WWE Network Extends to UK TV

Just wanted to update this post as it’s rather out of date !  So any WWE fans in the UK who are searching for coverage on a domestic network need to head for BT Sports.  You can subscribe to this in a number of ways, but they stream most events live on BT Sports 1 – obviously there’s a time difference !  You can also watch it via the BT Sports application if you’re a subscriber.  The cheapest way to subscribe is normally if you use their broadband service where you used to be able to get BT Sports for free (think there’s a fee now).

How to Watch WWE SmackDown

SmackDown is broadcast at 1:00am in the early hours of every Saturday morning.

It will be shown each week on BT Sport 1 and online via the BT Sport player and app.

How to watch WWE NXT and NXT UK

NXT is broadcast at 1:00am in the early hours of every Thursday morning.

It will be shown each week on BT Sport 1 and online via the BT Sport player and app.

NXT UK will also be shown on BT Sport every Thursday evening.

Wrestling fans will be pleased to hear that the WWE network has now been extended to UK television online viewers. It’s initially available on the Apple TV network which operates in the UK and Ireland.

It’s been quite a while coming, the network launched in the US in February of last year (2014), with the UK version supposed to arrive October 2014 – so it’s been quite heavily delayed.

Here’s one of the promos, they released –

So why the delay, well UK viewers will probably be aware that there is already a contract in place with Sky which has rights to broadcast WWE until 2019, most on the Sky Sports Channels with the big events on box office. It’s likely that this might lose Sky a lot of customers among wrestling fans as it’s model is to make premium channels like Sky Sports only accessible for the higher cost plans. If you only subscribe for the WWE it might be worth checking out the WWE individual offering particularly if you pay extra for the big events to.

The cost is £9.99 in the UK and 12.99 Eu in the Republic of Ireland. I’ve not checked this out, but it’s probably possible to subscribe to the US version using Identity Cloaker or another US VPN provider. The cost in the US is $9.99 which is about 30% cheaper than most European viewers will get access so worth investigating if you want to subscribe for a long time.

Other details for UK viewers is that the minimum subscription was originally set to 6 months but this has now been dropped and you are free to subscribe on a rolling month contract.

There’s a lot of content too, including lots of shows, all current pay per views and access to 3000 hour of older programmes. This includes all previous pay per views so you could save a fortune in DVDs costs alone.