Posted on 12/20/124 by Colin Vassallo
WWE has confirmed that Smackdown will expand to three hours
starting with the January 3, 2025 episode.
A WWE.COM entry on where to watch the weekly WWE shows and
premium live events come 2025 states, “At the start of 2025,
SmackDown will expand to three hours starting with the Jan.
3 episode from Phoenix, Arizona.”
Rumors have been flying around for months that Smackdown was
moving to three hours once the new year kicks in but WWE did
not make any official announcements until now. Raw is also
expected to revert to three hours once it moves to Netflix,
although their run time will have no constraints on the
streaming service since there’s no other live programming
before or after Raw.
This will be the first time that Smackdown will move to
three hours and WWE will obviously get more money on top of
their current deal with NBCUniversal for 52 additional hours
of original programming per year.