Nick Khan clarifies how many yearly WWE PLEs are in ESPN deal

In the wake of Wednesday’s announcement that ESPN will be the future home of WWE premium live events, WWE president Nick Khan clarified exactly how many shows that will entail.

Khan spoke with Puck’s John Ourand about the deal and said that while the amount of shows always could grow, the current deal is for ten annual PLEs held over 12 nights as WrestleMania and SummerSlam will remain at two nights each.

When asked about whether unique shows like Evolution will be part of that, Khan said to assume that WrestleMania, SummerSlam, Royal Rumble, Money in the Bank, and Survivor Series are set and that they will continue to look at other shows, citing this month’s Clash in Paris as an example.

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Beginning in April 2026, the new deal is reportedly for five years and $1.6 billion, an increase from what WWE was getting from Peacock annually.

Khan talked about the ESPN deal in aggregate, noting that “The marketplace dictates the price on all things in my opinion. The media rights marketplace to any reasonable person looking at it, has become reflective, relatively speaking, of the U.S. economy where the upper tier products continue to go up and the premium content gets premium pricing.”

As he has done in the past, Khan said that “the middle” when it comes to TV rights are getting “squeezed a bit” and that fortunately for WWE fans, they are not in the middle.

Without saying what other entities were interested, Khan said interest in the package “was real.” He said that “timing always matters on these things” and explained how the initial Peacock PLE deal was made during the height of the pre-vaccine COVID-19 era where NBCU needed content as the Olympics were postponed.

He did not say, nor was he asked, if Peacock made a final bid or if they were given the option to do so.

Khan said the ESPN deal didn’t take as long as the newly-announced NFL/ESPN deal did as, “It was sort of clear. Here’s this subscriber base, here’s how we think we can grow it together, and this is the perfect platform for us and our subscribers.”

Khan said he had dealt with ESPN/Disney extensively in the past on potential WWE deals but that it just didn’t work for timing reasons.

“This time, it worked.”