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As Dave Scherer and I discussed earlier this week on the We Don't Need No Stinkin' Name Show in the Elite section, as WWE NXT continues to grow from being just a developmental brand and into it's own unique entity similar to Raw and Smackdown, one bridge that the company will have to cross is addressing how NXT talents will be treated and paid in comparison to the current main roster talents.
As we discussed Wednesday, one of the things to keep an eye out for is whether NXT talents will start to be paid similar to main roster talents, including receiving a percentage of the live gates, similar to how talents are paid on the main roster.
As it turns out, there was actually a meeting with the NXT talents last Thursday at the Performance Center that addressed exactly that.
According to several people I've heard from in the last 24 hours, WWE's Canyon Ceman and several of the Coaches informed the talents that as it currently stands, they will only be paid based on their developmental contracts and won't be receiving bonuses based on larger houses the brand has/will draw for events like Takeover: Brooklyn and the December UK tour.
According to several we spoke with, NXT talents were told that the company could not currently provide bonuses based on live gates because NXT is run at a loss in order to improve the company's long-term future with talent and Coach salaries as well as the cost of running and operating the Performance Center having to be taken into account.
It should be noted that unlike main roster talents, WWE covers the hotel and rental car costs for NXT talents on the road, unlike Raw and Smackdown where only flights are covered by the company. Unlike previous developmental generations, NXT talents are being marketed with action figures, t-shirts and videogame appearances and do make money from those revenue streams as well.
Still, there's been some grumbling among talents about that decision since they are looking at a big December tour in major venues in the UK with a nice advance, a recent sellout of 15,000+ seats in Brooklyn, NY and NXT has been a cornerstone in promoting the WWE Network.
While WWE is touting that NXT is it's own third brand for the company, it is important to remember that at it's core, those initials are still very much WWE developmental until the day WWE changes how the brand is set up internally.
Should NXT continue to grow at the rate it has over the last year, WWE will have no choice but to address how they have the system structured and to change that structure. Perhaps splitting NXT into a two-tiered system where "A" are the TV talents who one can make a case are drawing money and the remainder of developmental can be something of a "B" team is an idea the company can look into down the line.
Based on the meeting last week, however, that decision isn't going to come anytime in the near future.
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