Last night saw the completion of the free trial week of the WWE Network and I would first like to point out that they no longer require a credit card for the free week. I used to be a huge professional wrestling fan during my childhood in the 80s and teenage years in the 90s but I have not followed the business in some time. Given that the network has a lot of Legends that I grew up watching I figured at the very least I could catch up on some old favorites and try to learn about some of the newer wrestlers, sorry, they are no longer wrestlers, now they are sports entertainers.
I have not had cable for at least five years so as a digital content supporter, I am always looking for new ways to stream video content be it free or subscription based. Last night I found myself doing something that lead towards me cancelling cable in the first place, I was wasting time watching reality television, granted it was reality television with Rowdy Roddy Piper, but reality television nonetheless. I wanted to watch Raw live, Raw was a big deal back when I watched wrestling so to see it still running gave me a nice nostalgic feeling. Before Raw was the Raw Preview show, which could best be described as a SportsCenter influenced show, but it was a little ridiculous how the panelists were discussing the product given that I am certain nobody believes pro wrestling to be real any longer. After the Raw preview show I kept viewing the Live schedule but instead of Raw I got a Countdown show, WWE Network airs neither Raw nor Smackdown live due to existing television rights.
The WWE Network is $9.99 a month with a six month commitment required, at least that's what the WWE wants it to be. It turns out the Paypal customers can easily cancel their subscription at any time to avoid the six month commitment, a process that is more difficult to accomplish if you pay with a credit card. The biggest draw of the WWE Network is if you are a regular viewer than you can watch every WWE PPV of the year live, included in the subscription price. To explain that further, you would pay $120 a year for the network which includes classic and original programming in addition to the PPV's as opposed to over $500 to jut purchase the PPV's through a cable provider. If you are a regular WWE viewer then that seems like almost a no-brainer, though I find it more difficult to warrant that price if you are not an avid WWE fan. For a person looking to just watch the occasional WWE program, I would lean towards paying for Netflix which has plenty of WWE content in addition to everything else that Netflix provides.
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