WWE Home Video was a video distribution and production company that distributed WWE programming. A division of WWE formed on April 16, 1997, as WWF Home Video, it replaced a similar independent company owned by Evart Enterprises, Coliseum Video which operated between 1985 and 1997.

History

Coliseum Video

World Wrestling Federation initially began releasing home videos of its content through Coliseum Video under the "WWF Official Video" label. The company was initially founded in 1985 by Evart Enterprises and released VHS and

Betamax Betamax (also known as Beta, and stylized as the Greek letter Beta, β in its logo) is a discontinued consumer analog Videotape, video cassette recording format developed by Sony. It was one of the main competitors in the videotape format war ag ...

cassettes that generally fell into several categories: *"Best-of" volumes highlighting classic matches, both recent and from the company's earlier years. Many of these releases included title changes that had happened since production of the previous volume was completed. *Wrestler profiles, which encompassed the WWF careers of company wrestlers, both current and former. *Theme videos, which showcased match types. **Each of the WWF's three major men's titles – the Heavyweight Championship, Intercontinental Championship and Tag Team Championship – had a volume dedicated to the title as it progressed from champion to champion, along with classic matches contested for the championship. **A handful of these volumes also showcased bloopers and comedy moments, rather than strictly wrestling matches. *

Pay-per-view Pay-per-view (PPV) is a type of pay television or webcast service that enables a viewer to pay to watch individual events via private telecast. Events can be purchased through a multichannel television platform using their electronic program ...

and other live events. Coliseum Video released videos of the two World Bodybuilding Federation events and two non-Titan videos: the music video for the

New York Giants The New York Giants are a professional American football team based in the New York metropolitan area. The Giants compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) NFC East, East division. The ...

' "We're The New York Giants" and a

Wayne Gretzky Wayne Douglas Gretzky ( ; born January 26, 1961) is a Canadian former professional ice hockey player and former head coach. He played 20 seasons in the National Hockey League (NHL) for four teams from 1979 to 1999. Nicknamed "the Great One ...

instructional video, ''Hockey My Way''. At the beginning of 1997, the WWF decided to part ways with Coliseum and release content in-house. Following the contract expiration, Coliseum ceased operations.

Legacy

On February 5, 2018, WWE released over 38 Coliseum Video releases on the

WWE Network WWE Network is a subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service and digital television network owned by the American professional wrestling promotion WWE, a division of TKO Group Holdings. The service relied on technology develo ...

, branded as "WWE Home Video Classics".

WWF/WWE Home Video

After ending the deal with Coliseum, the WWF began releasing home video releases in-house through WWF Home Video, which was founded in April 1997. Videos that were being or had been released by Coliseum Video were re-released with new packaging and the WWF Home Video name and logo. When the WWF became WWE in 2002, the name of the home video subsidiary changed as well. Content released by WWE Home Video continued to release the same content as Coliseum did, and also releases content produced exclusively for home entertainment such as swimsuit videos and retrospective

documentaries A documentary film (often described simply as a documentary) is a nonfiction motion picture intended to "document reality, primarily for instruction, education or maintaining a historical record". The American author and media analyst Bill ...

. Content from the World Wrestling Federation's "Attitude Era" (1998–2002), however, had to be edited due to the lawsuit that caused the WWF to become WWE. All WWF "scratch" logos and references to the initials WWF had to be blurred or edited out. However, the words "World Wrestling Federation" were not edited, and the old WWF logo was not blurred. Some of the early WWE home video releases were also not edited (such as ''The Rock Just Bring It''; the 2002 editions of

Backlash Backlash may refer to: Literature * '' Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women'', a 1991 book by Susan Faludi * ''Backlash'' (Star Wars novel), a 2010 novel by Aaron Allston * Backlash (Marc Slayton), a comic book character from ...

and Insurrextion also featured the WWE digital on-screen graphics inserted on top on the old WWF one). Some of the videos/DVDs in question were just renamed with the WWE logo. In 2012, WWE and the World Wide Fund came to an agreement which allowed WWE to use the Scratch logo in past photos and videos, thus ending the blurring on 'Attitude Era' PPVs and shows; in return, the WWE is not permitted to use any WWF logos in new, original footage. On November 19, 2014, WWE entered into a distribution partnership with

Warner Home Video Warner Bros. Discovery Home Entertainment, Inc. (doing business as Warner Bros. Home Entertainment; formerly known as Warner Home Video and WCI Home Video and sometimes credited as Warner Home Entertainment) is the American home video distribution ...

for North America.Warner Bros. Locks Down Multi-Year Deal to Distribute WWE Home video Titles (EXCLUSIVE)
'' Variety'' (11/19/2014) The deal also saw DVD releases coming from the defunct

World Championship Wrestling World Championship Wrestling (WCW) was an American professional wrestling promotion founded by Ted Turner in 1988, after Turner Broadcasting System, through a subsidiary named Universal Wrestling Corporation, purchased the assets of National W ...

(WCW), which was previously owned by

Time Warner Warner Media, LLC ( doing business as WarnerMedia) was an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate owned by AT&T. It was headquartered at the 30 Hudson Yards complex in New York City. It was established as Time Warne ...

and sold to WWE in 2001. The deal came as a result of the success the two had with '' Scooby-Doo! WrestleMania Mystery'', as well as a '' Flintstones'' crossover and a sequel to the ''

Scooby-Doo ''Scooby-Doo'' is an American media franchise owned by Warner Bros., Warner Bros. Entertainment and created in 1969 by writers Joe Ruby and Ken Spears through their animated series, ''Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!'', for Hanna-Barbera (which wa ...

'' crossover. Additionally, despite remaining top-sellers, WWE Home Video releases had been in a decline in recent years due to

streaming media Streaming media refers to multimedia delivered through a Computer network, network for playback using a Media player (disambiguation), media player. Media is transferred in a ''stream'' of Network packet, packets from a Server (computing), ...

services such as WWE's own

International Distribution

The WWF began releasing home video products in the United Kingdom in July 1990 through an exclusive partnership with Silver Vision, a division of home video distributor Clear Vision. Their releases were initially distributed by The Video Collection before Silver Vision began releasing products independently. Silver Vision began releasing WWE releases in other European territories such as Germany (previously released through PolyGram Video). One popular line from Silver Vision was the UK-exclusive WWE Tagged Classics DVD series, which did not have any edits or censoring of the WWF initials. On 19 September 2012, Silver Vision announced on their website that the partnership between their parent Clear Vision Ltd. and WWE would end on 31 December 2012, with SummerSlam 2012 and ''nWo: The Revolution'' being their final WWE release. On 19 November 2012, it was announced that

FremantleMedia Fremantle Limited (), formerly FremantleMedia, is a British multinational television production and distribution company based in London. The company was founded as Pearson Television in 1993 when publishing and education company Pearson ...

(now Fremantle) would be the new WWE Home Video distributor for the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

and the rest of

Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

, releasing all future WWE DVD, Blu-ray, and digital-file-based releases in Europe, replacing Silver Vision. Their official UK website launched in January 2013 along with their initial releases - ''Night Of Champions 2012'', ''Hell In A Cell 2012'', ''Top 100 RAW Moments'' and ''The Attitude Era'', all of which were issued on DVD and Blu-ray.

Discontinuation

On December 3, 2021, it was originally announced that WWE Home Video releases would be discontinued in the United States and Canada in early 2022, although releases in the United Kingdom and Germany by distributor

Fremantle Fremantle () () is a port city in Western Australia located at the mouth of the Swan River (Western Australia), Swan River in the metropolitan area of Perth, the state capital. Fremantle Harbour serves as the port of Perth. The Western Australi ...

would be continuing. Despite this, WWE Home Video releases continued to be released throughout 2022 and 2023. On December 5, 2023, Fremantle announced that they would not renew their British and German contract with WWE to continue releasing physical content. As such, Crown Jewel 2023 was the last WWE Home Video release in those regions. On the same day, it was revealed that WWE Home Video releases would be discontinued in North America as well, as no announcements were made by the company that they would release physical products in 2024 and beyond. Survivor Series: WarGames 2023 was the last WWE Home Video release in North America as well as their last release altogether. On December 31, 2023, they posted an announcement to their X (formerly known as Twitter) account that reads:

Expansion of the video library

With the expansion of the WWE Video Library, content has also been released from the vast library archives, including classic WWF, AWA, WCW, ECW, WCCW, and NWA content.

Formats

Content was released exclusively in the

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for digital video disc or digital versatile disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any ki ...

and UMD format (for selected documentaries only, until the format was discontinued) from mid-2005 ( SummerSlam 2005 was the last VHS release) until their closure in 2023.

WrestleMania XXIV WrestleMania XXIV was a 2008 professional wrestling pay-per-view (PPV) List of WWE pay-per-view events, event produced by World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE). It was the 24th annual WrestleMania and took place on March 30, 2008, at the Camping Wo ...

was the company's first show, and the first sports related event, to be released on

Blu-ray Disc Blu-ray (Blu-ray Disc or BD) is a Digital media, digital optical disc data storage format designed to supersede the DVD format. It was invented and developed in 2005 and released worldwide on June 20, 2006, capable of storing several hours of ...

, being released in stores on May 20, 2008, as a 2-disc set; it was also the only pay-per-view released on UMD. Some content (primarily pay-per-views) were also available on

Video CD Video CD (abbreviated as VCD, and also known as Compact Disc Digital Video), (not to be confused with CD Video which is a type of Laserdisc) is a home video format and the first format for distributing films on standard optical discs. The f ...

format through certain licensors in developing markets like India where Ultra Video was the licensee in the mid 2000s followed by Excel Home Video starting in 2010.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wwe Home Video Home video distributors Mass media companies established in 1997 1997 establishments in Connecticut Mass media companies disestablished in 2023 American companies disestablished in 2023