WWE’s Current Relationship With ESPN After Peacock Deal Not Good

ESPN may be upset with WWE.

Today it was announced that NBCUniversal’s Peacock service will become the new streaming service for WWE in the United States. We heard last year that WWE was looking to possibly sell the streaming rights to their pay-per-views and that ESPN was one company they were talking with. We now know that WWE did not go with ESPN on this deal and it looks like ESPN was not happy about that.

According to Dave Meltzer on Monday’s Wrestling Observer Live, Bryan Alvarez asked if this means WWE is no longer talking to Disney about anything and Meltzer stated,

“Oh boy, can I tell you some stuff there. What I can tell you  is… This is conjecture, this is my conjecture and then later what I will tell you is not conjecture. I believe there is a good chance ESPN was part of the talks. I believe three weeks ago ESPN knew they were not gonna get it. That’s my conjecture. What I do know, is that ESPN has pretty much shut down any WWE right now. No more WWE content on ESPN.”

We do not know what this fully means as far as WWE’s relationship with ESPN/Disney and how far those talks actually went. It does not sound like they are happy though. It also seems as if the two sides were still talking within the last month on a possible deal.

Another question out right now is how FOX feels about this deal. Essentially FOX now has to push a competitor’s streaming service during Smackdown since that is where all WWE pay-per-views will air on.

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