Report: ESPN Stops Airing WWE Content Following Peacock Deal

WWE and NBCUniversal have reached a multi-year agreement which gives the Peacock streaming service exclusive rights to WWE Network in the United States. The Network will migrate across to Peacock on March 18 and the first event will be the Fastlane pay-per-view on March 21. 

WWE had been trying to sell their pay-per-view rights since early 2020 and the company reportedly held talks with ESPN about airing major events on the ESPN+ service before the COVID-19 pandemic started. 

WWE's deal with Peacock seemingly had repercussions with ESPN as Dave Meltzer reported on Wrestling Observer Live that ESPN has "pretty much shut down" coverage of the wrestling company. 

Meltzer went into more detail on Wrestling Observer Radio and noted ESPN has introduced a ban on WWE, but not professional wrestling as a whole. 

Meltzer said: "It's got nothing to do with wrestling... They didn't ban wrestling but it was just like WWE. I don't know if that means they will do anything with them (AEW) but the ban I was told was WWE."

Why ESPN shut down coverage of WWE has not been confirmed, but Meltzer believes ESPN were still in talks with WWE over the Network and the sports channel found out they weren't going to come to an agreement three weeks ago.