WWE and ESPN disclosed their five-year streaming partnership this week for the domestic rights to WWE’s slate of premium live events, including WrestleMania.
WWE’s existing deal with Peacock expires in early 2026 and will transfer to ESPN’s new direct-to-consumer service in time for WrestleMania 42 next April. The deal calls for ten premium live events over twelve nights, accounting for the two-night WrestleMania and SummerSlam cards.
The deal is worth $1.6 billion over the term with an average annual value of $325 million. WWE states that the previous AAV of the deal with Peacock was worth $180 million.
For its fanbase, it does represent a significant shift as the ESPN streaming service is priced at $29.99 per month, a significant step up from the monthly rate at Peacock.
In addition, it is for less content as WWE’s archival library and NXT events are not part of the ESPN deal, as Mark Shapiro of TKO stated on the earnings call, they can take those pieces to the marketplace to further monetize.
Brandon Thurston of Wrestlenomics reported that only select carriers currently have deals in place that will allow access to the direct-to-consumer service with their cable subscription. Presently, those carriers are Charter (Spectrum), DirecTV, FuboTV, Hulu Live TV, and Verizon Fios. Thurston’s estimate is that these carriers cover approximately 30 million households.
It leaves other carriers, such as those subscribing to ESPN’s linear service with Comcast (Xfinity), DISH, Frontier, and YouTube TV, among others, without the ability to get the direct-to-consumer service free.
Alex Sherman of CNBC confirmed this report in his CNBC Sport newsletter, although he states the goal is to make the direct-to-consumer service available to all cable subscribers, but those carriage deals still need to be worked out with the outstanding ones.
I’m told discussions with all of these pay TV providers are ongoing, and Disney hopes to have most of them done by the end of the year. It’s still unclear to me at this point if Disney can accelerate some of these discussions if their pay TV carriage renewals aren’t until 2026.
Long-term, ESPN plans to have authentication deals with every major pay TV distributor. Disney doesn’t want existing cable customers leaving the bundle just because ESPN is now available outside of it.
But when the application is ready for showtime on Aug. 21, there are going to be a bunch of pay TV subscribers who aren’t going to get their authentication access that they’re paying for. It’s possible this may lead to some pay TV distribution swapping. In other words, if I’m a YouTube TV subscriber and I want ESPN’s direct-to-consumer product now, maybe I switch to DirecTV or Charter, if I live in that territory.
There is a silver lining that WWE’s move to the service doesn’t transpire until next spring, and many of these deals could be sorted by then, rather than its August 21 launch date of the service.
For international viewers, there is no impact with this deal as it’s strictly for the U.S. rights to the premium live events. International viewers will still have access to the PLEs and WWE library on Netflix.
If you’re keeping score, WWE can shop the NXT PLE rights, its library archive for a domestic partner, and AAA. For TKO at large, it stated it is “in the home stretch” of its domestic rights deal for the UFC, which expires at the end of 2025 with ESPN, as well as the forthcoming Zuffa Boxing entity.
After the deal was announced first thing on Wednesday, TKO’s stock shot up to nearly $170 per share but leveled off throughout the day and is currently trading at approximately $159 per share.
