10 Questions WWE Shareholders Should Be Asking Vince McMahon
8. Why Are You Signing So Much More Talent Than Is Required?
WWE's Performance Center is over-supplied with talent that cannot repay the investment because they do not have the opportunity to do so. TV time is at a premium.
This has created a strange pattern on NXT TV, in which talent pushed as potential game-changers are cycled out so quickly that their appearances feel pointless. Isiah 'Swerve' Scott; Cameron Grimes; Bronson Reed; KUSHIDA; Taynara; Xia Li; Mansoor; Austin Theory: all have scored wins on NXT on USA that amounted to nothing because their momentum was squandered through their subsequent disappearance. These aren't enhancement talents. They are prospective stars NXT is unable to maintain, and yet the company still saw fit to sign Killer Kross and Timothy Thatcher recently.
If I'm an investor, and watched a typical of SmackDown in 2020, I'd be astonished that WWE has offered north of $700,000pa apiece to the Revival, given their low position on the card. The top stars earn the money, or at least they used to, before WWE shattered the paradigm with my money.
We know the answer - it's a combination of spite and greed - but to an investor, it's profligate and nonsensical business practise, particularly since Vince otherwise waves away the threat of AEW on conference calls.
"AEW hasn't changed our business at all," he said last week.
If they aren't a threat, why sign every performer, to huge expense, that the little "blood and guts" league may hold interest in?