent company. That doesn't necessarily preclude those series eventually streaming on Netflix as well, but it seems to indicate clearly they will continue to premiere on cable TV across North America.

Is there anywhere else I will be able to watch WWE programming in Canada?

At least for the next few years, a couple of WWE programs will be available on U.S. broadcast networks, and therefore could potentially be available to Canadian viewers who don't want Netflix.

The CW — available in Canada through some border stations like WNLO Buffalo, plus premium superstations like WGN and WPIX — will carry WWE's developmental series NXT. But we should emphasize that there will still be multiple NXT-branded premium live events each year which will not air on The CW, and we expect that they will only be available on Netflix in Canada.

The other program airing on American broadcast TV will be Saturday Night's Main Event, a series of occasional televised events which was revived in December 2024 and will air quarterly on NBC until at least late 2029.

Additionally, we would not be surprised if WWE's main-roster premium live events continue to be available for purchase on pay-per-view (PPV) — much as they were available during the WWE Network era — albeit still at a considerably inflated price compared to accessing them through a monthly subscription.

For weekly main-roster programming, however, the possibility of an alternate home is a long shot at best. And again, all of the above programs — NXT, SNME, and PLEs — will also be on Netflix. So if you're subscribing to Netflix anyways for Raw and SmackDown, there probably won't be much reason to look for other shows elsewhere.

There is one WWE wrestling program that is only distributed on social media: WWE Speed, a weekly match with a short time limit. This is, and will remain, a global exclusive to the X social network (formerly known as Twitter). It will not be affected by the deal with Netflix.

I heard USA Network was coming to Canada. Can I watch WWE programming there?

No. The new Canadian version of USA Network (owned by Bell Media and rebranding from Discovery Channel) will have a separate schedule, though it should carry much of the original drama and reality programming from the American channel going forward. It will not, however, have any rights to WWE programming in Canada due to the Netflix agreement mentioned above which, to reiterate, covers both Raw and SmackDown in Canada.

Instead, USA Network in Canada will have AEW Collision, the weekly Saturday night show from WWE's largest North American rival, All Elite Wrestling, which previously aired in Canada on Bell Media's TSN+ streaming service. AEW's flagship Wednesday night program, Dynamite, will continue to air on TSN2.

Can I still watch other pro wrestling programs on Sportsnet 360?

Although it will be losing WWE content, Sportsnet 360 will not be dropping pro wrestling content entirely, having made a deal with Total Nonstop Action (TNA) Wrestling to carry its weekly program TNA Impact! on Thursday nights starting on January 2, 2025. Sportsnet 360 will also carry the promotion's secondary program TNA Xplosion and other ancillary programs. (TNA's premium events will continue to stream primarily on its own streaming service, TNA+.)

This was a bit of a surprise considering TNA is owned by Anthem Sports & Entertainment, a Canadian company which has its own cable channel, Fight Network, where TNA programs were premiering in Canada up to now. But with Fight Network being a relatively niche channel, moving to SN360 should mean an upgrade in visibility and availability for TNA.

It probably doesn't hurt matters that TNA has recently been part of a talent exchange relationship with WWE's NXT brand, which has meant regular WWE watchers have likely already been exposed to TNA performers like Jordynne Grace and Joe Hendry — not to mention past members of the WWE roster like Santino Marella and Nic Nemeth (formerly known in WWE as Dolph Ziggler).

To be clear, there are other pro wrestling viewing options in beyond WWE, TNA, and AEW, but most are hard to find in Canada outside of niche cable channels and streaming services. The only widely-available show we can think of offhand on Canadian broadcast TV is WOW: Women of Wrestling, a revival of sorts of the GLOW promotion from the 1980s (which inspired the Netflix drama series GLOW). WOW airs weekends on independent broadcast stations CHCH Hamilton and CHEK Victoria, as well as some American border stations and superstations like WNYO Buffalo and WSBK Boston.

Significant revisions

• January 3, 2025 — minor updates, including streaming info for Jan. 3 edition of SmackDown
• December 31, 2024 — clarifications re the upcoming launch of USA Network in Canada
• December 30, 2024 — various updates and clarifications
• October 23, 2024 — initial publication