Inside WWE's storytelling machine | Paul "Triple H" Levesque

0:06You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. What happens when leadership meets play? We set the stage to explore this question and much more at the inaugural TED Sports Conference, which just took place in Indianapolis in the U.S. In this conversation, Paul Triple H LeVac, World Wrestling Entertainment Hall of Famer, 14-time world champion, and now its chief content officer, sits down with co-chair of TED Sports Indianapolis, Patrick Talty, to pull back the curtain on WWE's powerful storytelling machine, one that captivates more than a billion fans globally.

0:46While this one is for all of you wrestling fans out there, it's also for anyone interested in exploring the psychology of performance and the universal power that heroes, villains, and redemption arcs have on our collective psyche.

1:07so let's warm up a little bit let's do some one word sure associations quick sean michaels greatest in-ring performer of all time undertaker uh greatest big man of all time and probably one of the most for me at least anyways one of the most respected in-ring performers ever. Hunter.

1:32Fun alter ego. Yeah. New Hampshire. Solitude. You know, to me, that's my, it's where I grew up. So it's home for me. And when we get to go back there, we still have a place in the lake up there. It's just turn the world off and go be normal for a minute. Awesome. Steph? That's my rock. You know, a lot of people say that, you know, we tell it to a lot of people in our world as we get interns coming up and Nick Khan, our president, and I speak to those interns. They'll often ask us, what is the most important decision you'll ever make in your life? It's your spouse, for sure to me. And, um, you know, we tell them choose wisely because it can be the greatest thing in the world for you.

2:26It can be the worst thing in the world for you. If you choose poorly. And for me, luckily, um, I, I chose well, and hopefully she thinks she chose well, but, um, you know, it's, uh, it's such an amazing partnership and she's truly my rock. You know, I had, I had health issues a few years ago, which put life into perspective for you. And And it certainly did for me around family and my kids and my wife. And it's the most important thing in the world to me. All this other stuff. It's wonderful. I like to think I work incredibly hard at what we do and enjoy it more than anything. I think WWE is the greatest, at least in my opinion, greatest form of entertainment in the world.

3:10But all those things, all the money you make, all the everything else, it's just stuff. at the end of the day, your family, your wife, your kids, whatever that is for you. That's the most important stuff in your life. No one's going to ask you how hard you worked on Tuesday when you die. They're going to, you know, most people regret not spending time with their families and doing things that are meaningful. You don't see too many people on their deathbed saying, man, I wish I'd have made one more board meeting, you know. That's right. Well, right there at that, right there we could stop the talk and that nugget right there is more than i mean this was worth the price you know since we're talking about it like it's one thing for me i get asked a lot because of our schedule about work-life balance and you know i i tell people all the time work-life balance is is a lie it doesn't exist it's it's something that you try to achieve but it's not it's not this thing where so if i just did this it would be perfect and everything would be balanced out I think that the only thing that you can do to have some semblance of balance is be present.

4:16When you're at work, be present. At work, focus on that. When you're home, you're with your kids, focus on that. When you're with your spouse, focus on that. Like whatever you're doing in that moment, allow yourself that time to be present in just what you're doing. It's not the quantity of time you spend with your kids or your family or anything else. It's the quality of it. If you're present, if you're just there and you're on your phone the whole time or taking calls or not really paying attention, it's not worth it anyway for them. And kids sense that and they feel it. And everybody does. So be present in whatever it is you're doing.

4:51Amen. Amen. I love it. Absolutely. All right. So WWE is athletic and it's competitive. It's scriptive but predetermined. tell us because people have a hard time I ruined it for everybody so way to go people have a hard time wrapping their head around it that this entertainment is so powerful and it's so yet athletic and competitive I mean how do you respond to that when people talk about that well it's a funny thing because what we do is it's all those things wrapped up into one but everything is a version of that what is sports it's entertainment If you're not playing it, it's entertainment. You're watching it.

5:36You're being entertained, right? So, you know, if you're watching combat sport, it's... The truth is, not that many people are incredibly, like, adept at the science or the intricacies of what they're doing. They might like to think that they are, but, like, you know, they don't know everything about football. They don't know everything about basketball. They don't know everything about the fight game, whether it be MMA or boxing. but they know the stories that lead you into it, right? The biggest market sports teams, when they compete against each other, because there's a history there, there's a storied rivalry, they will say, right?

6:15Story is the key word. Those markets and those stories do better business, right? A football game is just a football game. If you know who's playing and you're invested, if you go to a high school football game and you know nobody playing, you don't really care. If your kid is playing and you know the story going in, you're invested in that. It's the same for what we do. So with WWE, it's about the story. We don't necessarily, the matches are absolutely important, delivering on the athleticism and the excitement and the spectacle of what we do. But the truth of the matter is really what hooks people and gets them engaged is the storytelling.

6:55And storytelling doesn't have to be complex. It doesn't have to be simple either, but those stories are there since the beginning of time, and it's really what we do. Good, bad, and in today's world, no one is really fully good. No one is really fully bad. They're shades of gray, but they lean certain ways. People pick and choose the characters they want to follow. They pick and choose the storylines that resonate with them. And then once we tell those stories of antagonists, protagonists, then the resolution of those takes place in a ring in the middle of that arena. Sometimes in front of tens of thousands, sometimes in front of 50, 60, 70, 80, 100 ,000 people.

7:42And seen around the world globally through our partners, which are either domestically raw, is on Netflix. so the largest streaming platform on the planet, and international, every place else in the world. All of our programming, for the most part, is on Netflix. NXT, which is our developmental program, airs on Tuesdays on the CW, so on broadcast television. Go to Fridays. SmackDown is on USA domestically, globally Netflix. and then our biggest events are what used to be pay-per-views and are now called premium live events because they're on streaming services. We just did a massive deal that we're very proud of with ESPN.

8:33So you have the sort of icon of the sports and there is a big E on the front of their name for entertainment but the icon of sports and obviously we like to think we're the best at what we do. coming together. So nobody puts on live events like us with the spectacle we do. WrestleMania is the ultimate spectacle. I've been to every other sporting event out there. There's nothing like WrestleMania. And nobody really promotes those live events like ESPN. Their ability to do shoulder programming that leads you into those events is second to none. So it's an amazing partnership for us. Let's talk about ESPN a little bit.

9:13I kind of feel like that deal really kind of mainstreams WWE in the sports lexicon. And that part of this is about storytelling of the brand. Yes. And really pushing that forward to the more mainstream. Yeah, look, you go back not that long ago to UFC, where there was a lot of, it sort of wasn't a household name. It sort of wasn't to the degree that it is now. ESPN changed that for them. ESPN sort of put them in the day-to-day, I hate to say water cooler talk because it makes me sound old, but it's day-to-day conversation. Thank you for the one person that laughed. The day-to-day conversation.

10:04Already we see that. When Monday Night Raw gets done and you flip the SportsCenter that night, there's a recap of Monday Night Raw happening on SportsCenter just like if we were an NFL game an NBA game anything else and as somebody that grew up watching the business with no way to catch up on it that's that's a massive step forward and it normalizes you to everybody else so if you're a WWE fan or you're not the entry point is easy the conversation around it is easy And even for people that maybe don't get what we are, it's an easy conversation now because it's sitting there with the NFL, with the NBA, with Major League Baseball, with all these other sports.

10:47To me, seen in the light that it truly should be seen in anyways. And like we started out this conversation, at the end of the day, all those sports, all those things are entertainment. and WWE has the same level of that backstage, behind the scenes sort of contracts and drama that any other sport has as well. So you get that side of it. We have an interesting documentary out right now on Netflix called Unreal that takes you for the first time ever behind the scenes of what it takes into the writer's room as we're laying out our storylines, you know, over months and years and showing sort of what we do behind the scenes.

11:28and the thought being that much like F1 where if you don't know anything about F1 it's sort of like just, I don't know it's just driving in a weird circle for a long period of time it's hard to comprehend that if you're not a fan but if you watch that show it's fascinating all the heart, soul, passion and all the things that go into F1 this is the same for us if you don't understand like the WWE aspect of it isn't this just guys fake fighting? Like, I don't get it. Like when you see the heart, soul and passion and everything that goes into it, it's hard not to walk away from that show as a fan and at least be interested in what we offer.

12:07Yeah. I mean, let's talk about those superstars. You know, I mean, I remember when I worked with you, we always talked about one of the superstars said to me, every move, every action I'm taking in the ring is part of this story I'm telling. And that may be prescripted. It may be decided, but it is still a story that they're telling. Yeah, 100%. Look, that's what, in any sport, as the game is taking place, why are there commentators? You watch it, see it happen. They're going to tell you what's happening, they're going to break it down, they're going to analyze, and they're going to tell you what the story is.

12:43So when that play happens, what does it mean? Right? It's no different than a movie, it's just watching a movie, but having a narrator take you through the scenes. ours is the same thing so when two talent get into the ring to have a match it's not just okay one guy won one guy lost it's the story we're trying to tell it's the emotion the underdog that's in there the big i'm making this up a big bully that's in there facing the underdog and oh my god it just looks terrible for this guy and he starts to do well and then he gets shut down and jesus no way he could possibly do it but whoa hold on a second here it comes right But we are very much, and I say this a lot to people, we are, if you said we're a combat sport, we're less boxing, more Rocky.

13:31We're the movie. We're all the things that take place. There's not a ton of boxing in the movie Rocky. It's the rest of the movie that hooks you to make the fights matter. That's what we do. We give you the movie around the fights and then give you an epic fight scene to play that drama out. well how I mean what's your creative process I mean you just basically out a story in front of us yeah and like do you go into the woods do you is like TMZ where the right where the writers are like pitching stories I mean what's this actually like go in the woods take all my clothes off it's a weird process but somehow it all gets done yeah yeah um watch you don't if the leaves are three stay away from it.

14:16Get itchy. So we have a large team of writers. It's really I often say creative is like creating a North Star. We look at where we want to get to. So if I was to say right now in this time that we're in, probably my North Star would be WrestleMania in April. And I would say where do we want to get to to get to April? What are we looking to get at? What are our biggest characters, our biggest storylines, and how do we want them to pay off at WrestleMania? The trick for us is when WrestleMania happens, it ends all our stories, and it starts all our stories because the next day you do Monday Night Raw and the whole process starts again.

14:58Your off-season is about 10 minutes. So you're laying yourself out to that point. Now, here's where it gets different. It's live. This isn't a movie. It's live. it's real human beings. There are injuries, there are sickness, there are family problems, there are any number of reasons why your great creative along the way gets shut down. And what you thought was going to be epic in April, somewhere in December, January, something happens and you realize none of that can take place and you have to start over. But always having that North Star in front of you is really that's your compass. You're always headed towards that.

15:44It's like a GPS. Whereas if we start down a road creatively, we miss a turn. Well, we recalculate and it then tells you which turn to go next to get a certain place. If our destination changes because a talent gets sick or injured or whatever, our business is very physical. So you run every time somebody steps in the ring or does anything, you're running that risk of injury. Something changes, we pivot. And I think that's what WWE does incredibly well, is pivot. At any point in time, you know, and you know this, we're about to do on September 20th here, we're going to do Wrestlepalooza. It's a new event for us.

16:23It's the first event that will take place on ESPN on their app. Huge, massive event for us. ESPN, as we were working into this partnership with them, said we'd love to have an initial first run event that would be epic. They gave us a date. We looked at where we could run it. Indy came up. We were like perfect. They're the perfect host city for this first massive event for us. We come in and do it. That all happened in a very, very short window of time. So a period of time where we had a PLE and another PLE six weeks apart, all of a sudden there's one in the middle and it's got to be bigger than everything else because it's the launch point right yep so you have to recalculate but if you don't have that north star you're lost it's just chaos and things all over the place you have to know where you're going um it's the biggest thing we do you once told me that the best characters are the ones who can blend reality with what they do on screen?

17:23Pull on that a little bit for me. Characters to me are the best in our world. You know, there are some characters that it's completely a character. And, you know, as you know him very well, but Mark Calloway was known as The Undertaker for years. One of the most — you asked me about him in the beginning — one of the most beloved epic characters that we have ever had in our industry, went through a lot of career changes and morphs. But the basic premise of his character is he's a dead guy that just, you can't hurt him, right? So no matter what you do to him, he just keeps coming. And you know, that played out in a million different directions over time, but very much a character.

18:08Then there are characters, and I'll just use this as an example, like CM Punk, who is a massive character for us, but with CM Punk, CM Punk is Phil Brooks, his real name. Phil Brooks is CM Punk. And it's really difficult if you went down the character of CM Punk, it's really hard to delineate that from Phil Brooks, almost the same person. And Phil Brooks' attitude and his excitement or his displeasure with things comes out in his character. It's on his sleeve, right? But so that's a great character for us because you never know the blend of, is that real? Is that not real? Are they taking a real situation and ramping it up, turning the volume on it to make it worthwhile?

18:58Is the confrontation between those two talent real? Or is it part of the storyline? Some of the stuff we do, you know, people that aren't fans of WWE sometimes will think like, sometimes it's so hokey or corny. Yeah, it's supposed to be. It's entertainment. It's supposed to be fun. It's supposed to be fun. You're supposed to enjoy it. At times, we're going to make you laugh. At times, we're going to make you cry. At times, we're going to make you on the edge of your seat excited with your adrenaline pumping. We're going to make you sad. We're going to run the gamut of all those emotions like any great TV show would with those characters.

19:38But it's not supposed to be serious all the time. Some of the characters that are serious are the best ones are the ones that blur reality. When you can blur those lines of reality and people think, well, that might be scripted. But I think those two guys really don't like each other and they might really fight. And like that is when it gets really interesting for us. there are multiple sides to every character we have so their character their real life story and then what the internet believes is really happening to them and that those blending those three together sometimes can make magic wow yeah so let's go back let's talk about you when did you decide that you wanted to be an in-ring performer when when i was a kid and i I don't know how old I was.

20:26I was probably five or something like that. I was sitting home with my dad, big giant console TV, and I can remember distinctly having a plastic football helmet, a little plastic football I was playing in the room, and my dad changed the channels and sat down on the couch. And I remember looking at it, and I know it now, it was Chief J Strongbow in a match for WWF at the time. And I remember watching like two seconds of it and putting the helmet down with a football in it and getting up on my dad's lap and sitting and watching it. And I was fascinated with it. And it became a thing for me, which is one of the things I'm most proud of about our industry, is that ability for it to bring families together.

21:13It's what I did with my dad. My dad did with his father. You know, my grandmother watched it. She just gets mad at everybody. and, you know, little quiet woman but would swear a lot at the TV when I was a kid. It became the thing that sort of brought us together, and it's one of my things. So over 50 % of our audience comes to shows with a child, right? Co-viewing, grandparents, parents, kids all coming together to come to the events together. 40 % of our audience is female. We over-index in every category across ethnic and racial divides, right? It's super wide open. You almost never see fights in our crowd.

21:58People aren't there for that. You go to WrestleMania, it's like being at a family reunion with 100 ,000 people that are in your family but you don't know. And if you don't know what the storyline is and you're sitting there going, okay, what's the deal on this one? The guy behind you will step in and go, all right, so here's what's happening, right? Right. He hates this other person. Right. And they'll fill you in on the thing. Everybody's there. Just have a great time. They're walking around with their title belts. They got their shirts on or their favorite. They're representing their team, so to speak.

22:28So, you know, that's one of the things for me that I find. I grew up like as a kid, my favorite was Ric Flair. My dad hated Ric Flair, but it was like this bonding point between the two of us. as I got older you know I wanted to do it but just didn't know how and and I was relentless sort of in my pursuit of it and you know yeah just just sort of went for it got in the gym when I was 14 because I was like all right if I got to do what these guys do on TV I got to be that size and I got to I got to be bigger and I got to grow and I got to do all that stuff found a place to get trained and it took off and the rest is history but I've never sort of been the guy that just wanted to play like I'm the kid that wanted to play baseball but wanted to know everything about it like I wanted to know all the positions I wanted to know the theory of the game I wanted to know all that stuff so when I really first started to make it came to WWE and started to make it, I had the opportunity to talk creatively with Vince McMahon for the first time.

23:35And that would start a creative relationship with the two of us that would last for, you know, multiple decades that would sort of put me in, even while I was performing in a behind the scenes capacity, understanding what drove the business and the business of the business over all those years so when you know he finally left I had sort of been in that position for a lot of years to sort of come in and seamlessly to some degree because you know nobody can fully take over the chair that he had he he built the business from the ground up he is the visionary that saw this you talk about our deals with ESPN when Wrestlemania 1 first happened it was on closed circuit TV we We were pioneering the closed circuit TV industry.

24:26When pay-per-view came to be, Vince could see it going into every home. So he had gone out and took over all the little territories and became the first sort of national global brand, pioneered the pay-per-view industry. And I've heard people say in that industry, pay-per-view would have failed if it wasn't for WWE because we had multiple events all the time. Not like boxing where there was one-offs. when pay-per-view was starting to slow down and streaming came in you know when netflix was the the big first mover we moved immediately and went from pay-per-view and i think you were there for part of that we went from pay-per-view we tore up entire business model and said we're going to go in streaming that's where the future is and um we started wwe network as everybody else started to get into streaming, we realized this is going to become a technology war.

25:18That is not what we do. So we got rid of the network and we went to Peacock. As everything was bundling together, we went into a deal with Peacock. Five years, our partner within NBC, which is massive and amazing. You know, a large part of our streaming now is on Netflix, which is the biggest provider, you know, streaming provider in the world. And now our deal for the PLEs with ESPN that sort of goes back to the streaming in the largest way possible, but yet having ESPN almost as a Barker channel for you at all times. So we've been in front of that curve as things have moved forward, and it's one of the reasons for the success of what we do.

26:02But I was there for all those transitions and could see that and was a part of it and behind the scenes of it and was sort of in a position when the time came to step into that role. That's great. So fitness and family, kids, obviously really important to you. Yeah. You just recently named to the president's fitness council. Yes. Why is that important to you? I am a big believer. So, you know, I started training when I was 14, and Arnold Schwarzenegger was a big sort of hero for me, mentor for me and I watched what he did. Grew up in a tiny small town in Austria. I grew up in a little town in New Hampshire.

26:50Had a dream to be the greatest bodybuilder. I had a dream to get into wrestling but sort of then followed that up with all these other things to business but along the way what really taught me the most was the gym. It doesn't lie. It doesn't bullshit you. It doesn't, what you put into it is what you get out of it. Um, you know, when they say, uh, you know, anything about working out, right? The harder you train, the more results you get, the more you're on your diet, the more results you get, the more you focus on your sleep, your nutrition, your athleticism, the weights don't lie, right? Like it teaches you work ethic and everything you need to know.

27:28I think the country in a lot of ways the world and it's i don't know that it's anybody's fault per se but like screens there's so much pull to people's times anybody that's over a certain age in this in this room grew up in a time frame where their parents sent them outside in the summer when they're home from school and we're like when the lights when the street lights come on come back in the house i don't want to see you until then go do your own thing entertain yourself do all this stuff. You ran around, you rode bikes, you played, you found a sandlot, you played baseball, you did things, you kept yourself engaged, you worked at it.

28:03Kids now sit on couches. The food that they're given, there's issues, you know, the chemicals, the everything else, right? They're working on all that stuff to remove it. I was fortunate enough to be named to the president's council because I think I believe the same thing that this administration does, that Secretary Kennedy does, that it's we need to make people healthier. And how you do that is the achievement of training. It's not about breaking records. And there will be rewards for that for kids as we move into a space of winning accolades in the President's Council and passing the fitness test.

28:43And what does that benefit to you, which will hopefully be things like scholarships that can advance their life. But along the way, if you take a kid that isn't doing anything and is embarrassed to some degree by that and you hand teach them you can't do any push-ups now but if you step back from that you say okay you're going to do them from your knees or off this bench to where you can do 10 of those that will get you to being able to do one push-up on your knees then you'll put your feet out and then you can do one there and eventually you'll get the five eventually you'll get the 10 if you dedicate yourself that success that feeling of achievement for kids starts them on a path of that success.

29:23And I truly believe that fitness, health, wellness leads you to success in life. It is the stepping stone for you to do all good things. Mind, body, soul, right, is sort of a philosophy. And I believe that you're schooling all those things, but there are other ways to learn. And the gym sort of teaches you really everything you need to know in life. There are no excuses. You either do it or you don't. And you can blame somebody else and say there was no opportunity or you could say whatever you want to do, but you either do it and succeed or don't. And I believe that teaches you. And if you really want something, you will find a way to do it.

30:05You know, I truly believe that. So I'm very passionate about the council and hopefully the work that we'll get to do and hopefully changing a generation so that, you know, going forward, people are just healthier. And it just, I'm, a few years ago, I had a heart issue, genetic heart issue that luckily we caught him in a good place now, but I was right on the one yard line. It changes your perspective and it tells you what's important. Money, success, all those things without your health, you have zero. You can have the biggest bank account in the world when you die. It doesn't buy anything. That's right.

30:47Right? It just buys problems probably for your family when you're gone. That's right. You know, so to me, the first priority is your health and your wellness. And then everything else comes from that. Without that, you have nothing. Yeah. So, thank you. Yes. Just got my earpiece. Gorilla's calling saying it's time to go home. so last word go ahead and bring us home um you know i think when you one of the things that wwe does is it's a way to engage people in a physical activity that or or at least a thought process of that physical activity that can motivate people to places in their life what i mean by that is because that was a really confusing statement is that there are a lot of people and we hear this all the time from Make-A-Wish Kids, one of our biggest partners, you know, John Cena has officially more, has done more wishes for kids than any other celebrity in history.

31:57When you hear their stories about like the characters within what we do sort of being their rock and their thing that they cling on to that gets them through it. People that say that, you know, I was in a really negative place in my life. WWE was the thing that carried me through that all those times. If we can do that and motivate people, if we can do that and inspire people, if we can do that through our storytelling and get people to a better place in their life, I don't care if you call us sport. I don't care if you call us entertainment. I don't care what you call us, if we can get people to that place in their life where it helps them or it helps them in a connection with their families or their friends or their whatever, that becomes their social thing, then we are successful at what we do.

32:48That is our goal and our desire to make this one of the biggest forms of entertainment out there. Sometimes we succeed, sometimes we don't, but for the people that it means something to just know that it means just as much to us, the product that we put out, we put our hearts and souls into it for them. And yeah, it's, you know, the athleticism, the sport, it's all there, but the entertainment aspect of it, it's all there. And we love what we do. Awesome. Ball Triple H, Levesque.

33:30That was Paul Triple H Levesque in conversation with Patrick Talty at TED Sports Indianapolis in 2025. If you're curious about TED's curation, find out more at ted.com slash curation guidelines. And that's it for today. TED Talks Daily is part of the TED Audio Collective. This talk was produced and edited by our team, Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Brian Green, Lucy Little, and Tonsika Sungmarnivong. This episode was mixed by Lucy Little. Additional support from Emma Taubner and Daniela Ballarezzo. I'm Elise Hu. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed. Thanks for listening.