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Gripped: Netflix is slamming $5bn down for rights to WWE

Gripped: Netflix is slamming $5bn down for rights to WWE

David Crowther

Raw power

‍Netflix is teaming up with WWE as it furthers its foray into live streaming, signing a punchy $5 billion deal to become the exclusive home of the weekly flagship Raw show from January 2025. The 10-year agreement is the biggest live sports entertainment deal in Netflix history and brings WWE properties like SmackDown and Wrestlemania under the platform’s umbrella for streaming outside the US.

Shares in TKO Group — the entertainment giant formed after the merger of WWE and UFC last September — jumped almost 20% on the news yesterday morning. Netflix’s stock is also soaring, up 12% at the time of writing, although that’s likely more to do with the company reporting 13 million new subscribers, way ahead of the expected 8-9 million additional watchers.

‍WWE works

‍For TKO-owned WWE, the deal is a milestone in the monetization of its flagship show, with media deals adding over $1 billion in sales last year — some 80% of the business’s record $1.3 billion revenue, largely thanks to its current streaming deal with Peacock and record viewership across many of its pay-per-view premium live events.

For Netflix it's one — very expensive — step toward achieving its ambition of becoming the “must-have home-entertainment” subscription service: adding one of the longest-running weekly episodic shows in history to its portfolio.

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Saleah Blancaflor

Justin Bieber's music keeps surging on streaming after Coachella

You better belieb it. After Justin Bieber's headlined Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival in Indio, California, Billboard reports the pop star is experiencing the biggest non-Super Bowl catalog bump this year, with his music tripling in streams just days after his first set on April 11.

Following Bieber's performance on Weekend 2 at Coachella on April 18 (which included appearances from Billie Eilish and SZA), his streams climbed even higher.

On Monday (April 20), Bieber's streams reached a new high for the year, amassing a 32.4 million official on-demand US streams, according to Luminate, which is a 12% increase from his total the previous Monday (just over 29 million) and a 5% gain from the previous Tuesday (30.9 million), his previously high-water mark for 2026.

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(Event contracts are offered through Robinhood Derivatives, LLC — probabilities referenced or sourced from KalshiEx LLC or ForecastEx LLC.)

Since the Coachella bump, he has had a total of six days with at least 30 million streams compared with only four days in all of 2025 when he released his “Swag" album.

Spotify reported that following Bieber's first Coachella set that the pop star reached No. 1 on Spotify’s Global Top Artist chart with his catalog surpassing 77 million streams in a single day, which marked his biggest streaming day of the year.

While prediction markets currently show that Bruno Mars is in the lead at 74% for artist with the most monthly Spotify listeners at the end of April, Bieber could slowly catch up with a week left in the month. The "Baby" singer is currently in second place with his odds at 27%.

Justin Bieber’s Post-Coachella Streams Aren’t Done Spiking Yet

Justin Bieber’s Post-Coachella Streams Aren’t Done Spiking Yet

On Monday (April 20), Bieber's streams reached a new high for the year, amassing a 32.4 million official on-demand US streams, according to Luminate, which is a 12% increase from his total the previous Monday (just over 29 million) and a 5% gain from the previous Tuesday (30.9 million), his previously high-water mark for 2026.

Loading...
 

(Event contracts are offered through Robinhood Derivatives, LLC — probabilities referenced or sourced from KalshiEx LLC or ForecastEx LLC.)

Since the Coachella bump, he has had a total of six days with at least 30 million streams compared with only four days in all of 2025 when he released his “Swag" album.

Spotify reported that following Bieber's first Coachella set that the pop star reached No. 1 on Spotify’s Global Top Artist chart with his catalog surpassing 77 million streams in a single day, which marked his biggest streaming day of the year.

While prediction markets currently show that Bruno Mars is in the lead at 74% for artist with the most monthly Spotify listeners at the end of April, Bieber could slowly catch up with a week left in the month. The "Baby" singer is currently in second place with his odds at 27%.

culture
Max Knoblauch

Xbox cuts price of its Game Pass subscription by 23%, removes new “Call of Duty” games

A Halley’s Comet-level event in the world of subscriptions is occurring at Microsoft: the company announced it will lower the price of its Game Pass Ultimate from $29.99 to $22.99.

The move comes a little over a week after reports revealed an internal memo from new Xbox head Asha Sharma in which the exec told employees that Game Pass has “become too expensive.” Back in October, before Sharma’s tenure began, Xbox hiked its Game Pass subscription by 50%.

With the price drop, Game Pass will also see a major shift: new “Call of Duty” titles will no longer be added to the service at launch, instead joining the library about a year later during the following holiday season. The subscription will still cost a bit more than it did before the popular titles were added in 2024.

According to estimates reported by Bloomberg, the decision to put “Call of Duty” on Game Pass cost Xbox more than $300 million.

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LIV Golf’s Saudi backers are reportedly pulling out after pumping $5 billion into the tour

The 2026 season will continue “uninterrupted and at full throttle,” LIV’s CEO said.

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Millie Giles

The most popular male and female names in the US, according to the latest Census

New data published Tuesday by the US Census Bureau has revealed the most common names provided in the 2020 Census, in the first release to include forename data since 1990.

As described in the brief, Michael was the most popular name for males in the US, with roughly 3.5 million American men reporting having this name or a close variant. This is up from fourth place in the 1990 Census, when the top US male name was James — though there were still 3 million Jameses in 2020’s tally.

Despite a three-decade gap, Mary remained the top name for American females in both censuses, with the 2020 survey counting almost 1.8 million females with this given name. Interestingly, Mary was one of just two predominantly female names that broke the top 10 given names in the US, with the overall list dominated mostly by male monikers.

Most popular names US census 2020 chart
Sherwood News

In all, American females had far more first-name diversity than male counterparts: 16% of US males had one of the top 10 most frequent names among men, compared with 7.8% of women. Zooming out, almost 3x as many given names were needed to cover a quarter of the US female population than that of males.

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