ESPN Not Thrilled With Stephanie McMahon Over Recent Actions

There are some people at ESPN not thrilled over Stephanie McMahon‘s recent actions.

Earlier this month, WWE signed a five-year deal with ESPN for their new app to distribute the company’s premium live events in the United States for a reported $1.6 billion.

This deal doesn’t affect international WWE fans who get all of the company’s content together on Netflix. However, people in the United States only have access to WWE RAW on Netflix. That is, if you don’t have a VPN.

On a recent episode of What’s Your Story? with Stephanie McMahon, the former WWE President read an ad for Surfshark VPN, encouraging the WWE Universe to utilize the service to watch all WWE programming on Netflix.

You can check out McMahon’s ad read in the embedded video below:

Stephanie telling everyone to use a VPN for WWE on Netflix???
She’s telling you guys not to pay $30 pic.twitter.com/305VJHDBxf

— Zashy ?? (@Zashy120) August 28, 2025

So how does ESPN feel about all of this?

According to Fightful’s Sean Ross Sapp (via Fightful Select), at least one source at ESPN “wasn’t thrilled” by Stephanie McMahon’s ad read on her podcast. However, they don’t believe it will turn into a major issue between the two sides.

ESPN should likely direct their displeasure at whoever booked the ad read on the show to begin with, be it Fanatics or WWE itself; it wasn’t a smart move after signing such a big marquee deal.

Stay tuned to WrestleZone for more information as it becomes available.

READ MORE: Seth Rollins Explains Why The WWE-ESPN Partnership Is Huge For The Industry

What do you make of this report? Do you use a VPN to watch your weekly WWE content? Let us know your overall thoughts by sounding off in the comments section below.