WWE is changing how fans will watch SummerSlam, and the move is already raising questions about whether ESPN Unlimited has delivered the subscription numbers both sides expected.
Speaking on Wrestling Observer Radio, Dave Meltzer broke down WWE’s decision not to air a free one-hour portion of SummerSlam on ESPN before the main show moves to ESPN Unlimited.
ESPN will still push SummerSlam hard across its platforms. The network plans to air talk shows, countdown programming and repeated broadcasts of Cody Rhodes’ appearance with Tom Brady. However, fans will not get any free matches on ESPN this time around.
Meltzer does not believe television ratings caused the change. He argued that WWE programming likely performed far better than ESPN’s usual Saturday night content, especially outside of college football season.
“They decided not to do the one hour. My gut is—we didn’t get the ratings for the last two of the one-hour shows, which I thought was interesting. However, there’s no way, in the time slot that they were doing those hours, that they weren’t way, way, way, way, way above what ESPN would do in that time slot. So it can’t be low ratings based on ESPN. It does much better than programming in that time slot would do.”
The bigger concern may be how many people actually signed up for ESPN Unlimited after watching the free portion. Meltzer believes WWE and ESPN may have decided that giving away matches on television was not converting enough viewers into paying customers.
“The reason for not doing it obviously has to be that they must be unhappy with the amount of signups that they’re getting or the viewership that they’re getting on ESPN Unlimited, and feel that putting the two matches on ESPN was cutting into the numbers that they wanted.”
He explained that traditional viewership is not the most important number in this situation. The real money comes from fans subscribing to ESPN Unlimited on the day of the event.
“The numbers that are important to them are the money numbers—not even the viewer numbers—because the money numbers to them are how many people subscribe on the day of the show. That’s where they really make their money on this deal or don’t make their money on this deal.”
Meltzer compared the strategy to ESPN’s old setup with UFC, where free preliminary fights were used to convince fans to purchase the pay-per-view. WWE is trying to sell a streaming subscription instead, which changes the entire game.
“The one-hour show also heightens interest and gets people, like they did for the entirety of the UFC contract, where they always tried to find somewhere on the ESPN networks to put those two hours before the start of the pay-per-view to get people to buy the pay-per-view. But it’s a different animal. That was selling a pay-per-view. This is not selling a pay-per-view.”
In Meltzer’s view, dropping the free ESPN hour is a strong sign that the original plan did not produce the results WWE and ESPN wanted.
“In the end, it tells you that they weren’t happy with the number of people who were buying—new people buying subscriptions for ESPN Unlimited—because if they were, they would have kept going and doing what they were doing.”
He also pointed out that concerns about ESPN Unlimited’s reach existed from the start. The service was not available in every home, while ESPN was paying serious money for WWE programming.
“There have been rumors of that from the start, that they have not been happy about the numbers. My gut was, at first, that they weren’t going to be because it was limited how many homes could get it and they were paying an awful lot of money.”
Meltzer stopped short of claiming WWE or ESPN had directly confirmed any disappointment. Still, he believes the change in strategy is the clearest sign yet that the free-hour experiment did not work as planned.
“I guess this would be the first pretty much confirmation that, yeah, they’re trying a new strategy because they feel that the strategy didn’t pay off.”
The fact that WWE is making this move for SummerSlam makes it even more noticeable. This is not some throwaway monthly event. SummerSlam is one of the company’s biggest shows of the year.
“The fact they’re doing it on SummerSlam tells it even stronger. If they skipped it on the show the month before, the June show, it’d be one thing and you could just go, ‘Maybe they don’t need to do it on a small show.’ But this is as big as it gets other than the Rumble and WrestleMania. So there you go.”
WWE and ESPN are still throwing major promotional muscle behind SummerSlam, but taking away the free matches puts more pressure on fans to pay from the opening bell. Now the real question is whether that creates more subscribers or pushes casual viewers away.
Do you think removing the free ESPN hour will help ESPN Unlimited subscriptions, or will it hurt SummerSlam’s overall audience? Leave your feedback below.
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