Will McCormick of Heavy Sports has a featured article up covering the WWE deal with ESPN, and specifically how it will affect the bottom line of fans.
The article is dubbed, “WWE TV Will Cost You $1,000 a Year to Watch After 2026 ESPN Launch”, and informs fans of the costs associated with consuming all of WWE’s content under the current platforms the various programming is offered on, and how drastically that is about to change.
According to the article, WWE’s current weekly content runs fans approximately $780 per year, whereas after the move to ESPN takes place in 2026, it will cost fans in excess of $1,000 anually to consume all of the primary WWE content.
From HeavySports.com:
“… For an avid WWE fan to watch all of WWE’s weekly content in 2025, the cheapest option is $65 a month, or roughly $780 a year …Once WWE PLEs move to ESPN next April, wrestling fans will go from paying $132 annually for PLEs on Peacock to $360 a year under ESPN. That’s just for the monthly WWE events. Also, Netflix is $96 annually. The cheapest cable subscription service, like Sling TV, is still $552 a year. Suffice to say, the numbers add up. On paper, wrestling fans should expect to pay a minimum of $1008 under the current prices to watch Raw, SmackDown, and all PLEs.”
As noted, WWE announced last week that the company will be moving its’ monthly premium live events from Peacock to ESPN, starting with WrestleMania 42 on April 18 and April 19, 2026. The five-year deal was worth a reported $1.6 billion.
