ESPN President: There Is A Full Appreciation At ESPN For How Compelling WWE Content Is

The WWE and ESPN partnership officially kicked off on September 20 with WWE Wrestlepalooza. Ahead of the event, WWE superstars were all over ESPN programming and ESPN dedicated time to pre-show coverage to the event.

Speaking to Richard Deitsch on the Sports Media podcast, ESPN President of Content Burke Magnus was asked how ESPN will continue to incorporate WWE programming, wondering if SportsCenter would cover major happenings in the world of WWE.

“It’s a really active conversation. What we’re seeing today is launch-oriented. We’ve had superstars on our shows. Triple H has been on a variety of shows. Everything, though, has been presented in the context of the new partnership and Wrestlepalooza. When it flips from being (less) about the awareness of the new rights agreements and new partnership, how do we handle coverage of the WWE across our platforms? That is a really active conversation right now. My gut here is that there will be coverage, but we’re figuring out what that looks like in the context of WWE. It’s unequivocally entertainment and part of sports and athletic and what we do in every way, other than the storylines are scripted, and it’s presented that way and everybody knows that. There is a full appreciation at ESPN of how compelling their content is from an entertainment perspective. The answer is ‘Yes, for sure,’ but I’m not really prepared right now to tell you or give you examples of what that might look like,” he said.

Elsewhere during the interview, Magnus revealed that he tried to acquire WWE programming in the past for ESPN. You can find his full comments here.

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