There’s been a fair amount of speculation about how ESPN and WWE’s multi-year media rights deal for domestic premium live events is being viewed internally at both companies. Most of the rumors and reports tell us there’s frustration on both sides, and that frustration has seemed evident in both WWE’s product and ESPN’s presentation at times since the partnership kicked off with Wrestlepalooza
last September.As I find is the case with most things — especially on the wrestle web — the truth is probably
not as bad as the worst rumors but not as good as the official company (or companies, in this case) line, or closest to the option 32% of you chose last week.
Here, that would mean that ESPN and WWE are still trying to figure out how to make the marriage of a pro wrestling/sports entertainment company that’s increasingly embracing its pre-determined and scripted nature, and a brand built on non-scripted competition with unknown outcomes, aka “real sports”.
Joe Fortenbaugh is not a decision-maker at Disney-owned ESPN (his bio on their website says he’s a sports betting analyst and host that’s been with the company since 2020), which may explain why his “state of the partnership” answer during a post-SummerSlam interview with Denise Salcedo is probably pretty close to the truth instead of a public relations statement loaded down with b-school buzzwords.
“Excellent question, because we are still in the exploratory phase with that. What does the viewer want the most? If we sit down and we have an interview with Seth [Rollins], which we did recently, it aired this morning about tonight’s match, do people want to hear about the match, the history with Roman [Reigns], his preparation for the match?
“Or do you want to bring in a new audience that might not necessarily watch wrestling, that might not necessarily want to hear about the storyline, but could be interested in the fact that Seth’s a huge Bears fan? They’re a Bears fan or they’re a football fan, now there’s a connection.
“Now they might be more interested in following Seth because they know something about him. So we’re working to marry those two, how best to serve the viewer.”
If the brass at WWE and ESPN share Fortenbaugh’s outlook (and honestly, given how customer-centric it is, I kinda doubt it), they’ll likely continue to tweak their PLE formula to figure out how to best serve their existing audience and bridge the game to their partners’ viewers.
Will they? And if they do, will they be successful? That’s the $1.6 billion dollar bet.
Get in on that action, or Joe Fortenbaugh’s almost-shockingly sane take on it, in the comments or The Feed!
