ounded on 7 January 1953 as the Capitol Wrestling Corporation, WWE has undergone many name changes since its inauguration. From the World Wide Wrestling Federation in 1963, to the World Wrestling Federation in 1979, it finally settled on World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) in 2002 – having to rebrand itself after losing out on a lawsuit to the World Wildlife Fund. Since then, WWE has promoted four brands: Raw, Smackdown, NXT – and, in March of this year, Evolve was revived. Today, WWE is the world’s largest wrestling promotion, featuring scripted storylines, carefully choreographed matches and a blend of sports and entertainment. Streaming giants double down On 6 January earlier this year, WWE premiered on Netflix, marking Monday Night Raw ’s shift to the streaming service giant. Triple H kicked off the affair with an unveiling of the new era. The event saw Rhea Ripley reclaim the Women’s World Championship with her impressive win over Liv Morgan, Roman Reigns toppling Solo Sikoa in a Tribal Combat match, CM Punk besting Seth Rollins in a highly anticipated match and Jey Uso securing a win over Drew McIntyre. It also featured appearances from Hulk Hogan, The Rock and The Undertaker, as well as introducing John Cena’s farewell
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tour. The live event took place at a sold-out Intuit Dome in Los Angeles, setting a company record as the highest-grossing WWE arena event of all time. Additionally, the show set a merchandise sales record, becoming the highest-grossing non-premium live event of all time. Having previously aired on USA Network, a traditional television
channel, Raw has left linear television for the first time since its inception in 1993. Netflix officially became the exclusive home of Raw in the US, Canada, the UK and Latin America, with more countries to be added in due course. The streaming giant will also be the permanent home for all other WWE programming, including Smackdown , Wrestlemania , Royal
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