When WWE signed a deal with ESPN to move its Premium Live Events from Peacock to ESPN Unlimited, the pitch was that anyone with an existing ESPN subscription could access the shows.<\/p>\n
That turned out not to be the case. And now it\u2019s the subject of a class-action lawsuit in US District Court.<\/p>\n
WWE fans Michael Diesa and Rebecca Toback have accused the company of violating the Connecticut Unfair Trade Practices Act and conspiring with ESPN to make fans overpay for the PLEs.<\/p>\n
According to Sportico\u2019s Michael McCann<\/a>, the lawsuit was first filed against WWE in January. But now ESPN has successfully petitioned<\/a> to join the pro wrestling titan as a tag-team partner in the case. Judge Thomas O. Farrish granted the motion in a 29-page ruling.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Court concludes that ESPN should be permitted to intervene to defend itself against the allegation that it violated CUTPA. As ESPN notes, \u2018CUTPA liability carries significant exposure,\u2019 and \u2018Diesa and Toback seek to establish those claims on behalf of a putative class.\u2019 (ESPN Mem. at 7.) The Plaintiffs do not dispute that they cannot prevail on Counts Two or Three of their complaint against WWE without obtaining a judicial determination that ESPN violated CUTPA,\u201d the judge wrote.<\/p>\n Why would ESPN want to join WWE in a multi-million dollar lawsuit? As McCann outlines, the subscriber agreement for ESPN, Disney+, and Hulu calls for arbitration to settle disputes and keep them out of the public eye, as well as a class-action waiver. Those would obviously benefit both ESPN and WWE as they look to wrestle their way out of the case.<\/p>\n It all stems from the promises made in the unveiling of ESPN Unlimited that weren\u2019t ultimately kept. WWE CEO Nick Khan told Puck\u2019s John Ourand on a podcast that anyone with an ESPN subscription would not face an \u201cupcharge\u201d for the PLEs.<\/p>\n \u201cSame thing here with what has been referred to as ESPN Flagship. You subscribe to that product, you get WrestleMania, SummerSlam, Royal Rumble, all of our other premium live events with no upcharge,\u201d Khan said in August 2025<\/a>.<\/p>\n ESPN also said that customers with a pay-TV subscription could access the content along with those who subscribed to the service directly in their outline of the streaming service<\/a>: \u201cIn addition to ESPN DTC subscribers, fans that access ESPN through a traditional pay TV provider, e.g. Comcast, DirectTV, Hulu + Live TV, YouTube TV, will also have access to the new features through the enhanced ESPN App.\u201d<\/p>\n Yet, ahead of the first Wrestlepalooza PLE on ESPN, millions of subscribers couldn\u2019t watch<\/a> without an extra ESPN Unlimited subscription. Comcast<\/a> users didn\u2019t get access until February 2026, while YouTube TV<\/a> customers were left out until September 2026.<\/p>\n The rollout of WWE on ESPN and wider access to ESPN Unlimited was nothing short of a disaster, especially for sports fans on platforms that had to wait months for something they assumed would be available immediately. If you were a dedicated WWE fan who had to pay the extra $31.99 per month to watch these shows, you have every right to feel aggrieved. But ultimately, the court will decide whether it deserves compensation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When WWE signed a deal with ESPN to move its Premium Live Events from Peacock to ESPN Unlimited,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":858320,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[206834,399,398,396,397,167411,99,99438],"class_list":["post-858319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaa-football","tag-espn-unlimited","tag-football","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-football","tag-ncaafootball","tag-nick-khan","tag-sports","tag-wwe-on-espn"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/858319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=858319"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/858319\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/858320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=858319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=858319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=858319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}