It sounds like WWE Wrestlepalooza is one of the factors in ESPN’s new app finding early success.
This week’s episode of the Sports Business Journal’s The Sports Media Podcast featured host and SBJ writer Austin Karp discussing the sports media landscape with The Athletic’s Andrew Marchand and Puck’s John Ourand.
During the episode’s “Who’s Up, Who’s Down” segment, SBJ‘s Karp praised ESPN and FOX for making waves with the launch of their respective standalone apps. In particular, Karp cited ESPN seeing a massive spike in signups ahead of Wrestlepalooza. The event marked WWE’s debut Premium Live Event on the network. WWE was one of the reasons ESPN saw a huge rise in subscriptions, along with the start of the pro football season.
“Well, my ‘Who’s Up’ is the bundle of ESPN the app and the FOX One app,” Karp said. “We saw some of the initial numbers since that began. I think the numbers there are per Antenna, not released by the networks. The ‘Who’s Up’ in this case, we’ll say [CEO of FOX Sports] Eric Shanks and [ESPN Chairman] Jimmy Pitaro.
“But a lot of good reception, they launched it right before football season. You can see the spikes when the NFL started, when college football started, and particularly late in September when ESPN had its first PLE, Wrestlepalooza really seeing a spike there in signups. So, I thought it was a really good start there,” Karp added.
WWE Wrestlepalooza featured AJ Lee’s first match in more than ten years. Lee picked up a tag team win with CM Punk over Becky Lynch and Seth Rollins. The event also featured Brock Lesnar vs. John Cena, and Cody Rhodes defending the WWE Championship against Drew McIntyre.
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