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BadmanDan @lemmy.world

Is the WWE/ESPN PLE Deal Destined to Fail?

  1. They want $30 a month, a steep increase over what consumers already pay.
  2. ESPN is paying the WWE $200m more than what NBC gives them, FOR LESS, this deal dosen’t include WWE’s achieved library (which has serious value)
  3. Both TKO and ESPN are dealing with sexual harassment/assault cases right now.
  4. The WWE product isn’t necessarily hot right now, and they continue to prove gouge their loyal fans.

Am I missing something here, but this sounds like an incoming disaster of a deal, especially for ESPN.

1 comments

  • I doubt they'll call it a failure regardless of how it does.

    If anything it's a great money maker for WWE. How's it a failure for them by any means? They're making more for giving less. They can sell the library elsewhere to make more. Unless you're speculating it's a failure for ESPN in which case it remains to be seen.

    WWE could care less if people buy the PLEs since they have a guaranteed payment from the deal.

    They're also towards the (seemingly) tail end of a hot period that lasted around the same, if not, longer than the attitude era. It was also even more profitable even accounting for inflation.

    WWE has no reason to worry until the last year or so of the new deal. Nothing matters until then. They will make a ton of money and be immensely profitable.

    Edit: Content and the cost being worth it is continually debated and yet sports continually pay more in rights fees while everything else seemingly gets less. This falls close enough to sports to fall in the loss-leader category of wanting to have the programming for prestige to build the brand as opposed to directly making money.

    Think about sports rights and events like that. Millions of dollars in rights fees that don't get made back even in advertising, etc. It means a lot for station X to have something like the NBA, how much it means to have WWE PLEs remain to be seen for ESPN.