ESPN Reportedly Unhappy With WWE Streaming Deal – Earlier this year, ESPN signed a five-year agreement with WWE reportedly worth over $1.6 billion to stream the company’s premium live events on ESPN+. The deal, originally scheduled to begin in 2026, started early with the debut of Wrestlepalooza in September.
Despite ESPN President Burke Magnus recently praising the partnership, former WWE creative team member Freddie Prinze Jr. revealed on the Wrestling with Freddie podcast that ESPN may not be seeing the return on investment they expected. “ESPN, by the way, so unhappy with the deal,” Prinze Jr. said. “I was talking to a friend of mine who works for Disney, and he was just like, ‘Yo, they better make their money back on this deal.’ He just said, ‘They’re hot.’”
Magnus, however, painted a more positive picture in a late November media appearance, highlighting the collaboration with WWE and the company’s superstars. “It’s gone great so far. We’re very familiar with Nick Khan and the team over there. We’ve had engagement with them for years in much smaller ways. They are fantastic to work with. They really hustle on behalf of their property. Those appearances don’t just happen unless you have a league to make those people available. The superstars are highly engaged in promoting themselves, the broader WWE, and their stories. It’s been really good so far. We’re looking forward to WrestleMania this year, which would be our first. We’ve had two PLEs to date, one was in the Middle East, so it was on an off-hour. Wrestlepalooza was new. Survivor Series this weekend is going to be a really good measuring stick for how it’s going. In terms of the interaction between the team at WWE and us, it’s been great,” he said.
With WWE’s major events now streaming on ESPN+, the next few months, including WrestleMania and Survivor Series, will be key in evaluating whether ESPN feels the partnership delivers on its massive investment.
ESPN Reportedly Unhappy With WWE Streaming Deal
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