Rants

Why WWE Network doesn’t like Canada?

By Scott Keith on March 2, 2014

Been following your updates on the new network, and wishing I had high speed access to make this a reality. However, I've noticed that you have to do some DNS spoofing to get the WWE Network to work in Canada. Why is that? Is it the same reasoning as why we can't access video from most US TV sites (and why Netflix in Canada can be kind of sucktastic), namely being the draconian CRTC Can-Con policies? I can understand this with first-run stuff that you could be paying satellite providers to watch (well…. actually, I can't, but whatever), but with this not being a "real" television network….. How difficult would it be to sort out the royalties so that true "region-free" viewing could some day be supported? Or, is the WWE planning to roll out a "WWE Network Canada" at some point, to get around this restriction? Considering that some of their greatest stars of the past and today are Canadian, it would seem that they are throwing money away by not having an option available to Canadian fans. If they were to start showing old episodes of Stampede Wrestling on the network (as I'm sure they will soon enough), I would be RABID at having to technically engage in mail and communications fraud to be able to watch them.

It's a matter of TV rights as far as I know, because Sportsnet 360 has exclusive broadcast agreements with them in Canada and they'd have to get around that before launching the network up here. It probably has to do with their PPV agreements, too. Canadian content wouldn't be an issue because it's already been established that the CRTC can't mandate the internet.
And WWE has been saying all along that it'll launch in Canada at the end of the year, so obviously they have plans in place to make it happen. I wouldn't panic. That's why I'm so happy it's the way it is, because a "real" network wouldn't launch up here for YEARS due to CRTC regulations and convoluted rights issues, if ever.
Or you could just get it around like me and enjoy!

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