Dan Le Batard, Mike Ryan lament WrestleMania ‘cash grab’ by WWE, ESPN

Set aside the specifics of the match results or the culmination of Pat McAfee’s return, and the clear takeaway from ESPN’s first WrestleMania this weekend was that it was a worse experience for the fans.

Coming off a week in which the Worldwide Leader put its full promotional heft behind the WWE, and McAfee used his show to cut promos for Saturday night’s main event, the actual spectacle in Las Vegas fell short of expectations. And on Monday, while recapping WrestleMania 42, Dan Le Batard and longtime producer Mike Ryan lamented how WWE’s signature event may have come to symbolize a tilt toward money over fan experience across all sports.

“The WWE fan right now is paying more than it ever has to get PLEs,” Ryan said Monday on The Dan Le Batard Show. “I’m paying more than ever to get approximately 12 events per year. Usually (by partnering with the WWE), you would get the entire catalog, and that’s what was so valuable to Peacock. Here, they’re just getting 12 tentpole events a year.”

ESPN signed a five-year deal with WWE parent TKO last year, reportedly worth $325 million annually. Unlike the promotion’s previous contract with NBCUniversal and Peacock, the new deal covers only the monthly Premier Live Events (PLEs). The new arrangement means WWE fans pay more for access to the company’s full library, and they also have to authenticate the ESPN Unlimited service and watch more commercials.

“The in-ring action was the thing that was least represented on WrestleMania,” Ryan added. “The amount of commercial breaks outnumbered the amount of in-ring action.”

But beyond the financial questions surrounding the ESPN deal, Ryan also called into question WWE’s fundamental vision since its merger with the UFC and Endeavor to form TKO Group Holdings.

“What was interesting to see was that this was kind of a big week for the narrative around TKO’s ownership,” Ryan explained. “They’ve really put their stamp on this product, now, and they’re all over ESPN, and it’s a capitalist venture. Tickets were not nearly as (well-sold) as the last time they ran Las Vegas. Running Las Vegas back-to-back years was a cash grab, and it showed.”

The same city has not hosted consecutive WrestleManias since 1988-89, in Atlantic City. In 2027, the marquee event will air from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, as the WWE’s close relationship with Middle Eastern countries has seemingly strengthened since the TKO takeover.

While Ryan’s gripes focused on this year’s WrestleMania, Le Batard argued that similar dynamics are overtaking all of the live sports experience.

“All this stuff exists for the advertising. It is the reason that all of this is becoming, instead of the enjoyable customer experience that you might prefer at the ambiance of the ballpark, it’s all programming now,” Le Batard said. “When you’re talking about the direction that this is headed, whoever the four or five winners are in sports, are going to need to get their money back because the Padres just went for $3.9 billion.”

Indeed, the WWE provides a useful example for how sports have been infiltrated by big business over the past decade. Going from the McMahon family business to a global private equity firm (Silver Lake, which owns Endeavor, which owns TKO) has quickly changed the WWE. Look no further than the incredibly bizarre yet fitting promotion of shady crypto billionaire Adam Weitsman ringside on Sunday night. The same groups are buying in across sports, and the results are likely to be felt similarly.