ESPN executives asked about WWE running Wrestlepalooza against AEW All Out
The 2025 WWE Wrestlepalooza PLE is scheduled to take place this Saturday along with AEW All Out. During a media call to promote Wrestlepalooza, ESPN Programming and Acquisitions Lead Matt Kenny and ESPN SVP JT Lasker were asked about the event being viewed as counter-programming against AEW. Here is the excerpt…
Q. We’ve seen in the past WWE’s counter programs or competition quite a bit. How did that weigh into the decision to run Wrestlepalooza this weekend or did it? Do you foresee that happening more in the future, or do you kind of want an uninterrupted wrestling market and audience to appeal to?
KENNY: “I’ll take a stab at that one. For us, we work collaboratively with the WWE on the schedule. In this particular case, many of their events had already been scheduled. Normally in these types of arrangements — so my team will work on the NBA. We also handle UFC. There’s a lengthy process where you work with the partner to identify specific dates, you build out your schedule, so you align in that regard. On some level, WWE’s schedule throughout the rest of 2025, there had been a number of dates already on the calendar.
In this particular case, we were just laser focused on launching WWE. We knew we wanted to have a marquee WWE event in September to support the launch of ESPN’s Direct-to-Consumer offering, as [Lasker] mentioned before, so it really had less to do with any particular wrestling competition.
In fact, we take a holistic view. We know there’s competition everywhere, and certainly in the fall on Saturdays, I don’t need to explain to this group, there’s no shortage of college football competition throughout the day. We’re in the teeth of the football season now. So, we welcome competition. We do take a, hey, game on approach, and we’re focused on what we can do in this particular case to super serve WWE and wrestling fans on our platforms.”