WWE Wrestlepalooza ESPN Media Scrum: ESPN Not Having Any Creative Control for WWE PLEs, Interest in WWE Library, “Church & State” News Coverage with WWE & Wrestling, Wrestlepalooza’s Date Had Less To Do with Competition, “Minimum Threshold” for WWE PLEs Simulcasts

ESPN held a media scrum earlier today to promote this Saturday’s WWE’s Wrestlepalooza event in Indianapolis, Indiana on the ESPN app.

Some of the notable topics discussed included:

• On the topic of if ESPN has any say on WWE’s creative plans or talents booked for WWE shows such as Brock Lesnar on their streaming service, ESPN Vice President of Programming and Acquisitions Matt Kenny stated “Our relationship with the WWE is such where they have creative control. I think it’s important to provide some context there, we are distributors of the events. It’s not all that dissimilar to the other rights holder relationships we have, where we have relationships with the league. Obviously, a glove, stick, and ball league is a little bit different than the combat sports world, as we could all appreciate. But in regard to our relationship with the WWE, they retain creative control, which, by the way, we’re fine with, because they have built an incredible business for a long period of time. For as much as I playfully talked about my WWE fandom at the top of the call, I don’t need to be opining on what a script should be to WWE. We’re excited about what they do, how they do it, and can’t wait for Saturday.“
• On the topic of ESPN’s interest in WWE’s archive library, Kenny stated “You know, I think for us, the rights that we have are for the Premium Live Events and those will be called bankable V.O.D. so as the events take place on our platforms, we’ll be able to offer those events on demand, and so that library, our PLE library will build over time. But in terms of the broader library, I would direct your question to the WWE to handle. But, we’re excited to start populating, building, curating a robust digital offering for WWE fans on our platforms.“
• On the topic of if any new WWE PLEs will be added to this year’s calendar and specifically for this December due to the lack of a WWE PLE for that month, Kenny stated “Yeah, I think anything along those lines will bear itself out in just more forward-looking scheduling conversations that we’ll get into with the WWE over time. But I think just to put a fine point on that answer, we knew what we were signing up for when we acquired the PLEs. The PLEs are incredibly invaluable and we understand the importance of those shows to help fuel our direct-to-consumer business so, we’re excited about the schedule of events that WWE puts forth for the PLEs, and if there’s conversations to be had about evolving that, then we’re certainly game to doing that.“
• On the topic of if ESPN reporters would have full independence in how they cover WWE and their competitors in wrestling, Senior Vice President of ESPN+ JT Lasker stated “Yeah, I think the answer to that is an emphatic yes.“Kenny responded stating “Unequivocal, yes, and that’s separation of church and state. I know we have some P.R. folks on here that could probably underscore that, but yes.“
• On the topic of WWE’s media rights deal with ESPN for PLEs starting earlier than originally expected, Kenny stated “So, our relationship is with the WWE. We have no interaction, engagement, dialogue with the Peacock folks at all. I think what was most important for us was the opportunity to have a launch event this fall, and so we were really excited about that, and then, when it was presented to us that there was an opportunity to begin our five-year relationship early, obviously, we were excited about that as well.“
• On the topic of WWE counter-programming efforts and Wrestlepalooza being scheduled for the same night as AEW’s All Out event, Kenny stated “We work collaboratively with WWE on schedule. In this particular case, many of their events had already been scheduled. Normally, in these types of arrangements — so my team and I work on the NBA. We also handle UFC. There’s really a lengthy process where you work with the partner to identify specific dates. You build out your schedule so you align in that regard, and so on. On some level, WWE is scheduled throughout the rest of the year. Throughout the rest of 2025, there had been a number of dates already on the calendar, and in this particular case, we were just laser-focused on launching WWE. We knew we wanted to have a marquee WWE event in September to support the launch of ESPN’s direct-to-consumer offering, as JT mentioned before, so it really had less to do with any particular wrestling competition. In fact, we take a holistic view. We know there’s competition everywhere, and certainly in the fall on Saturdays, I don’t need to explain to this group, there’s no shortage of college football competition throughout the day, right? We’re in the teeth of the football season now, so we welcome competition. We really take a ‘Hey game on’ approach, and we’re focused on what we can do, in this particular case, to super-serve WWE and wrestling fans on our platforms.“
• Lasker responded stating “Everything that Matt said, I 1,000% agree with, in addition, we’ve got an incredible sort of digital ecosystem here and in a great product that we just launched on August 21 which, which effectively allows us to, you Know, to to do what we need to do, sort of in the even with or without, you know, competition. So this Saturday night, just on our own networks, there’s a lot of really great college football games going on, and we get really excited about. I mentioned the features and functionality that we talked about. One of those is multi-view. Fans are going to be sitting there on Saturday night, watching Wrestlepalooza in Miami, Florida, at the same time, and can sort of super in and super out as they see fit, or as they wish. Our hope there is it’s just going to drive more interest and engagement in the WWE and vice versa, that hopefully WWE fans that are coming to us get to sort of experience and become fans of a lot of the other sort of sports content that we’ll be able to present to them. So there’s growth and opportunity and sort of excitement in terms of how we serve sports fans, irrespective of the sort of competitive set. The more sports fans that are on our platform on Saturday night, watching various things, is good for all of us.“
• On the topic of how ESPN decides which portions of WWE PLEs are going to be simulcast on the new streaming service and on linear television, Kenny stated “Yeah, it’s a great question. I mentioned the collaboration between us and WWE. So I think the first step is we work with our content strategy team to figure out that opportunities exist. This may be a little inside the ropes a bit, but, I think it’s good context so it starts with us figuring out where are we. As you can appreciate, given our portfolio of rights, we have a lot of commitments, and so then, it’s once we get a sense of what we could do, it’s working with the WWE on what that looks like, and so, we will get into that with them. There is a minimum threshold (of WWE PLEs that have to be shown on ESPN linear TV), that we have to hit, and at the same time, we understand that, look, maybe doing it more would be beneficial, maybe not and so, we’re still so early in all this, that I think the most important aspect of the simulcast piece is how do we use our mega influence? If you think about ESPN as a funnel, how do we get as many people into the funnel as people? And ultimately, that accrues benefit to the diehard WWE fan, and then also expanding the audience and exposing more and more people to the WWE which we want to do. Audience expansion is a big priority for our company. We wanna get younger, we wanna get more diverse. We want better gender diversity on our platforms. All of these things, we want to do, and so, we believe WWE is a big part of that solution as we move forward here in our new direct-to-consumer world.“

WWE Wrestlepalooza ESPN full media scrum:

Source: F4WOnline.com, Fightful.com 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, & 6