Plaintiffs In Lawsuit Against WWE Over ESPN PLEs Ask For Discovery To Commence

The plaintiffs in the lawsuit filed against WWE over marketing about PLEs going to ESPN have filed a new motion pushing for discovery to start. As you may recall, a class lawsuit was filed in January against WWE, accusing them of deceptive marketing around the move of PLEs to ESPN. The lawsuit argues that WWE’s statements that “subscribers” would get PLEs at no extra charge suggested that all ESPN subscribers would get such a deal, when of course the access was in fact for ESPN Unlimited which requires an extra cost for a number of ESPN subscribers.

Brandon Thurson of POST Wrestling and Wrestlenomics reported on Monday that the plaintiffs have asked that discovery not be stayed. They argued that WWE cannot be trusted not to destroy evidence and used Nick Khan being sanctioned in the WWE shareholder lawsuit over the TKO merger as the basis for their argument.

Khan and Vince McMahon were both sanctioned in the other suit, with the judge in the case ruling that the two “acted recklessly” in using the Signal app and changing their settings to where messages would automatically delete after a period of time. The judge ruled that McMahon and Khan destroyed evidence by doing so.

WWE has been asking the court to put discovery on hold in the ESPN PLE lawsuit, as they are trying to compel arbitration as outlined in the arbitration clause contained in the ESPN streaming user agreement.