The United Kingdom received the service in February 2015, and was made available in the Middle East and parts of Africa that March, and to India in November.

Upon launch, the WWE Network was met with positive reception of its content library, but was criticized for technical problems.

Beginning in 2021, WWE began to phase out WWE Network as a standalone service in some markets, transitioning its content library to domestic streaming services owned by local rightsholders (such as Peacock in the United States, Binge in Australia, and Disney+ in Philippines and Indonesia (Disney+ Hotstar)).

As a result, WWE Network ceased standalone operations in the vast majority of its remaining countries as of January 1, 2025.

It remains active for an indeterminate period of time in a small number of territories where Netflix's contract will not take immediate effect due to pre-existing agreements.

[1][2] Then CEO Linda McMahon revealed that WWF wanted its own cable network and testified that before WWF signed a rights deal with Viacom, the company had floated the idea of acquiring USA's Sci-Fi Channel, and reformatting it as a dedicated wrestling network.

[11] At the Consumer Electronics Show, WWE revealed a comprehensive plan which would see a launch date of February 24, 2014 in the United States.

[17] In April 2014, ahead of WrestleMania XXX, the Network received acclaim, with The New York Times saying that WWE had "positioned themselves on the cutting edge of Internet television.

[24] Also on that date, it was announced that the WWE Network would launch in Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Singapore, Mexico, Spain, and the Nordics, among others on August 12, with Italian, Arab, German, Japanese, Indian, Chinese, Thai, and Malaysian launches planned for a later date.

This was announced as a part of WWE's financial reporting on the second quarter of the year, which had resulted in their stock price rising past $20.00 after closing on the previous day at $16.48.

[44][45] On November 19, a report by market research and consulting firm Park Associates announced that the WWE Network had broken into the top five streaming services and trailed only MLB.tv in the sports category.

[46] WWE announced the network would launch in Germany, Switzerland, Austria, and Japan on January 5, 2016,[47][48] followed by Thailand and the Philippines on February 29, 2016.

The company decided to partner with Endeavor Streaming (formed primarily from the assets of NeuLion) to provide infrastructure and billing services, and Massive Interactive to develop a new front-end and mobile apps.

It includes a revamped user experience, support for 1080p streams, new browsing tools (such as a new "Superstars" interface for filtering content by performers), and plans to add a download feature for offline viewing in the future.

[54] In March 2020, amid the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and to promote WrestleMania 36, WWE Network made a selection of its premium content and archives available free for a limited time.

[55] On June 1, 2020, WWE Network officially launched a free tier with 15,000 hours of content, which includes access to selected content such as recent episodes of its weekly programming, and original series such as Raw Talk, Monday Night War, and Ride Along.

Existing and future WWE Network content will be hosted by a branded channel within the Peacock service, with the full service included as part of the paid Peacock Premium tier (which features a wider array of television, film, and sports programming), and a selection of WWE Network content (including some of its original series such as The Bump and Raw Talk, and episodes of Total Divas and Total Bellas from NBCUniversal cable channel E!)

[57][59] To coincide with the introduction, Peacock announced plans to offer a four-month half-price promotion for new Premium subscribers.

[60] This has included the removal of scenes/matches containing content inappropriate under current standards, with the most prominent example being a WrestleMania VI match where Roddy Piper painted half of his body black before facing African-American opponent Bad News Brown.

[70] It was subsequently reported that WWE Network would remain active in a small number of international markets where Netflix cannot yet assume rights due to conflicting contracts, and in fact was relaunching as a standalone service in the Philippines following the end of WWE's contract in the region with Disney+.

It is also distributed through six non-UN countries: the Republic of China (Taiwan), the Cook Islands, Kosovo, Niue, Northern Cyprus, and SADR-claimed Western Sahara.

In late 2017, Liechtenstein and the People's Republic of China were added to the list of non-available countries,[74] however, the WWE Network is still available in the PRC special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macau as well as ROC-controlled Taiwan and Fujian.

The WWE Network service is also not available in the Russian-controlled regions of Crimea, Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, Zaporozhye, Transnistria, Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

The deleted matches were eventually reinstated with replacement music and newly recorded Joey Styles commentary.

[120] This includes mostly foreign events such as WCW's Millennium Final, Collision in Korea, and the Japan Supershows, and ECW's foreign ECW/FMW Supershows, however it also includes some events held domestically such as WCW's Nitro Girls Swimsuit Calendar Special and When Worlds Collide, and WWF's No Holds Barred: The Match/The Movie.

[140] In an interview with Time, Michelle D. Wilson, chief revenue and marketing officer for WWE, stated their reason for bypassing cable companies and instead only offering the WWE Network online: "Digital over-the-top offerings represent the future, and given that our passionate fans consume five times more online video content than non-WWE viewers and over-index for purchasing online subscriptions such as Netflix and Hulu, we believe the time is now for a WWE Network.

"[144] In response to the announcement, DirecTV issued a statement saying that they are re-evaluating whether to continue carrying WWE's pay-per-view events.

Due to the fact that these events would also be available on the WWE Network once it launches, it might reduce the number of pay-per-view purchases via cable and satellite providers.

Vince McMahon suggested that pay-TV operators would ultimately decide to continue to carry WWE's pay-per-view events, given that providers keep a significant share of each purchase, and incur minimal costs (apart from WWE's share of the fee for each purchase) to carry the events: "It's found money for them.