World Wrestling Entertainment to launch WWE Network on Feb 24th 2014

Announced last night at a CES Event in Las Vegas, members of World Wrestling Entertainment including Stephanie McMahon, Triple H, “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, Shawn Michaels and Michael Cole gave the first details of their new network.

The WWE Network will cost $9.99 a month with a six-month commitment and will launch at 11:05 EST after the Monday Night RAW that night. All 12 PPVs for 2014 will air on the network and will be covered in the monthly fee – this includes WrestleMania 30 which will be the first PPV to air.

Every single PPV from WWE’s library will be available on demand in a Netflix style service which includes WWE, WCW and ECW. In total, WWE is claiming that 1500 hours of material will be available on the network including encores of RAW, Smackdown and Main Event as well as classic matches from wrestling history. Internet only shows like NXT and Superstars will be moving to the network. Whether they will remain on Hulu is unknown at this time.

There will also be original programming like Legends House (which was filmed around 3 years ago), countdown type shows, RAW and Smackdown post-shows and WrestleMania rewinds. There will also be a new show called Monday Night War which will look at the head-to-head battle of WWE’s RAW and WCW’s Nitro.

The network will be available on laptops, desktops, Xbox 360, Roku and smartphones. In the future it will be available on Xbox One and select smart TVs. No word yet on Apple devices.

While the network will be launched on February 24th 2014 in the States, it won’t be available in United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Hong Kong and the Nordics until late 2014, early 2015.

Latest rumblings state that both RAW and Smackdown will be available in their edited versions on the WWE Network as opposed to the full versions that will still air on the USA Network and Syfy. As for the UK, WWE’s deal with Sky comes to an end this year so there is a chance that all WWE TV programs could end up on the Network rather than negotiate a new deal.

Considering the network is costing WWE $10 million a month to run, they will need a big uptake in subscriptions. It wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to imagine that big shows like Royal Rumble, Summerslam and WrestleMania will return to PPV format next year.

Will you be buying the WWE Network? Let us know in the comments below.