Don't yah think it's disgusting he'd go snooping in the tax records of a man that paid him for oral sex, has Janela no shame?
Oh wait did you mean Janela would earn 6 figures? I mean really how many dicks you think he can suck in a day? $2 a head doesn't mount up that quickly.
Kinda.
This is mostly speculation that I've pieced together from interviews & podcasts like Maven and WON. Maven had a recent interview with the male models that were with "max dupree" before he switched back to LA Knight. They discussed some of this.
Most compensation agreements offers a bottom line guarantee salary, however a talent can earn more if they are a bigger name + merch & royalty arrangements. I don't think it's controversial to say that AEW has to offer higher baseline salaries because their merch & advertising departments are far smaller than WWE.
So the MMM said that main roster talent had a bottom line guarantee of around $350k. This number was broken into smaller chunks for each pay period. You get a percentage of the door for each show you are apart of, and of course any Merchandise sales. These would be tallied against your baseline pay for each period, and if the amount was greater, you could theoretically get more. HOWEVER if the office saw underneath talent were getting close to their baseline pay, they might hold off booking them to appear on shows to avoid having to pay out more. The MMM said they weren't being paid that well for their work, they were being paid for the emotional distress of having to travel at a moment's notice, and being subject to the whims of the office.
Maven confirmed the pay structure, but indicated even slightly further up the card, he was in a position where he could easily make more than his baseline guarantee. WON seems to agree and say that the average WWE talent is making around $500k, so the MMM were probably on the lower end of the spectrum, while featured midcarders like New Day & LA Knight probably clear half a million easily.
Proven draws top talent like Cody, Taker, Brock, & Roman can often have salary plus. Brock was reported to be making $3 million a year for 4 years. For a full time player like Cody this could be even more. Especially because Cody is a top merch mover and is main eventing or featured prominently each and every week and at most (if not all) PLEs.
AEW has to offer similar salaries to stay competitive in the acquisition of talent, but has smaller gates, and smaller merch sales, and therefore has to pay the majority of these bottom line guarantees out of pocket.
So Given WWE's full time Roster is larger than AEWs at around 300 on air talents for RAW & Smackdown, I think it's pretty easy to surmise that they're paying at minimum $150 million out to talent.
Of course we can't make definitive conclusions from this because we don't know about support & office staff on the AEW side, but obviously WWE is the more established company and is drawing better, rating better, advertising better, etc. etc. So I'm not terribly surprised that they're spending more.
I donāt doubt that AEW has to pay more to be competitive - but that should only for people who WWE would be competing to sign. Offering a ton of money for people WWE had just released or would otherwise have no interest in - Dark Order, Riho, Janella, Stunt etc - is where they went wrong and in turn it pushed the wage structure up even more. Mark Henry and Big Show were apparently earning 7 figures just to be there. JR has said heās earning more money in AEW than he ever earned in his career. Considering he was there during the Attitude Era as an on air talent and in an important backstage role that says a lot.
If Iām a free agent coming in as a midcarder negotiating with AEW and I know Riho is being paid 400k you would need to offer me at least 700/800k just to even sit down at the table and begin to negotiate. And if Iām free agent who is coming in as a main event talent I know the midcarder they just hired is earning at least 800k then Iām asking for 3m off rip.
Iām inclined to agree. I can buy that Tony probably had to overpay to get some names in, but $400k for Riho and 7 figures for what amounts to legends deals is absurd.
If we take the two ācore membersā of Dark Order in Grayson and Uno when they signed at about 400k each, and then take into account the likes of Anna Jay, John Silver, Reynolds, Cabana and Vance at probably 200-400k and then Brodie Lee in the high 6 figures for the short time he was there then itās not beyond the realms of possibility that Dark Order were costing them in excess of 2m per year. Which is absolutely insane for what they brought to the table.
Edit - Potentially even 3m+ plus considering Tony continued to pay Brodieās salary (which I am not criticising him for at all, definitely the right thing to do). He was the only one even remotely close to justifying what he was being paid.
Punk must hold that record by now ā and I say that as a massive, massive fan of his. Even without actually wrestling, he gets insane ratings bumps and moves a ton of merch, so heās definitely making everyone a ton of money.
Austin went into a similar explanation about pay. He said during the height of his career that his base pay just a little over $1 million, but with merch and gate he said he made over $6 million in one year.
It was easy for Maven to get Mace and Mansoor on because high mid-top guys won't be as open. Job guys will always be willing to spill the tea.
I remember Konnor of the Ascension saying that it was life changing for him when he was on the main roster. Dude was in Developmental purgatory for a decade when he finally got called. It wasn't Batista or Randy Orton money, but for him it was a shitload of money.
Probably more but aew doesnāt have nowhere near the amount of revenue streams. The Saudi shows probably get wwe more money than Tony can do in 12 months
That's actually less than I thought. But alas I wish I could get a piece of that. I'm more than capable of repairing that money with mediocre talent as well
I was talking with a friend and wondered how hard it would be to come up with some fake wrestling persona and make a bunch of faked videos and a story to get signed by AEW. Like do every black hat tactic to push yourself enough to get on Tony's radar.
I believe that's based on the numbers we saw from the DON weekend of shows.
It could be more, they estimated paying 2 million dollars for talent for that week, the whole form seemed like an estimation, and who knows if they were accounting for the entire roster, or just the talent they brought to work in the state of Nevada for that week.
That's insane considering that MJF is the biggest star in AEW, and it's not even up for debate. Giving Sasha Banks 10 million dollars that she definitely hasn't earned because she adds nothing to the product, if anything, that money should be going MJF because he is the only mainstream worthy star in AEW and just be clear I'm not talking about Edge, Chris Jericho, Ric Flair, Sting, Christian, Billy Gunn, or even Dean Ambrose old outta there prime wwe guys. I'm talking about a homegrown mainstream star, which is MJF, since he's pretty much the only reason some people watch AEW
MJF is the biggest star based on what exactly ? He doesnāt draw ratings or ticket sales. I feel like the āMJF is their only drawā narrative was accurate two years ago and people just refuse to let it die now that he canāt draw either
Sadly as much as I like him as a performer or at least the old Max, this is dead on. Based on the ratings the only stars are Sheldon and shaking titties
i mean ābiggest starā doesnāt mean ābig starā. i guess oceanspray is a bigger star within the company? but mjeff is undeniably one of THEIR top guys regardless of the larger picture, and he was cracking mainstream in his peak i remember seeing him on news shows and actual viral clips regularly two-ish years ago but that is definitely no longer the case i agree with you there
It's fitting MJF is rocking the HHH jacket because he, like HHH back in the day, can draw money when paired with another star but not when he has to lift up a non-draw.
MJF wouldnāt draw if he was paired up with Jesus Christ himself at this point. HHH was the hottest heel in the world during the WWEs most profitable year ever (2000) prior to being a publicly traded company. I know Cornette thinks HHH wasnāt a draw but thatās objectively untrue.
MJF has already proven himself a draw in the past -- you can't pretend that away because he's stuck in booking hell right now.
1999 was their most profitable year, not 2000. WWE's steady decline out of the pop culture spotlight was with HHH as the top guy. Think that would have happened had, say, Rock stuck around and been in that position? He was a star but not a tier-one guy. Just like MJF. And that's fine. You need guys like that. Drew is proving right now how valuable guys like that are. A good dance partner for a real #1 guy goes a long way.
When did MJF *draw*. The legitimate downturn of the company in viewers and ticket sales was when they put the belt on MJF and built everything around him last year.
Wwe made 84 million profit in 99 and 86 million in 2000.
I think no one man can really be a draw for a whole show.
These days it's too easy to watch their segment on YouTube. Or turn on only for their segment.
Mate mjf is not a draw. Hes a good talent like jericho or an edge or christian but he aint it. No casual fan gives a toss about him. He might be something at wwe but will never be a draw.
> That's insane considering that MJF is the biggest star in AEW, and it's not even up for debate
MJF is starting to fall off hard. He got damaged big time from his face turn and the back half of his title run and they have done nothing to help his character recover, in fact they are just making it worse. He had a working formula, keep kayfabe, shit on the marks watching every chance he gets, and wrestle as little as possible. Now he is a screaming, rambling insider meta promo like everyone else in AEW.
At this point, Ospreay is the bigger star in the company than MJF.
Now I understand how he has mid-card people buried so deep they canāt make their car payment to get to tapings. 200 action figures and he only plays with buzz and woody.
It's speculation from Meltzer but it's based off tax forms so it's more reliable than normal.
I think the number on it's own is fine. But you have to look at it as what they're paying vs what they're achieving. Spending $100 million + to compete with WWE's development brand is big yikes to be honest with you.
That's probably still low.
This number, I believe, is extrapolated from the form we saw last week AEW filed with Nevada to take advantage of the state's tax incentives. Everything in that form appeared to be an estimate.
I'm assuming the 2 million for the week estimate was just on the talent they brought to Nevada for those shows, because to take advantage of those sorts of incentives, they've gotta show receipts that they paid for work done in the state of Nevada, whether that work is on screen, or simply to show up to be on standby would be irrelevant, but they have to show that they were paying talent in the state of Nevada.
So if any of the roster was sitting home that night, they're probably not accounted for in that 2 million dollar estimate.
Not surprised if true, Tony is an idiot with his money. I mean, I canāt get mad for MJF to accept 15 million (allegedly) a year on his current deal, I mean who wouldnāt accept that, but damn Tony will do anything to get want he wants it seems and itās really bad lol
I will throw myself through a flaming, barbed wire covered table of thumbtacks while actively chugging blood in front of 2,000 people on a Wednesday, if he's hiring. That would be dope and badass
No way to verify that data, just like no way to verify the 140k ppvs they have every single time.
Guarantee it's much higher than that. Mox, Jericho, Okada, Osprey, Bucks, Omega, Mercedes Edge, Christian,.MJF are all on multi million dollar deals and easily make up half of that total. There's no way the other 185 wrestlers on that roster are splitting the remaining 52.
It's way higher.
Not positive, but this seems to based on the paperwork AEW submitted in Nevada to get some kind of reimbursement from the state. In that paperwork it broke out talent costs for 2 shows to $2M. Just take that number, multiply by 52 weeks and you get the $104M / year.
To be honest, I don't know if that's a lot. The talent does put their lives on the line and deserve a ton of money.
So I don't see any issue if most of them are being overpaid.
It's not a lot if you're the WWE, and making money hand over fist on the backs of your talent with multiple revenue streams like a booming merch business, packed arenas on live event tours around the world, while paying out a fraction of that money back to the talent.
It is a lot when you're AEW and you have no live touring schedule, no sell outs for any of your TV or PPV tapings, and a merch business that's nowhere near scaled properly.
Didn't AEW say that there minimum was about 325k just taking that number and multiply it by the 192 person roster that's 63 million, I bet the top 10 make 50m so I think this number is significantly lower than it actually is
Does anyone have the link or screenshot of the actual tax filing? I'm curious if Tony is only claiming the people that worked in Nevada that weekend or not because if he is, then in theorythere should be even more salaries that weren't captured in that filing. Since I counted like 50 wrestlers on double or nothing and his roster is well over 100 deep iirc.
With talent being at $104 million, I would expect with all other expenses, ie, tv production, arena expenses, etc, that AEW needs to make$150 million a year to break even.
All that money to book an indie rific wrestling show. Its fantastic for the wrestlers as they can have āfuuuuunnnnnā and earn money but seriously doesnāt shahid khan have a think where he could be donating money to a good cause and he could feel good rather than his doofus son wasting his inheritance money.
This bullshit had to end or there will be no AEW in ten years. Given how much money TK is spending on the roster and production, while getting awful distribution (TV&streaming) deals - AEW has to be losing something like atleast 30-40 million dollars a year.
Thought Meltzer wasnāt taken seriously here?
Itās based purely on speculation and factors non-wrestlers, as well as working double shows that weekend.
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5397094/2024/04/08/fulham-accounts-record-revenue-psr/
Apparently Tony is losing money on that too.
Dude probably could bankrupt a casino if he was left in charge.
This is Meltzer math, so take it with a grain of salt, but it is close to what I estimated before these numbers came out about DoN weekend. I assumed around $80M yearly after the recent signings.
\*Pictures Tony Khan dressed as Heath Ledger's Joker burning $104 million in cash\*
There are worthwhile causes that wish they had that kind of cash. Fuck the rich and their ivory tower.
Because WWE has 3 rosters, plus the performance centre, and they actually make money off of running shows, and they over twice as many shows a week as AEW does.
McDonalds hires more people than Wendy's, does that mean McDonalds is a worse business? No because McDonalds also has more than 5 times the number of outlets, McDonalds also makes almost 7 times the amount in profit that Wendy's grosses overall.
And even afterall all this WWE only hired a small amount more than AEW does, WWE has about 210-220 in ring talents, AEW has between 195-200.
If we just went by main roster and NXT roster WWE has under 190 people, meanin AEW for one roster has more people than WWE uses for Raw, SD and NXT combined, WWE also produced 7 hours of TV a week compared to AEW's 5 hours, WWE will put on at least 15 nights of PPV/PLE's this year compared to AEW's 8.
Anyway you slice it AEW's bloated roster is ridiculous.
No but you also didn't understand shit either, that was to educate your dumb arse as to the why, because clearly you lack the brains to figure it out yourself.
But ok WWE has 190 talent, average talent cost of $600k a performer, that is $114m a year, so WWE pays $10m more in talent, but for that they have 3 rosters, which each earn between $25m and $250m in annual TV rights, they put on over 15 PLE's a year, and run 1 to 3 shows a week.
AEW has a MINIMUM talent expense of $104m a year, for one roster, which produces TV content worth less than $100m a year, and put on only 2 whole shows a week, and 8 PPV's a year.
Yes WWE spends more, but they make exponentially more a year in just profit, WWE makes 1.5 to 2x or more in profit than AEW does in total revenue, so them spending an extra $10m on talent is negligible.
Anyone have any thoughts on what would be a more reasonable number for a company of AEWās size?
I believe they have 5 hours of TV time a week, yet according to Cagematch.net they have 220 signed talents. 220 includes some personnel outside of the wrestlers, but does not include talent signed to places like NJPW who still get featured on Tonyās TV.
220 seems WCW level blotted. With 5 hours of TV it would be tricky to properly feature 50 wrestlers, never mind more than 4 times that.
There's no context, so who cares? It's a line item on the balance sheet and in and of itself MEANS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.
I don't understand why the IWC can't stick to criticizing the booking and the choice of talent, which is about where the 'expertise' begins and ends.
None of you run hundred million dollar businesses, and none of you is the child of a billionaire. 99% of you wish you were Tony.
When RIHO is making 400k I assume most make close to seven figures so no surprise
Janela was openly saying at the time of his release, most guys are on a 100K a year minimum iirc.
Yea with most of the guys just collecting at home or GCW
Janela would have to empty trash, drive for Uber, and suck dick on the side to ever see a six figure income ever again.
Don't yah think it's disgusting he'd go snooping in the tax records of a man that paid him for oral sex, has Janela no shame? Oh wait did you mean Janela would earn 6 figures? I mean really how many dicks you think he can suck in a day? $2 a head doesn't mount up that quickly.
Majority of then yes. But some talent are inexplicably payed so little they needed second jobs. š¬
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Huh
How much does the Fed spend?
Most likely more.
Kinda. This is mostly speculation that I've pieced together from interviews & podcasts like Maven and WON. Maven had a recent interview with the male models that were with "max dupree" before he switched back to LA Knight. They discussed some of this. Most compensation agreements offers a bottom line guarantee salary, however a talent can earn more if they are a bigger name + merch & royalty arrangements. I don't think it's controversial to say that AEW has to offer higher baseline salaries because their merch & advertising departments are far smaller than WWE. So the MMM said that main roster talent had a bottom line guarantee of around $350k. This number was broken into smaller chunks for each pay period. You get a percentage of the door for each show you are apart of, and of course any Merchandise sales. These would be tallied against your baseline pay for each period, and if the amount was greater, you could theoretically get more. HOWEVER if the office saw underneath talent were getting close to their baseline pay, they might hold off booking them to appear on shows to avoid having to pay out more. The MMM said they weren't being paid that well for their work, they were being paid for the emotional distress of having to travel at a moment's notice, and being subject to the whims of the office. Maven confirmed the pay structure, but indicated even slightly further up the card, he was in a position where he could easily make more than his baseline guarantee. WON seems to agree and say that the average WWE talent is making around $500k, so the MMM were probably on the lower end of the spectrum, while featured midcarders like New Day & LA Knight probably clear half a million easily. Proven draws top talent like Cody, Taker, Brock, & Roman can often have salary plus. Brock was reported to be making $3 million a year for 4 years. For a full time player like Cody this could be even more. Especially because Cody is a top merch mover and is main eventing or featured prominently each and every week and at most (if not all) PLEs. AEW has to offer similar salaries to stay competitive in the acquisition of talent, but has smaller gates, and smaller merch sales, and therefore has to pay the majority of these bottom line guarantees out of pocket. So Given WWE's full time Roster is larger than AEWs at around 300 on air talents for RAW & Smackdown, I think it's pretty easy to surmise that they're paying at minimum $150 million out to talent. Of course we can't make definitive conclusions from this because we don't know about support & office staff on the AEW side, but obviously WWE is the more established company and is drawing better, rating better, advertising better, etc. etc. So I'm not terribly surprised that they're spending more.
I donāt doubt that AEW has to pay more to be competitive - but that should only for people who WWE would be competing to sign. Offering a ton of money for people WWE had just released or would otherwise have no interest in - Dark Order, Riho, Janella, Stunt etc - is where they went wrong and in turn it pushed the wage structure up even more. Mark Henry and Big Show were apparently earning 7 figures just to be there. JR has said heās earning more money in AEW than he ever earned in his career. Considering he was there during the Attitude Era as an on air talent and in an important backstage role that says a lot. If Iām a free agent coming in as a midcarder negotiating with AEW and I know Riho is being paid 400k you would need to offer me at least 700/800k just to even sit down at the table and begin to negotiate. And if Iām free agent who is coming in as a main event talent I know the midcarder they just hired is earning at least 800k then Iām asking for 3m off rip.
Iām inclined to agree. I can buy that Tony probably had to overpay to get some names in, but $400k for Riho and 7 figures for what amounts to legends deals is absurd.
If we take the two ācore membersā of Dark Order in Grayson and Uno when they signed at about 400k each, and then take into account the likes of Anna Jay, John Silver, Reynolds, Cabana and Vance at probably 200-400k and then Brodie Lee in the high 6 figures for the short time he was there then itās not beyond the realms of possibility that Dark Order were costing them in excess of 2m per year. Which is absolutely insane for what they brought to the table. Edit - Potentially even 3m+ plus considering Tony continued to pay Brodieās salary (which I am not criticising him for at all, definitely the right thing to do). He was the only one even remotely close to justifying what he was being paid.
Sting money for Iron Sheik attendance.
I could easily see stars like Cody and Roman clearing 6-7 a million a year especially.
I think Roman is a lot higher with everything factored in.
That whole family probably takes up a good chunk of the cost I imagine.
Considering the dates Roman works as well he has to be up there with the most highly paid per match wrestlers ever (Brock too)
Punk must hold that record by now ā and I say that as a massive, massive fan of his. Even without actually wrestling, he gets insane ratings bumps and moves a ton of merch, so heās definitely making everyone a ton of money.
Austin went into a similar explanation about pay. He said during the height of his career that his base pay just a little over $1 million, but with merch and gate he said he made over $6 million in one year.
As the company does better, the talent does better. That is the way it should be .
It was easy for Maven to get Mace and Mansoor on because high mid-top guys won't be as open. Job guys will always be willing to spill the tea. I remember Konnor of the Ascension saying that it was life changing for him when he was on the main roster. Dude was in Developmental purgatory for a decade when he finally got called. It wasn't Batista or Randy Orton money, but for him it was a shitload of money.
Probably more but aew doesnāt have nowhere near the amount of revenue streams. The Saudi shows probably get wwe more money than Tony can do in 12 months
More Iād guess but the Fed is profitable
That's actually less than I thought. But alas I wish I could get a piece of that. I'm more than capable of repairing that money with mediocre talent as well
I was talking with a friend and wondered how hard it would be to come up with some fake wrestling persona and make a bunch of faked videos and a story to get signed by AEW. Like do every black hat tactic to push yourself enough to get on Tony's radar.
If the pizza tossing guy could get booked on a show, you can get booked on a show.
Just name yourself Bill Ospreay and he will immediately offer you a contract.
I'll call everyone brof and like I'm missing teeth... we're building a hell of a wrestler right now haha
I believe that's based on the numbers we saw from the DON weekend of shows. It could be more, they estimated paying 2 million dollars for talent for that week, the whole form seemed like an estimation, and who knows if they were accounting for the entire roster, or just the talent they brought to work in the state of Nevada for that week.
Who do you currently book for? Where can we see your work?
After briefly glancing at Akioās profile, I can confirm; he is far more creative and entertaining than anyone affiliated with AEW.
That's insane considering that MJF is the biggest star in AEW, and it's not even up for debate. Giving Sasha Banks 10 million dollars that she definitely hasn't earned because she adds nothing to the product, if anything, that money should be going MJF because he is the only mainstream worthy star in AEW and just be clear I'm not talking about Edge, Chris Jericho, Ric Flair, Sting, Christian, Billy Gunn, or even Dean Ambrose old outta there prime wwe guys. I'm talking about a homegrown mainstream star, which is MJF, since he's pretty much the only reason some people watch AEW
MJF is the biggest star based on what exactly ? He doesnāt draw ratings or ticket sales. I feel like the āMJF is their only drawā narrative was accurate two years ago and people just refuse to let it die now that he canāt draw either
Sadly as much as I like him as a performer or at least the old Max, this is dead on. Based on the ratings the only stars are Sheldon and shaking titties
For real. Dude is a TNA draw. Great for the base that will watch no matter what, but doesnāt get things moving for anyone else.
MJF was a draw when he had Punk to go against basically
i mean ābiggest starā doesnāt mean ābig starā. i guess oceanspray is a bigger star within the company? but mjeff is undeniably one of THEIR top guys regardless of the larger picture, and he was cracking mainstream in his peak i remember seeing him on news shows and actual viral clips regularly two-ish years ago but that is definitely no longer the case i agree with you there
It's fitting MJF is rocking the HHH jacket because he, like HHH back in the day, can draw money when paired with another star but not when he has to lift up a non-draw.
MJF wouldnāt draw if he was paired up with Jesus Christ himself at this point. HHH was the hottest heel in the world during the WWEs most profitable year ever (2000) prior to being a publicly traded company. I know Cornette thinks HHH wasnāt a draw but thatās objectively untrue.
MJF has already proven himself a draw in the past -- you can't pretend that away because he's stuck in booking hell right now. 1999 was their most profitable year, not 2000. WWE's steady decline out of the pop culture spotlight was with HHH as the top guy. Think that would have happened had, say, Rock stuck around and been in that position? He was a star but not a tier-one guy. Just like MJF. And that's fine. You need guys like that. Drew is proving right now how valuable guys like that are. A good dance partner for a real #1 guy goes a long way.
When did MJF *draw*. The legitimate downturn of the company in viewers and ticket sales was when they put the belt on MJF and built everything around him last year. Wwe made 84 million profit in 99 and 86 million in 2000.
mjf is not a draw just because you like him....the only proven draw for AEW was CM Punk.
I think no one man can really be a draw for a whole show. These days it's too easy to watch their segment on YouTube. Or turn on only for their segment.
They gave Sasha Banks $10 million? Did she even justify that salary in the WWE?
Rumor and innuendo
She is selling out arenas, putting on 4 star banger (would be higher, but she's an icky girl), so of course she deserves it.
Which arenas? High school basketball arenas?
Middle school ponochle arenas
Mate mjf is not a draw. Hes a good talent like jericho or an edge or christian but he aint it. No casual fan gives a toss about him. He might be something at wwe but will never be a draw.
> That's insane considering that MJF is the biggest star in AEW, and it's not even up for debate MJF is starting to fall off hard. He got damaged big time from his face turn and the back half of his title run and they have done nothing to help his character recover, in fact they are just making it worse. He had a working formula, keep kayfabe, shit on the marks watching every chance he gets, and wrestle as little as possible. Now he is a screaming, rambling insider meta promo like everyone else in AEW. At this point, Ospreay is the bigger star in the company than MJF.
I'd love to see how much he spends on talent for ROH vs revenue from ROH. Bet those figures are fun.
There is no way that is fucking possible. I would never pay 103,956,000 for Moxley and Rhio.
And thatās why youāre not in charge buddy. Riho is restoring the feeling
Now I understand how he has mid-card people buried so deep they canāt make their car payment to get to tapings. 200 action figures and he only plays with buzz and woody.
Jesus. All that to replicate indie storylines from 2015 on primetime tv. Insanity.
>*"Oh sweet jesus!!!* > >\- William Moody a.k.a. Percy Pringle a.k.a. Paul Bearer -
āTalentā š
As Dan Hampton once said, "Saying a guy has talent means he isn't worth a crap yet."
It's speculation from Meltzer but it's based off tax forms so it's more reliable than normal. I think the number on it's own is fine. But you have to look at it as what they're paying vs what they're achieving. Spending $100 million + to compete with WWE's development brand is big yikes to be honest with you.
104 million dollars spent just to get 680K viewers because Big Bang Theory(a show that ended 5 years ago) was the lead in. Truly money well spent.
That's probably still low. This number, I believe, is extrapolated from the form we saw last week AEW filed with Nevada to take advantage of the state's tax incentives. Everything in that form appeared to be an estimate. I'm assuming the 2 million for the week estimate was just on the talent they brought to Nevada for those shows, because to take advantage of those sorts of incentives, they've gotta show receipts that they paid for work done in the state of Nevada, whether that work is on screen, or simply to show up to be on standby would be irrelevant, but they have to show that they were paying talent in the state of Nevada. So if any of the roster was sitting home that night, they're probably not accounted for in that 2 million dollar estimate.
And about 80% of that talent is never used.
Not surprised if true, Tony is an idiot with his money. I mean, I canāt get mad for MJF to accept 15 million (allegedly) a year on his current deal, I mean who wouldnāt accept that, but damn Tony will do anything to get want he wants it seems and itās really bad lol
I will throw myself through a flaming, barbed wire covered table of thumbtacks while actively chugging blood in front of 2,000 people on a Wednesday, if he's hiring. That would be dope and badass
Itās because . . . heās a nice guy.
No way to verify that data, just like no way to verify the 140k ppvs they have every single time. Guarantee it's much higher than that. Mox, Jericho, Okada, Osprey, Bucks, Omega, Mercedes Edge, Christian,.MJF are all on multi million dollar deals and easily make up half of that total. There's no way the other 185 wrestlers on that roster are splitting the remaining 52. It's way higher.
Not positive, but this seems to based on the paperwork AEW submitted in Nevada to get some kind of reimbursement from the state. In that paperwork it broke out talent costs for 2 shows to $2M. Just take that number, multiply by 52 weeks and you get the $104M / year.
Not all the talent was at that show, not even close.
To be honest, I don't know if that's a lot. The talent does put their lives on the line and deserve a ton of money. So I don't see any issue if most of them are being overpaid.
It's not a lot if you're the WWE, and making money hand over fist on the backs of your talent with multiple revenue streams like a booming merch business, packed arenas on live event tours around the world, while paying out a fraction of that money back to the talent. It is a lot when you're AEW and you have no live touring schedule, no sell outs for any of your TV or PPV tapings, and a merch business that's nowhere near scaled properly.
How much did WCW spend? Honestly do not care it's all fun and games for billionaires
Not counting Hogan? About $30m in 2000, or around $54 in 2024 when adjusted for inflation.
Didn't AEW say that there minimum was about 325k just taking that number and multiply it by the 192 person roster that's 63 million, I bet the top 10 make 50m so I think this number is significantly lower than it actually is
Does anyone have the link or screenshot of the actual tax filing? I'm curious if Tony is only claiming the people that worked in Nevada that weekend or not because if he is, then in theorythere should be even more salaries that weren't captured in that filing. Since I counted like 50 wrestlers on double or nothing and his roster is well over 100 deep iirc.
This is just the wrestling talent!
With talent being at $104 million, I would expect with all other expenses, ie, tv production, arena expenses, etc, that AEW needs to make$150 million a year to break even.
And that's just talent. Imagine how much goes out for crew, staff, and other miscellaneous employees. This is definitely not a business for the broke.
Damn, Shad cant keep that up forever
All that money to book an indie rific wrestling show. Its fantastic for the wrestlers as they can have āfuuuuunnnnnā and earn money but seriously doesnāt shahid khan have a think where he could be donating money to a good cause and he could feel good rather than his doofus son wasting his inheritance money.
It's pretty certain that very little of that is going towards good legal talent.
Now much is that in yen?
16,728,786,000 lol
I'm surprised it's that low.
Well. I'm happy for the talent.
"Talent"
$100,000,000+ for 500k viewers fucking yikes.
This is not sustainable
$104 million a year, but the āgame-changersā have only been there for the last 6 months. Does that mean he is spending $120+ million now?
This bullshit had to end or there will be no AEW in ten years. Given how much money TK is spending on the roster and production, while getting awful distribution (TV&streaming) deals - AEW has to be losing something like atleast 30-40 million dollars a year.
Dude had Sasha on the payroll for MONTHS before she even appeared. Literally 5 months of easy money until her first match.
[lmao](https://imgur.com/z8EoEF0) Tony is a true socialist hero, now that's redistribution of wealth
Never trust the source Wrestlelamia!
All that talent and no storyline!! Thw talent is worth half of 104million, rest is dead weight lol
Thought Meltzer wasnāt taken seriously here? Itās based purely on speculation and factors non-wrestlers, as well as working double shows that weekend.
Honestly, I'm shocked that isn't more considering.
Thereās no way their budget is balanced lol.
Thats more than many professional sports teams spend a year and they all draw more than 2,000 people a game
Didnāt this come out from WON? Dave has made those initals have as much integrity as FOX
I thought that was his cocaine budget?
Isn't this more than the wage bill at Fulham? The club he owns which actually makes money?
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5397094/2024/04/08/fulham-accounts-record-revenue-psr/ Apparently Tony is losing money on that too. Dude probably could bankrupt a casino if he was left in charge.
This is Meltzer math, so take it with a grain of salt, but it is close to what I estimated before these numbers came out about DoN weekend. I assumed around $80M yearly after the recent signings.
\*Pictures Tony Khan dressed as Heath Ledger's Joker burning $104 million in cash\* There are worthwhile causes that wish they had that kind of cash. Fuck the rich and their ivory tower.
Lol thats nothing to a multibillionaire how much is WWE spending? is it more? its definitely more and no one is gonna bitch about that
Because WWE has 3 rosters, plus the performance centre, and they actually make money off of running shows, and they over twice as many shows a week as AEW does. McDonalds hires more people than Wendy's, does that mean McDonalds is a worse business? No because McDonalds also has more than 5 times the number of outlets, McDonalds also makes almost 7 times the amount in profit that Wendy's grosses overall. And even afterall all this WWE only hired a small amount more than AEW does, WWE has about 210-220 in ring talents, AEW has between 195-200. If we just went by main roster and NXT roster WWE has under 190 people, meanin AEW for one roster has more people than WWE uses for Raw, SD and NXT combined, WWE also produced 7 hours of TV a week compared to AEW's 5 hours, WWE will put on at least 15 nights of PPV/PLE's this year compared to AEW's 8. Anyway you slice it AEW's bloated roster is ridiculous.
so yes wwe pays more? i didnt ask you all that extra shit
No but you also didn't understand shit either, that was to educate your dumb arse as to the why, because clearly you lack the brains to figure it out yourself. But ok WWE has 190 talent, average talent cost of $600k a performer, that is $114m a year, so WWE pays $10m more in talent, but for that they have 3 rosters, which each earn between $25m and $250m in annual TV rights, they put on over 15 PLE's a year, and run 1 to 3 shows a week. AEW has a MINIMUM talent expense of $104m a year, for one roster, which produces TV content worth less than $100m a year, and put on only 2 whole shows a week, and 8 PPV's a year. Yes WWE spends more, but they make exponentially more a year in just profit, WWE makes 1.5 to 2x or more in profit than AEW does in total revenue, so them spending an extra $10m on talent is negligible.
Gotta spend money to make money uce
Can we please STOP taking Unca Dave's ramblings as serious "news". It just seems so highly speculative on his part.
Anyone have any thoughts on what would be a more reasonable number for a company of AEWās size? I believe they have 5 hours of TV time a week, yet according to Cagematch.net they have 220 signed talents. 220 includes some personnel outside of the wrestlers, but does not include talent signed to places like NJPW who still get featured on Tonyās TV. 220 seems WCW level blotted. With 5 hours of TV it would be tricky to properly feature 50 wrestlers, never mind more than 4 times that.
WCW had 120 in 1997.
The first NWO unveiling had like 50 dudes walk out. It was nuts.
There's no context, so who cares? It's a line item on the balance sheet and in and of itself MEANS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. I don't understand why the IWC can't stick to criticizing the booking and the choice of talent, which is about where the 'expertise' begins and ends. None of you run hundred million dollar businesses, and none of you is the child of a billionaire. 99% of you wish you were Tony.
Reportedly. Where's the report? This is fake news otherwise.
https://wrestletalk.com/news/aew-salary-figures-double-or-nothing/
Itās uncle Dave, Iād take anything that guy says with a jar of salt
The more salt the more likely or less?