Sky Sports to air its last-ever live Raw tonight in the UK

Tonight’s Monday Night Raw live broadcast on Sky Sports will be the last one ever on the network in the United Kingdom as starting from this Friday’s Smackdown, all WWE programming moves to BT Sport.

A few months ago, WWE and BT Sport announced a new multi-year agreement that brought an end to an era of WWE TV in the United Kingdom with WWE moving away from Sky for the first time in over three decades.

The partnership between WWE and Sky is the longest in terms of TV deals for WWE with Sky bringing WWE shows in 1989. It’s a partnership that even outlasts WWE’s deal with USA Network in the United States. Their last deal was signed on January 30, 2014 with a five-year agreement where Sky continued to be the exclusive home of all WWE shows including pay-per-views.

WWE viewership on Sky greatly diminished over the years and despite Sky being in 8.5 million homes in the United Kingdom, WWE only got a small fraction of that viewership every week, mainly due in part of the 1AM start time for live shows.