Can WWE Afford To Pay Its Wrestlers Healthcare?

Thurston's figures, which come in at $28.5m per year to completely cover the entire roster of 215 performers, falls well within this bracket. It works under the assumption that WWE's annual wage bill for the roster is $118m (almost certainly an overestimate), that the entire roster would contribute 7% of their wage to their 401k (US average is 3.5%), the wrestlers being 30% more expensive to insure than regular employees (also almost certainly an overestimate), and that all their travel expenses would average out as a 200 mile overnight trip.

These figures are, across the board, grossly inflated, and even the Wrestling Observer's Dave Meltzer has said that the real figure would be "considerably less" than $28.5m quoted. This is even before factoring in that basic salaries would decrease due to the cover being offered, that some of the expenses would be offset by legislation, and the talent would likely pick up some of the insurance premiums themselves.

To put that in perspective, it's estimated that the company was paid somewhere in the region of $40-50m for putting on Greatest Royal Rumble. Even with Thurston's "aggressive estimates", this could have paid for complete healthcare, travel and insurance for the roster for almost 2 years.

So why aren't they? Well, we're going to do some digging, and hope to have a full follow-up article for you sometime next week. The company categorically can afford this on a surface level, but the reality is clearly more complicated than that. In the meantime though checkout Fightful's full breakdown of costs here.