I thought it would be a good idea to put together a list of official channels, as i’m sure there are plenty which people will find entertaining but aren’t aware of.
At the moment I’m writing this, Lita has forgotten to turn her twitch channel off, she thinks nobody can hear her and she’s having a discussion on the phone probably with her agent. Very odd and surreal moment.
Does “exclusive independent contractor” stretch beyond wrestling…?
Either WWE feel they deserve a cut of the extra money the wrestlers are making because WWE made these wrestlers stars or they don’t like that the wrestlers are using their real names in these third party ventures because it makes the wrestling side of things look stupid (which would be WWE’s own fault as they make it clear that the wrestlers don’t own their fake names).
Probably the former. I guess it’s like a 360 deal in music. They want a cut on all revenue streams.
“The letter comes following a Sunday meeting with talent about the “reinvention of the product” where it came up that WWE owns the real names of talent in addition to their character names.”
Well that explains why Mia Yim changed her Twitch name today. Formerly ‘ItsMiaYim’, now ‘ItsMeSYB’.
Paige was ‘OfficialPaigeWWE’, now ‘SarayaoOfficial’. Hopefully they can all continue to use these platforms without their WWE owned likeness and it won’t effect their income.
Either way, if the talent knew about this and signed the contract then they can’t really complain. If they didn’t know about it, they need to start reading things they sign.
And what is the purpose of wrestling names then? The talent don’t care and WWE own the usage of the wrestlers’ real name anyway. Seems like an outdated concept.
WWE do pay big for these clauses though and I wonder if wrestlers would prefer less money from WWE but a free pass on third party ventures. Unless you’re a massive, massive star you’re not gonna negotiate both into your contract.
I watch a lot of twitch streams. Some are good, some are bad. Some are harmless like Drew Gulak, I don’t see why you would prevent his streams. He plays or comments matches. He’s very pleasant with his chat. Some have a lot of viewers like Paige and sometimes Adam Cole. I have seen Paige having more than 1k viewers which is pretty good. I think she’s earning some good money. She also has a lot of subscribers. She and Zelina are not streams I enjoy watching because they don’t do much, they just encourage people to sub to their channel by offering them gifts. They play less than the other WWE guys.