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.
