ESPN Losing Big Money on WWE Deal Despite WrestlePalooza Spike

ESPN’s major gamble on WWE content may already be backfiring.

During Wrestling Observer Radio, Meltzer broke down ESPN Unlimited’s performance after WWE joined the $325 million-per-year streaming partnership. While the service saw a surge during WrestlePalooza, it wasn’t nearly enough to justify the deal’s massive price tag.

According to Meltzer, the platform reached 2.1 million total subscribers, but the true value to ESPN hinges on who’s paying for WWE. The key weekend—WrestlePalooza—reportedly added around 100,000 to 125,000 subscribers, but Meltzer did the math and it doesn’t look good.

“If every month ends up kind of like this one… it’s worth $35 million a year. Now, they’re spending $325 million a year for $35 million a year of revenue coming from having these WWE events. Which is a very bad number.”

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Meltzer pointed out that ESPN is betting big on long-term growth, but that strategy might cost them heavily in the short run. He said most of the 30 million existing ESPN subscribers are getting the service for free through cable providers, which means the real revenue is only coming from a small portion of WWE diehards.

“That’s why these companies are losing lots of money on this type of stuff—with the idea that down the road, when we get 50 million subscribers paying 30 bucks, we’ll be able to afford all this.”

When asked how WWE’s value compares to other mega sports deals, Meltzer didn’t hold back.

“They’re probably going to be more valuable to ESPN than UFC will be to Paramount… That’s a $1.1 billion deal. That’s going to be a giant, giant, giant money loser. This will be a big money loser too—just like Peacock was for WWE.”

While the idea of WWE helping launch premium sports platforms sounds exciting on paper, Meltzer says the real winners are WWE executives cashing those checks—not necessarily the platforms footing the bill.

“WWE has managed to get itself in that position—to where people are paying a lot to launch services based on these types of people: WWE, NBA, and all that. So it’s good to be those people. But man, a lot of companies are losing a lot of money doing this business.”

Whether ESPN can turn things around or not, one thing is clear: WrestlePalooza may have brought in short-term hype, but it didn’t bring enough paying customers to make the numbers make sense.

ESPN’s faith in WWE is costing them more than just rights fees—it’s turning into a brutal lesson in subscription economics.

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