The closing of Twitch channels by WWE superstars has been a huge piece of news this summer, especially this week as several of them announced their closing yesterday. Paige especially has been vocal, saying she has spoken with a unionization lawyer.
Now, it’s rumored, the WWE will be giving them an alleged alternative.
During Wrestling Observer Live, Bryan Alvarez stated he had heard the WWE was looking to set up a platform similar to Twitch which their contracted talent would be using. The other rumor that has long been discussed would be the WWE would enter a partnership with Cameo and Twitch where they would share the revenue of contracted talent, where talent would receive a percentage of their revenue and count against their downside guarantee. This, of course, has left talent upset with.
The company started cracking down on this, stating they were looking to protect their intellectual property in a manner similar to Warner Bros. or Disney, with contracted talent believing they could circumvent the edict by using their real names and not their gimmick names, but this did little change the situation.
It’s also believed that the WWE will go in the direction of asking talent to stream via the WWE’s own Twitch channel instead of a whole new service, allowing them to maintain a presence under the company umbrella. It shows that WWE continues to try to create alternatives to the services they’ve removed superstars from to have more control over the talent and their revenue. During this pandemic, WWE has introduced virtual meet and greets, which remains different from Cameo. Fans get to have scheduled in person sessions instead of personalized video messages from talent, and being able to build these alternatives would take a lot of infrastructure during a time where the economy is down.
Main roster talent has allegedly spoken with Vince McMahon about the matter, though it has done little to change his mind. Aleister Black and Zelina Vega said on their farewell stream that there would be a meeting held today about what the future holds, though the talent has been left in the dark over the matter.
While main roster talent has started their exodus from Twitch, it has been noted NXT talent Adam Cole, Dakota Kai, and Jessamyn Duke remain on Twitch, though this could be pertaining to the fact they are not under main roster contracts. All of this has started to put a spotlight on the controversial move that WWE classifies their talent as independent contractors though maintains an iron grip on their talent in ways an independent contractor wouldn’t normally have.
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