App / Streaming Service Review | The WWE Network in the UK

After a controversial delay and an even more contentious false start, the WWE Network quietly launched in the UK on 13th January. Being amongst the first to sign up on its release date, despite the surprising lack of promotion (in January, at least), I’ve now had nearly seven weeks to enjoy the streaming service without paying a penny for  it. This extended free trial has given me ample opportunity to attest to the network’s incredible, game-changing potential, as well as its unprecedented value for money (particularly here in the formerly Sky-headlocked England), but I’m afraid that it hasn’t made a paying subscriber out of me - yet.

For die-hard WWE fans in the UK and Republic of Ireland, the question of whether to subscribe to the service is almost a no-brainer. Even at £9.99 / €12.99 (as opposed to the rest of the world’s $9.99), it’s significantly cheaper than a monthly pay-per-view on Sky, which in of itself should justify a subscription. However, not everyone’s primary focus is cost, and whilst my eyes can’t easily see a difference between the network’s native 720p and Sky’s sharper 1080p, those will larger televisions might. Those unlucky enough to still be in areas with poor broadband speeds might also suffer from buffering issues, or perhaps even find the streaming unviable completely. There were even early reports of the stream failing at the WWE end during live streams in the US when the network was first rolled out last February, though this is less likely to be an issue over here as fewer viewers stay up until the early hours to watch a pay-per-view live; I haven’t done so since WrestleMania XIX in 2003, though as a casual viewer, perhaps I’m not the best example.

Indeed, not being all that passionate about the product these days (I didn’t watch it all between 2004 and 2011, when the Rock returned, and the peerless CM Punk rose to prominence), I generally just buy the odd big event (or individual match) via iTunes and rent the Blu-rays through LOVEFiLM. As such, £9.99 per month for me is a huge increase in what I’ve spent on WWE programming each month over the last few years. My existing £7.99 LOVEFiLM subscription covers most pay-per-views and Beyond the Ring documentaries, and the odd £2.49 - £17.99 to iTunes over the year doesn’t even come close to the £119.88 WWE are asking for their subscription. Admittedly, being a few months behind in the so-called “Reality Era” isn’t ideal – were I to ever venture into the world of social media, or even Google something WWE-related, then I’d instantly be bombarded with spoilers. Hell, most main event results are given away by WWE home media covers (see above right for a criminal example from a couple of years ago!) Nonetheless, for me, the pay-per-views alone don’t sell the WWE Network.

What really makes the network appeal to me are three key things: being able to revisit Attitude-Era RAWs and SmackDown!s (so good it had an exclamation mark back then); enjoy The Monday Night Wars and other WWE Network original series and specials; and, most importantly, being able to watch relatively recent (and until now, always Sky-exclusive) RAW and SmackDown episodes in date order amongst the relevant pay-per-views. For instance, I’ve just watched the Royal Rumble and its subsequent RAW this week, when the latter was finally added, some four weeks after its broadcast on Sky. Effectively opening up the whole world of WWE programming without the need for a Sky dish or Sky Sports subscription – something people don’t often consider when thinking about the subscription’s value for money; the real cost of following WWE on Sky is far more than just the cost of monthly pay-per-view – should, in theory, easily justify my £9.99.

In theory.

My first, and perhaps biggest, disappointment with WWE Network is the dearth of exclusive in-ring content from the eras that I’m interested in (mainly Attitude and early Ruthless Aggression). I can happily fill my boots with whole seasons of Prime Time Wrestling from the cheesy 1980s, and even RAW from the shockingly-poor early to mid-1990s, but 1999 - the then-WWF’s finest year, in my view - has only eight of its fifty-two RAWs available currently. More will be added over time, of course, probably to discourage “hit and run” subscribers, but I’m unlikely to come back until at least November 1997 – August 2002 has its full complement of RAWs and SmackDown!s available to stream.

As to the RAW and SmackDown replays, these are great - except that there is no sodding rhyme or reason that I can see to their release schedule. A Thursday-night SmackDown might appear before that Monday night’s RAW; three RAWs might then pop up all at once. It’s infuriating - if WWE can’t settle on a weekly release date for their replays (which are generally added four to six weeks after broadcast), then they at least could give subscribers a “Notify Me” option so that they can opt for an e-mail alert whenever an episode is added to one of their favourite series. Every so often I get an e-mail from iTunes reminding me to download the latest episode of Star Wars Rebels or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (yeah, I basically just watch cartoons) and it really takes the sting out of their haphazard arrivals.

I got on much better with The Monday Night War series, which finally delivers the detailed, blow-by-blow and fairly impartial account of the WWF vs WCW battle that I’ve craved since the DVD of the same name was released in 2004. My only possible criticism of it is that if you watch all twenty hour-long episodes in just seven weeks, you notice a lot of key sequences, and even anecdotes, being repeated or recycled. I was similarly impressed with the Daniel Bryan and Shield “Journey to…” documentaries, though the (so far only) episode of WWE 24 was less interesting than I’d hoped. The most revealing part is shown in the opening teaser and isn’t really expounded upon later in the programme. Furthermore, the Stone Cold podcasts, whilst superb, are available to listen to for free on iTunes, and with extra content there to boot.

A lot of viewers in the same boat as me, who care far more about yesterday than they do today, are signing up on the strength of the WWE Network’s vast pay-per-view library, which boasts every single pay-per-view in the history of WWF/E, WCW and ECW, not to mention countless hours’ worth of vintage programming from all the companies and territories whose video libraries have been usurped by WWE. However, as I’ve long since been a hoarder of home media, everything that I’d be likely to watch again I already own. The only notable exception is the infamous 1999 pay-per-view, Over the Edge, which has been made commercially available for the first time on the network, albeit with its terrible tragedy tactfully edited out, and a fitting in memoriam dedication to Owen Hart inserted at the programme’s start.

I did think that the convenience of being able to stream retro pay-per-views might see the network commandeer the place of my vast video library, and perhaps even raise a few months’ subscription funds in a lucrative eBay sale, but, whilst the network’s standard-definition video quality is very good indeed, the video itself has been heavily edited. I’m pleased to see that the World Wildlife Fund has apparently relented in its mission to make WWE “keep the F out” of its retro programming, which marred countless home media releases between 2002 and 2013, but many Superstars’ memorable entrance themes – the biker-gimmick Undertaker being a prime example – have been removed, utterly killing the feel of many shows (the end of Judgment Day 2000 is butchered beyond belief, sans Kid Rock), and a few Attitude Era-defining moments, like the Kat’s cheeky flash of her “puppies” at Armageddon 1999, are also gone. Most annoyingly of all though, if I’m watching an old 4:3 programme (and WWE was a good decade or so behind the rest of the world when it came to adapting a 16:9 picture format) on my iPad or iPhone, whenever I press the apparent “zoom in” button (highlighted above), the video just stops. I have to then start it again, and again endure the annoying certification sequence that precedes every single programme, for which there appears to be no “I’m over 18 – always skip!” feature. I’m therefore stuck being bombarded with certifications that are irrelevant in the UK (TV 14 D L V?) and only able to watch a tiny square picture in the middle of my phone or tablet.

The interface is lacking in many other key areas too. As demonstrated by the screengrabs (above), even the most general of search terms yield no or few results, and those that do return results that are usually spoiler-laden as they often give away a match’s finish. Moreover, whilst on my PC – which is by far the least likely device that I’d ever stream the network on! – most programmes have chapter markers, on Apple phones and tablets you are only able to skip forwards or backwards thirty seconds at a time. Most pay-per-views are three hours long, so if you just want to watch a main event, that’s a lot of skipping you’ve got to do to get there. More annoyingly still, certain programmes – last year’s TLCS, this year’s Royal Rumble, the first episode of WWE 24, and probably many, many more – aren’t ever marked as “Watched” once you’ve finished them (see below) as the WWE app thinks that they’re longer than they actually are. Once you’ve started watching them, then, you’re forever reminded that you need to continue watching them, even if you don’t. It’s schoolboy stuff to get fixed, but nobody bothers.

One feature I’d also need to see to get my money’s worth is a temporary download option, similar to that featured with the BBC’s iPlayer app, whereby you can download a programme to watch on your phone or tablet whilst you’re out and about, which then expires after a set amount of days (to protect the Beeb against piracy). Being able to do this would make a programme like the Legends of Wrestling roundtable, for instance, that I’d probably never sit down and watch, an added attraction for me, as it’d be perfecting listening material for a commute.

The deal-breaker for me though is that WWE explicitly advertise Apple TV as being a platform on which the WWE Network can be viewed. Yet, just like the two missed UK release dates, both of which insultingly passed without any sort of reasonable explanation, the WWE Network app remains absent from UK Apple TVs, and we’ve no indication of when – or even if – this will appear. Now as most WWE Network Apple TV subscribers will know, you can get round this if you change your iTunes Store setting from the UK to the US on your Apple TV, but of course then you have to go through the rigmarole of switching it back to the UK every time you want to buy something or stream some iTunes Extras for a film you own. WWE’s superlatively annoying Apple TV apathy also means that you can’t purchase the subscription through iTunes either, which is a big factor for me as I buy all my store credit at 75% of its worth whenever a retailer has the vouchers marked down (which is about half the year!), and so could potentially pay a fairer price for the network that’s closer to what everyone else in the world pays outside these ill-treated isles.

More positively, I haven’t experienced any major issues streaming content. If your broadband connection wanes for a few minutes, as mine seems to for about half an hour every night around 10pm, then like Netflix and other reputable streaming services, the network adjusts the quality of the streamed content accordingly to minimise any buffering. I can even maintain a good HD stream in my garage on my 2.4GHz network (but not my 5GHz), which is some distance and several thick brick walls away from my router. I’ve also had few interruptions from ads – all I’ve experienced is the thirty-second WWE Immortals ad, and even this has only been three or four times over nearly seven weeks.

Overall then, the potential is there to revolutionise the consumption of sports entertainment, and create a powerhouse of a service that would truly make the “Immortal” Hulk Hogan and his peers exactly that. But there’s a long, long way to go before I’ll be spending any of my money on it, and if WWE wants to attract subscribers from outside its die-hard fanbase and start turning a good profit on the WWE Network, then it’ll need to address the technical points that I’ve raised here at the very least, and perhaps adjust its attitude towards Attitude too.

To subscribe to the WWE Network, visit WWE.com. It’s $15.42!