ESPN began its partnership with WWE in August of last year, signing a five-year exclusive deal to broadcast the wrestling company’s premium live events (PLEs) in the United States. This agreement kicked off with the WrestlePalooza event, and since then, the sports network has provided extensive on-screen coverage of WWE programming.
Joe Fortenbaugh, ESPN’s sports betting analyst and co-host of GameDay on ESPN Radio, recently interviewed Denise Salcedo on various topics, including how the network approaches its coverage of WWE and its shows.
Fortenbaugh said, “Excellent question, because we are still in the exploratory phase with that. What does the viewer want the most? If we sit down and have an interview with Seth, do people want to hear about the match, the history with Roman, his preparation for the match? Or do you want to bring in a new audience that might not necessarily watch wrestling and that might not necessarily want to hear about the storyline, but could be interested in the fact that Seth is a huge Bears fan? They’re a Bears fan or they’re a football fan, now there’s a connection. Now, they might be more interested in following Seth because they know something about him. So we’re working to marry those two, how best to serve the viewer. Getting to know them a little bit, I think there are fans that really want to see the peek behind the curtain, and we’re trying to figure out the best way to marry the two for the viewers.”
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(H/T to Fightful for transcribing the above quotes)
