It has been more than a year since WWE announced that its Premium Live Events were leaving Peacock for ESPN.
I didn’t hate the move when it was announced. WWE partnering with the self-proclaimed “Worldwide Leader in Sports” felt like another major step in the company’s continued push into the mainstream.
One year later, though, I have a hard time arguing that the deal has been good for WWE fans.
In fact, I think it has been a failure.
Whatever happens next legally, the lawsuit underscores a problem that has followed the ESPN deal from the beginning. More than a year after it was announced, we’re still talking about who gets access, what fans have to pay and what exactly they’re getting for their money.
The WWE Network felt like it was made for wrestling fans. Peacock wasn’t, but WWE fans still got the PLEs, the archive and everything else on Peacock for a relatively low monthly price. With ESPN, WWE moved to a bigger sports platform, but its fans got a worse product.
