Report: WWE Competitor Negotiating Netflix Deal

Upstart World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. WWE competitor Lucha Underground is reportedly in talks with Netflix Inc. NFLX to bring at least one season of content to the streaming service. Lucha Underground premiered its first season of professional wrestling programming in late 2014.

Weekly episodes of Lucha Underground air in English on the El Rey Network and in Spanish on UniMas.

According to Wrestling Inc, Lucha Underground Executive Producer Chris DeJoseph has confirmed that the company has been in talks with Netflix.

Lucha Underground has recently become available for purchase on Apple Inc. AAPL’s iTunes for the first time, but El Rey is currently only available in about 40 million homes. WWE’s weekly shows Raw and Smackdown air on the popular USA Network, which reaches a significantly higher number of viewers.

Despite the relatively small potential El Rey audience, Lucha Underground has regularly drawn more than 100,000 viewers for its two Wednesday programs.

WWE launched its own Netflix-like premium content streaming subscription platform, the WWE Network, in early 2014. If a deal is reached between Netflix and Lucha Underground, it will be the first time that WWE has directly faced professional wrestling content competition from Netflix.

In the past six months, WWE’s stock is down 9.2 percent.

Disclosure: the author holds no position in the stocks mentioned.