Dave Meltzer Speculates on Why ESPN Isn’t Airing Free Hours of WWE SummerSlam 2026, Thinks ESPN Is Unhappy With Subscriber Numbers

Yesterday, ESPN revealed its coverage plans for this weekend’s WWE SummerSlam 2026 premium live event. The press release didn’t make any mention of the first hour for both nights airing on the linear ESPN TV networks, including ESPN and ESPN 2, as ESPN has done in the past for WWE PLEs. During today’s edition of Wrestling Observer Radio, Dave Meltzer speculated that move indicates that ESPN thinks airing the first hour of WWE PLEs hurts the subscription numbers to its ESPN App service and the Unlimited tier.

Meltzer stated, “My gut is — we didn’t get the ratings for the last two — The one-hour shows, which I thought was interesting; however, there’s no way that in the time slot they were doing those hours that they weren’t way, way, way above what ESPN would do in that time slot. So, it can’t be low ratings based on ESPN. It does much better than programming in that time slot would do.”

Meltzer expressed his belief that ESPN is unhappy with the subscriber numbers for WWE PLEs, and that officials think the free hours of WWE PLEs are cutting into the overall subscriber numbers. He continued, “The reason for not doing it, obviously, has to be that they must be unhappy with the sign-ups they’re getting, or the viewership they’re getting on ESPN Unlimited, and feel that putting the two matches on ESPN was cutting into the numbers that they wanted and the numbers that are important to them, which is the money numbers.” He added, “And not even the viewer numbers because the money numbers are how many people subscribe on the day of the show. That’s where they really make their money on this deal or don’t make their money on this deal.”

Meltzer noted on ESPN’s strategy, “So I think that tells you a lot right there, in that if they were happy with what they were doing, they would keep doing it.”

Meltzer concluded that this strategy “confirms” rumors that ESPN isn’t happy with its WWE PLE numbers. He explained, “There have been rumors of that from the start that they haven’t been happy with the numbers, and my gut was at first that they weren’t going to be because it was limited to how many homes could get it and they were paying an wful lot of money, but now, I guess this would be the first confirmation of that. That, yeah, they’re trying a new strategy because they feel that the strategy didn’t pay off. And the fact that they’re doing it at SummerSlam makes it even stronger. If they skipped it on the show a month before, the June show, it’d be one thing, and you’d go, ‘Well, maybe they just don’t need to do it on a small show.’ But this is as big as it gets other than [Royal] Rumble and WrestleMania.”

WWE SummerSlam 2026 takes place August 1-2 at US Bank Stadium in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It will air live on the ESPN App in the U.S. and on Netflix internationally,

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit Wrestling Observer Radio with an h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription.