FanPost

A Decade of Decline: How Corporatization and Rebranding Led WWE to Where They Are


"If you do that [bleed] we lose a $10,000,000 sponsor". Those words attributed to Triple H by Jon Moxley during his explosive interview with PW Torch editor Wade Keller on June 4th are a revealing look at where WWE’s priorities lie in 2019. For the last decade it’s been an increasing battle of fans vs advertisers for the heart of WWE with fans largely coming out on the losing end. The reality though is that everything that’s happened in the last decade is twenty years in the making. Ever since they went public in October 1999 Vince McMahon has been working toward becoming a corporate giant. Moxley's interviews with Keller and Chris Jericho on the Talk is Jericho podcast were eyewitness testimony that confirmed Vince McMahon has achieved his ultimate goal. He has successfully transformed WWE from a successful wrestling promotion to an corporate juggernaut that puts on wrestling shows. The problem is that the corporate structure is not suited for professional wrestling in general and on top of that WWE'S corporate kingdom is ruled by an iron-fisted mad king who by all accounts is getting madder by the day. This has led WWE down a dark decade-long path which has seen their Wall Street profile grow as their ratings, customer satisfaction, and employee morale have all dropped. WWE has become the corporate monster.

At this point a brief history lesson is necessary to better explain why wrestling promotions are not suited to be corporations. From the industry’s inception in the 1920s wrestling promotions were private, usually family-owned, regional businesses. Over the decades a symbiotic relationship between promotion and fans was built; fans bought tickets to the matches each week in exchange for being entertained. If things started to get stale fans stopped coming to the matches and promoters didn't make money so promoters had an incentive to keep things interesting. Outside of WWE the only other example of a wrestling company being a corporation was Ted Turner's purchase of Jim Crockett Promotions which he turned into World Championship Wrestling under the Turner umbrella. In this case the wrestling company was bought by an outside corporation which may have been worse as Turner executives knew nothing about running a wrestling company and, outside of Ted himself, saw WCW as an embarrassment to the corporate brand particularly when it was losing money during the first six years under the Turner banner. Though creative catastrophe ultimately led to WCW’s downfall, corporate greed in the form of expanding Nitro to three hours and adding another two-hour show (Thunder) were contributing factors. A wrestling company being a corporation completely changes that promoter/fan dynamic and forces the needs of the corporation, as well as investors and sponsors, to come before the needs of the fans which goes against the basic principles of the industry. Most wrestling promoters would probably understand that but then again Vince McMahon isn't most wrestling promoters.

The difference between every other wrestling promoter and Vince McMahon is that Vince has never been content to just be a wrestling promoter. He showed it in 1983/4 when he took his New York based promotion national and in a comparatively short time decimated the territory system. He showed it again in 1988 when he launched what is now WWE Films with the Hulk Hogan-helmed No Holds Barred and in 1992 with the World Bodybuilding Federation. He showed once more when he took the WWF public in October 1999. He has long wanted to be more entertainment purveyor than wrestling promoter to the point where he changed the name of the company from Titan Sports Inc to World Wrestling Federation Entertainment as of the Initial Public Offering (IPO). The IPO also revealed the one thing standing in the way of Vince’s dream: much like every other wrestling promoter he was financially dependent on the fans. According to PW Torch’s reporting on the IPO, WWE made $170 million in live event and TV taping ticket sales and an additional $81 million in merchandise sales from 1998 to 99. By comparison, they were getting $500,000 a week from TNN when they debuted on that network in September 2000 and that was an increase which means USA was paying them less than $500,000 a week at the time of the IPO. Fast-forward twenty years and WWE will be making a combined $468 million a year from Fox and NBCU when the new TV deals take effect in October. Couple that with between $40 and $50 million per event WWE makes in its controversial two event a year deal with Saudi Arabia and that’s $548-568 million. That’s not counting whatever advertising revenue they pick up. By comparison, they made $361.3 million from their fans’ pockets last year. Given the current situation that’s likely to trend down a little bit this year. Still, the bulk of WWE’s profits come from sources other than fans’ pocketbooks. That’s the kind of financial independence Vince needed to fully realize his dream. Sure, their money is important to him but over time he's become les and less beholden to them for survival and as such their satisfaction has become less and less of a priority regardless of the lip service they pay to "serving the WWE Universe". It's ironic because for decades the wrestling business was built on satisfying its loyal fanbase but with corporatization there are other people whose satisfaction is more important like investors and sponsors.

Even before he achieved financial independence, he achieved a monopoly in the business. After purchasing his top rivals WCW and ECW in 2001, Vince was able do what he wanted as fans were left with few options to access wrestling on the same level as WWE. He began the corporatization process in earnest by hiring several people from Hollywood and other places outside the wrestling industry to executive positions including George Barrios and Michelle Wilson as co-presidents in 2008 and 2009. There was a lot of turnover and in the end Barrios and Wilson were the only two left standing. Together they helped lead a rebranding of the WWE in a transparent attempt to appeal to more advertisers as well as the mainstream entertainment industry. One of the first major steps of this rebranding was the changing of WWE'S longtime TV-14 rating to TV PG. With that change came several contradictions chief among them the fact the change was an overt move to cater to children and families while their key television demographic stayed at the 18-49 range. Figuring out how to entertain both while not offending one or insulting the other has been something Vince struggles with to this day. As part of this rebranding and change to a TV PG format, WWE creative under the dictatorial supervision of Vince McMahon underwent a massive sanitization. It went beyond just banning chairshots to the head and toning down the violence though. The product became blander and more tightly controlled. The announce team began pushing corporate terms chief among them "sports entertainment". The term had been around since at least 1989 when Vince used it to get out from under athletic commission fees he felt were gouging him. Throughout the 90s, especially when he was doing battle with WCW, "sports entertainment" (and Superstar) was a term of art used to differentiate between them and their competitors but viewers never got the feeling that WWE was disavowing pro wrestling. Over the last decade however "sports entertainment" has taken on a whole new meaning. A major part of the corporate rebranding was to completely disavow any connection to pro wrestling to the point where they shortened the company name to simply WWE and have tried to convince anyone who listens that "sports entertainment" and wrestling are two different things. There are two reasons for this. One is because Vince McMahon has always been ashamed of the perception of pro wrestling to non-wrestling fans and rather than attempt to use his position to change that perception he’d rather pretend he's not presenting wrestling. The bigger reason is purely financial. Sponsors, due in large part to Vince's lack of effort to try an improve public perception of the business, are weary of associating themselves with pro wrestling. Chief Brand Officer (and sometimes TV authority figure) Stephanie McMahon admitted as much in a 2016 interview saying "Advertisers either had an adverse reaction to the words ‘professional wrestling' or didn't understand what it was". According to Stephanie the term "sports entertainment" was created to as a way of describing to those advertisers that WWE was " based on larger-than-life characters enthralled in relatable storylines". Another step WWE took in this rebranding was to undo decades of wrestling booking and make the company the centerpiece star of the brand and as a result the wrestlers began to feel like interchangeable parts. They also started heavily promoting their philanthropy on their weekly programming to the point where it started to feel like they were doing charity work for good PR.

As time has passed, the creative process under Vince has gotten more dictatorial and less in touch with the fanbase. This is the world that Jon Moxley gives us a glimpse of. Sure, we know all about the tight scripting and Vince’s juvenile sense of humor but hearing Moxley describe his experience in his words is powerful and demonstrates just how far gone creative is. One of the more profound incidents Moxely recalls is one in which he and one of the writers re-wrote a script because it had the words "pooper-scooper" in it. Vince sent back notes saying that Moxley needed to read the script verbatim and not rewrite it. Later, in a meeting in his office Vince tells Moxley he has "creative license". Moxley was surprised by this statement because he didn’t feel like he had creative license. Throughout the different stories he tells, the common thread is constraint. He felt like the WWE creative process constrained him and that he couldn't give his voice to his own character. His story is not unique. Ex-WWE wrestlers as well as ex- creative team members tell differing versions of the very same story. That’s just another byproduct of this corporatization. The creative process features little or no input from the wrestlers on their own characters. A team of writers with very little experience in wrestling are tasked with manufacturing a character that can get Vince's seal of approval. It's a completely mechanized process in which all the creativity is sucked out before it gets to television. Neither the wrestlers themselves nor the fans are served.

What is served is the bottom line and that's where the disconnect between the two sides of WWE turns into a gulf. As WWE creative declined over the last ten years WWE has become a hugely profitable company. They’re on track to make a billion dollars in revenue this year. A recent article in Variety touts the fact that WWE's image has changed for the better in the eyes of the advertisers who are more willing to work with them. TV networks are desperate for live entertainment and are willing to pay premium prices for it regardless of the quality. A murderous, autocratic regime is more than willing to shell out lots of its blood-soaked cash for WWE’s "entertainment". It seems that at least some those proverbial chickens have come to roost finally. Fans are wholly dissatisfied and in many cases tuning out leading to decline in ratings which isn’t good news for networks or advertisers. This downward trend has led to USA to intervene by pitching ideas to shore things up. They wanted WWE to do away with the brand split but settled for the "wild card rule" which allowed crossover between the brands but ultimately did more harm than good. They pitched the 24/7 title which has been good for social media but not really moved the ratings. Most recently they pitched Raw Reunion which did the highest rating for the year but was something that can't be done every week. It also cost WWE valuable TV time to build the Raw side of the upcoming Summerslam PPV. The ratings slump has also led WWE to make several desperation moves of their own like repeatedly teasing Brock Lesnar cashing-in his Money in the Bank briefcase on Raw for three weeks with no intent to make good on the tease. Meanwhile wrestlers are asking for their releases or sitting out their contract because they feel creatively stifled or misused. Things aren’t rosy financially either. WWE reported a loss of $8 million in the first quarter of this year. The second quarter wasn't a whole lot better because even though they reported a profit of $17.1 million the only thing that kept them afloat was the $40 million check from Saudi Arabia. Without that they would have posted an operating income of-$22.9 million (Feel free to check my numbers as I’m a historian/researcher not mathematician).

In late June Vince made a move that at least on the surface sounds like a recognition that something needs to change and that something is the stranglehold he has on creative. He hired Paul Heyman and Eric Bischoff as Executive Directors of Raw and Smackdown respectively. The basic job description seemed to separate Vince from the day to day creative of both shows or at the very least put some previously nonexistent separation between the two. Vince confirmed as much in his Q2 conference call saying that Heyman and Bischoff would have "a lot of latitude" and that he "couldn't be in the weeds anymore". While it seems like that’s a sign of potential improvement, Vince then went on to describe the vision for the future of the company in a rather confusing manner that when deciphered sounds a lot like more of the same. If that wasn't bad enough the corporate side of WWE is moving ahead with revamp of the WWE Network that includes a tiered system. This is in spite of the fact that they have yet to reach the two million subscribers they've been aiming for the last several years.

Given the current state of the product and the uncertainty surrounding its improvement now would not seem to be the time to try to convince people to pay more money for the Network but corporate interests necessitate they do something. Going public fundamentally altered the relationship between WWE and their fans. WWE set themselves on a bad path with their corporate rebranding and self-imposed distancing from the fans financially. They haven't felt the effects until recently and now they're desperate to undo ten years worth of damage as quickly as possible especially with competition in the form of AEW set to launch on the same week Smackdown moves to Fox. The question is can WWE correct course or will the corporate monster consume itself?


The FanPosts are solely the subjective opinions of Cageside Seats readers and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cageside Seats editors or staff.