WWE Planning Highlights Show On Free UK TV
Ahead of their move to BT Sports, WWE is searching for a free-to-air broadcaster.
For UK wrestling fans, it’s going to be strange not to find WWE content housed on Sky Sports once 2020 comes around. With Vince McMahon’s wrestling behemoth officially signed up for a move to BT Sports in the future, now comes a new piece of information on WWE material potentially being made available elsewhere for UK audiences.
In a report from SportBusiness Media, it’s claimed that WWE is actively in talks with free-to-air UK broadcasters about finding a home for a highlights offering. Sky Sports is a paid subscription service, as is BT Sports, and the WWE has not provided UK household with free programming for nearly 20 years now.
Back in 1999, Channel 4 agreed a deal to air the then-WWF’s weekly Sunday Night Heat show and four PPVs a year. Despite the WWE’s huge popularity at the time, Channel 4 would decide against renewing this deal only a year later; all WWE content finishing up on the channel in 2001.
Given how All Elite Wrestling’s upcoming weekly TV product will be available for free on ITV4, it wouldn’t be a stretch to think that this has come played a part in WWE's thinking. If AEW is aired on free TV, yet WWE is behind the paywall of Sky Sports and then BT Sports, that instantly gives AEW one-up on WWE in terms of how many households their product is available to.
After airing on Sky Sports for nearly 30 years, WWE will move to BT Sports in January 2020.