WWE and ESPN are taking a special approach for this yr’s SummerSlam 2026 pay-per-view event, eliminating the free one-hour preview that previously aired on ESPN before the event moved exclusively to ESPN Unlimited. The choice has fueled speculation that the unique strategy may not have generated the streaming subscriptions each corporations were hoping for.
Speaking on today’s edition of Wrestling Observer Radio, Dave Meltzer said he doesn’t imagine the move has anything to do with television rankings. While ESPN will proceed promoting SummerSlam 2026 with studio coverage, countdown specials, and repeat airings of Cody Rhodes’ appearance alongside Tom Brady, fans will not get a free portion of the event on linear television.
Based on Meltzer, WWE programming almost actually outperformed ESPN’s typical Saturday night lineup, making poor rankings an unlikely explanation. He said,
“They decided to not do the one hour. My gut is — we didn’t get the rankings for the last two of the one-hour shows, which I assumed was interesting. Nonetheless, there’s no way, within 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 point slot. So it may well’t be low rankings based on ESPN. It does a lot better than programming in that point slot would do.”
“The rationale for not doing it obviously needs to be that they need to be unhappy with the quantity of signups that they’re getting or the viewership that they’re getting on ESPN Unlimited, and feel that putting the 2 matches on ESPN was cutting into the numbers that they wanted.”
“The numbers which might be vital to them are the cash numbers—not even the viewer numbers—because the cash numbers to them are how many individuals 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.”
“The one-hour show also heightens interest and gets people, like they did for the whole lot of the UFC contract, where they at all times tried to search out somewhere on the ESPN networks to place those two hours before the beginning of the pay-per-view to get people to purchase the pay-per-view. Nevertheless it’s a special animal. That was selling a pay-per-view. This isn’t selling a pay-per-view.”
“In the long run, it tells you that they weren’t pleased with the number of people that were buying—latest people buying subscriptions for ESPN Unlimited—because in the event that they were, they’d have kept going and doing what they were doing.”
“There have been rumors of that from the beginning, that they’ve not been pleased in regards to the numbers. My gut was, at first, that they weren’t going to be since it was limited what number of homes could get it they usually were paying an awful lot of cash.”
“I suppose this might be the primary just about confirmation that, yeah, they’re trying a brand new strategy because they feel that the strategy didn’t repay.”
“The very fact they’re doing it on SummerSlam tells it even stronger. In the event that they skipped it on the show the month before, the June show, it’d be one thing and you may just go, ‘Perhaps they don’t have to do it on a small show.’ But that is as big because it gets aside from the Rumble and WrestleMania. So there you go.”
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