Triple H & WWE Accused of Taking Advantage of ESPN
WWE and ESPN’s relationship has unofficially hit a rocky patch.
Recently, Freddie Prinze Jr., who is a former employee of the Stamford promotion, revealed that the sports conglomerate was unhappy in its partnership with the wrestling juggernaut.
In August, both companies signed a lucrative business deal to air wrestling premium live events on ESPN’s streaming platform in the United States, which kicked off with Wrestlepalooza in September.
The Hollywood star revealed on his podcast that he had a friend working in Disney, who claimed that they were not happy with their deal with WWE.
ESPN, by the way, so unhappy with the deal. I was talking to a friend of mine who works for Disney, and he was just like, ‘Yo, they better make their money back on this deal.’ He just said, ‘They’re hot.’
Fightful Select, meanwhile, followed up with ESPN and the Stamford-based company for a comment, revealing that both refuted any claims of existing tensions.
Triple H & WWE Taking Advantage Of ESPN?
On a recent episode of The Coach & Bro podcast, Jonathan Coachman and Vince Russo discussed the latest comments by Freddie Prinze Jr.
Coachman, who worked at ESPN sometime after leaving WWE, claimed that Triple H and Nick Khan were taking advantage of ESPN, whose subscribers are not primarily wrestling fans.
This was a big deal for both sides. It was a smart deal. When you’re launching an app, Vince, and you gotta get people to pay $30, it’s the most expensive entertainment app in the world. So, they knew it was going to be an uphill battle.
But Vince, when you don’t know, I think Triple H and WWE are taking advantage of that. I think Nick Khan’s taking advantage of the fact that they know that a lot of people at ESPN, they know the promotion game, but they don’t know the wrestling game.
So, I think they thought, ‘They don’t know if it’s a bad show. They don’t know if it’s a subpar show.’ You could just watch it, Vince, and you and I could pick it apart from now until next week on everything that was lazy about that show. Vince, they’re not living up to their side. ESPN is.