ESPN Responds To Claims It Has Already Decided To End Its Partnership With WWE

It has been almost a year since WWE PLEs started airing exclusively on ESPN. The partnership between the companies has been a little messy, to say the least. So much so that, with four years still to go, reports claimed ESPN has already decided it won’t be renewing its contract with WWE once this first one ends. However, ESPN has responded, claiming that simply isn’t true.

ESPN Denies It’s Already Decided Not To Re-Sign With WWE

SEScoops was the source of the original report claiming WWE and ESPN’s deal, which doesn’t expire until 2030, is already done for. In it, the site claims multiple sources told it that a lack of “culture and synergy” was the reason behind the decision, as well as cable providers not picking up the ESPN Unlimited app through which WWE PLEs are available.

ESPN’s Ben Cafardo, who has WWE Premium Live Events listed among the many things he’s involved with at the company, has quickly rubbished those reports, responding to SEScoops directly on Twitter. “There is no truth to the report that we have decided not to renew. They never checked with us before publishing and had they, we would have told them that was completely false,” Cafardo’s post reads.

SEScoops has seen the retort from Cafardo and added an update to its original article, but it’s neither an apology nor a correction. It’s simply an acknowledgment that the ESPN employee has claimed the report is false, but the site has made it very clear that it stands by its original story, suggesting that the sources the information came from are, perhaps, also ESPN employees.

WWE And ESPN’s Relationship Is Off To A Rough Start

This is far from the first bump in the road ESPN has encountered since getting into bed with WWE. Right out of the gate, fans were upset that they would need an ESPN subscription to watch WWE PLEs moving forward. Especially when that subscription is $29.99 per month, three times as much as they were being charged for the same thing on the WWE Network, and that came with an almost endless amount of archive content and additional original programming.

The news that ESPN might already be fed up with its WWE partnership also comes on the heels of WWE fans being charged even more for access to PLEs since the prices of the sports platform’s subscription service are going up. Couple that with the controversy surrounding ESPN’s middling letter grades for WWE shows, that system being quietly and mysteriously sunsetted, and then the reporter responsible for them being refused entry to WrestleMania, and yeah, all things considered, it has been a great first year for WWE and ESPN.