WWE and ESPN reached an agreement last summer for the exclusive broadcast of WWE's PLE on ESPN+, starting with Wrestlepalooza in September. Now, almost a year later, Joe Fortenbaugh, an ESPN analyst, has offered an assessment on the matter after being asked about it in a recent interview with Denise Salcedo.
"Excellent question, because we are still in an exploratory phase regarding that. What does the viewer want the most? If we sit down and do an interview with Seth (Rollins), do people want to hear about the match, his story with Roman (Reigns), his preparation for the match? Or do we want to attract a new audience that may not usually watch wrestling and may not necessarily be interested in hearing about the story, but might be interested in the fact that Seth is a big Bears fan?
They are Bears fans or American football fans, and now there is a connection. Suddenly, they might be more interested in following Seth because they know something about him. So we are working to combine those two things and find the best way to offer content to the viewer. I think there are fans who really want to take a look behind the scenes, and we are trying to find the best way to combine both things for the viewers," Fortenbaugh said.
WWE's new stage on ESPN has experienced some changes compared to the previous era on Peacock, such as broadcasting the first hour of PLE through the ESPN channel for free. This led the streaming platform to request an expansion of the SummerSlam card beyond five matches per night. It is unknown if the following PLE will follow this trend.
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