Netflix’s baby steps with live sports, including WWE, look like a practice run for what’s to come

In golf lingo, Netflix is putting its way into sports.

After seizing dominance in streaming thanks to a huge library of movies and TV series, the company is now slowly pushing into a new arena: live athletics. But the executive leading the initiative denies it’s happening, describing Netflix’s ambitions as far more limited—for now.

The company’s first live sporting event, a golf tournament called Netflix Cup featuring Formula 1 drivers and pro golfers, took place in November. It was then followed this month by the Netflix Slam exhibition tennis match between superstars Rafael Nadal and Carlos Alcaraz, with a boxing exhibition between influencer-turned-boxer Jake Paul and former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson planned for July.

Of course, Netflix also recently unveiled a $5 billion deal to stream World Wrestling Entertainment for 10 years. The partnership with WWE, which produces choreographed fights, is the company’s biggest move yet in sports—or not, according to Gabe Spitzer, Netflix’s vice president of nonfiction sports.

“At least in the short term, our pursuit has been Netflix Slam, Netflix Cup,” he told Fortune. “We are not into licensing live sports rights at this point.”

For years, Netflix has said it’s uninterested in paying big money to stream NFL, NBA, and MLB games. Those rights are typically bid up by broadcasters like ESPN and NBC, which consider the games to be among the little must-watch live TV left in the streaming era.

“It is more of a pure licensing play, and we license things all the time,” Spitzer said about the WWE deal, comparing it to TV law drama Suits.

He added: “It’s sports entertainment, and that’s even what WWE says as well. I wouldn’t say it fits necessarily one side or the other.”

Considering WWE as partly entertainment helps Netflix avoid acknowledging any interest in high-profile leagues like the NBA, as is rumored to be the case. Spitzer declined to comment about that. Nevertheless, Netflix’s baby steps in live sports could be useful preparation for the future.

“There’s a general expectation that at some point—not tomorrow, but in a few years—they will have to consider sports,” said AllianceBernstein analyst Laurent Yoon about Netflix broadcasting major sporting events.

Currently, Netflix doesn’t need to buy expensive sports rights to drive subscribers because other legs of its business are still growing. A crackdown on password sharing between friends and family, and increased subscription prices, have accelerated revenue growth in recent months. Expansion in international markets and Netflix’s nascent ad tier—a version of its service that comes with commercials—may help propel growth for years to come. But after Netflix exhausts its current growth options, the sports rights it now says are too expensive could be the answer. “They need to start thinking about this because it’s not something they can do right away,” Yoon said.

That Netflix is still building out its advertising platform is another consideration, according to Wedbush Securities analyst Alicia Reese. The streamer needs enough marketers paying for ad slots to fill a live broadcast, during which ads typically appear for much longer than Netflix’s standard four minutes per hour. Netflix is also still expanding the length of commercials it shows and the kinds of marketers it accepts, recently allowing dating sites to advertise on the platform.

“It doesn’t make sense to rush in before they have a sizable advertising platform,” Reese told Fortune. “As the advertising platform grows, it makes sense to leverage that in whatever ways they can.”

Netflix will have a practice round of sorts with WWE, in which ad tier subscribers will see commercials while other members won’t, CNBC reported. WWE writers will script action that’s unimportant to a fight’s outcome, like a headlock, so that those in the ad-tier can be shown commercials without missing much action while others continue with the live broadcast, according to CNBC.

Netflix's sports strategy differs from its rivals

After winning the streaming wars, Netflix is in a very different position from its competitors. Of its 260 million subscribers, 80 million are in the U.S. and Canada, which analysts agreed are largely saturated markets. The streamer is instead focusing on international growth and extracting more revenue per user domestically through its ad tiers, they said.

“Others like Paramount and Warner Bros. need those major sports events in order to drive subscribers,” Yoon said.

Netflix’s streaming competitors—including Amazon Prime Video, Max, Paramount+, and Peacock—are still growing their subscriber numbers in the U.S. and are using sports to do so. Peacock, for example, paid $110 million to exclusively stream the NFL Wild Card game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Miami Dolphins in January. In the three days leading up to the game, an estimated 2.8 million people signed up for the service, representing the largest subscriber gains ever measured for any streamer over a similar period, according to data firm Antenna. Peacock then tried to limit the number of subscribers canceling after the game by adding high-quality content, like this year’s Oscar-winning best picture Oppenheimer.

While Netflix produces one-off sporting events, like the planned July boxing match, it has no plans to buy rights to single, high-profile games like Peacock did with the NFL, Spitzer said. Netflix connects its live events to existing sports documentaries on its service, calling them “shoulder programming” to its existing content slate. The boxing match will follow an episode of sports documentary series Untold featuring Paul, for example.

“Other networks have thousands of hours of live programming, and nonfiction documentaries are shoulder content,” Spitzer told Fortune. “We see it as the inverse. How can we bring in a big, new audience with documentaries and then get them excited about something live?”

It’s also cheaper to create a new event, like the Netflix Cup, than to buy rights to a big, existing tournament, Yoon added. While Netflix wouldn’t comment on whether it earns money from its events’ ticket and sponsorship sales, those sales may be another income stream.

Once Netflix exhausts other growth options, it could also offer pay-per-view games or create a more expensive subscription tier featuring a variety of live sports, Yoon said. Such a tier would require Netflix to start licensing bigger NFL, NBA, and World Cup-type events, rather than hosting programming like the Netflix Cup and Netflix Slam, he said.

“There’s a market for it and I’m sure Netflix knows that, but they have bigger fish to fry at the moment,” he said.

WWE as a play outside the U.S.

No matter where WWE exactly fits in Netflix’s portfolio, analysts agreed it was a good deal. WWE says 11 million U.S. fans watch its live programming, and some of those fans who want to keep up with the fights on a weekly basis could become long-term Netflix subscribers.

The growth potential from wrestling is particularly strong outside the U.S., Yoon said. WWE is popular in Latin America and Asia, two regions where Netflix is looking to expand.

As it is, the streamer’s Latin America segment has just 46 million subscribers, while its Asia-Pacific segment has 45 million. Average revenue per user is also lower in those regions, with Netflix generating half the revenue by that metric in the most recent quarter than the $16.64 it makes from each user in the U.S. and Canada.

WWE could boost subscribers and average revenue per user in those regions, especially with Netflix’s ad tier. It’s “100% aligned with where they are trying to grow,” Yoon said.

Asked whether Netflix’s existing live sports properties have been successful, Spitzer instead pointed to the future. “Ask me again in a year, but we need a few more at-bats,” he said, while declining to say how he would measure success, whether it be subscriber additions, total hours watched by users, or something else. But what’s clear is that he thinks Netflix has much more runway in sports. “We’ve had conversations with every league, every team, and every athlete,” Spitzer said.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com