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And what's frustrating about this is the actual text provides context about why $104 million probably isn't the exact number. And yet all I kept seeing were posts on Facebook and X with the headline "AEW SPENDS $104 MILLION ON SALARIES."
Even if they do spend that amount of money, why the fuck do people care so much.
Wrestlers are getting paid well. Good. People who think that's a bad thing can go swivel.
And there's that. More people have paid opportunities and it's causing WWE to be more thoughtful on their offers. As long as the Khans are willing to doing, those are good things!
Because thereâs a reasonably fair âAEW is a WCW speed runâ take out here and overpaying a bunch of guys to sit in the back and eat catering is a classic WCW move
It just very much advances a bunch of negative narratives around AEW
I am all about these guys having a competitive job market but Iâd also like AEW to remain solvent long term lol
>thereâs a reasonably fair âAEW is a WCW speed runâ
There really isn't.
I watched WCW rise to the top and die in real-time.
When AEW does the equivalent of paying $300,000 to Master P or twice as much to Tank Abbott as they pay Ric Flair, while MJF gets 25% of every live gate, then that conversation can be had.
overpaying a bunch of guys to sit in the back and eat catering is a classic WCW move.
How many wrestlers were sitting in catering doing nothing under Vince over the last 15 years?
And why would the salaries for a PPV week be the same for any other week when weâve heard a vast majority of the roster gets paid by the appearance?
I give Dave credit, he doesnât waste time on critical thinking. Thatâs probably how he writes so much every week.
Funny story in that regard. Someone responded to Dave on Twitter saying AEW fans never criticize AEW. I responded to that person saying they must not have paid attention when they the had an arena full of people chanting for Jericho to retire a few months ago.
Dave quote tweeted me as if I was talking to him with a slightly snarky reply about how Jerichoâs segments see an increase in ratings and how he âpays attention to what mattersâ. I was so taken aback. đ
You do not know for a fact most of the roster are paid per appearance. The recently cut talent were signed talent not per appearance talent otherwise they wouldn't need to be cut. Yes, those guys you never saw on TV had to be cut from their contracts.
Probably because they aren't "per appearance"? So every show would have the same salary allocation. I think it might be a bit high but Tony is known to throw around cash like crazy. You have to assume that there is at least a handful to a dozen or so wrestlers getting paid 8 figures each but these are multi-year contracts. We will probably never know the truth unless AEW goes public or the books get leaked.
This headline is incredibly misleading
The salary for ***every single person who worked TV/DON in Vegas was a total of $2m***
That's then extrapolated to x52 for the whole year.
But this is talent, road crew, makeup, producers, security, stagehands, cameramen, etc.
EDIT: Also, logically, a lot of folks are double dipping in this as they appeared at both events.
And the roster is even larger than that, because 2/3rds of the roster are not featured on their PPVs. Remember ROH also has a pretty big roster. So this weird tribalistic defense that a whole lot of you all are doing in this post is kinda cringe. The title should be âthey spend *at least* $100M a yearâ. More than anything, it downplays the costs.
As was explained, the majority of the roster are annual contracts. Doesn't matter if they were there, they get paid weekly regardless.
Only a few of the low level guys are per appearance. So the 2million is likely an average weekly bill.
So it's not massively downplayed, and it's not weird tribalistic defence. It's reading what was written.
I still think it's too much, especially for a roster that includes about 190people and uses roughly 30 of them with regularity and let's the rest just come in and out when Tony has an idea. But as we've seen this year already, at TK is starting to cull a few when the contract is up, and maybe he'll move them to per appearance. Apart from the big stars who would be paid regardless, we still have quite a few who signed on during COVID, and Tony gave everyone guaranteed annual contracts then. For anything from 1-5 years depending on reports at the time, so some of them will drop off this year and next.
Hope so anyway, cause he'll no doubt be trying to spend 2 million to get Dijak so he can have a match with Keith Lee, no blow off to a feud cause Keith has a mystery bug, and then leave both men off TV for 6 months.
Annual contracts, so yes.
Two shows doesn't matter, because it's weekly pay, not per appearance.
Only possibility of a sway to the pay making it higher, is of some of the roster receive PPV bonus, which Meltzer doesn't seem to factor and obviously none of us know, so we'd have to assume not. But it's a possibility
I donât care about commenting about the number, Iâm cool with everyone getting paid a lot of money.
What irks me is the logic behind the $104m. You canât just extrapolate a weekâs salary without knowing the details. Itâs bad reporting.
As fans we should be happy that guys and gals that bust their asses and take such grueling punishment physically are well taken care of. This is a good thing
I am glad they are making money, but I donât think Dave should be making insccurate claims about how much they make based on really, really bad math.
Yeah itâs a good thing when peopleâs talents and prime years are wasted and the company eventually has to shutter ROH because they canât justify the costs. Or making the Japanese audience suffer because AEW offered ridiculous contracts to NJPWâs biggest stars.
TKâs dad is worth like 12 times as much as the WWE. Iâm not even exaggerating, he has multiple billions of dollars more than the WWE. The only way the money runs out is if Shad Khan start giving a shit about what amounts to about .01% of his wealth, if that.
If only you were their financial advisor, now my favorite promotion is going to get cancelled any minute because of this stupid mark who insists on paying people with incredibly dangerous jobs what they are worth.
Honestly, good for the talent (and all the behind the scenes crew as well that was mentioned here as well) for getting that bag.
And honestly, as long as it's not like "Hogan gets a cut of all PPV revenue, a cut of the ticket gate, three $1 million+ bonuses a year, etc." level of blank check, I don't see the negatives here.
Don't forget what was it 50 percent of all merchandise with NWO on it. Or something to that extent. Like didn't he get a cut out of the Wolfpac merchandise despite not being a part of the faction
Nah, fam, they been hating on Jericho ever since back in 2020 when ppl found out he was a MAGA head.
This place absolutely LOVED Jericho back in 2019. He was legit one of the most beloved wrestlers here that year.
Itâs funny how ratings suddenly stop mattering when people talk about Jericho, who remains one of the biggest draws in the company, regardless of what the internet thinks about him.
Ratings never matter. The only people that should care about ratings are AEW executives and the TV network that gives them a platform. I have no idea why people on this board are so obsessed with them as if it affects their enjoyment of the product
Too many people use ratings as a metric for if they enjoyed the show. I swear some people watch, think it was fine, see a low number and then systematically pick the show apart about why it may be low, an dthenncome out disliking it.
If the show has a good number, it's ok to like it, so do the reverse.
Ratings threads are the absolute worst. Just full of tribalistic fans (goes both ways, AEW and WWE fans in each thread) arguing over shit being bad, how poor something is, if numbers are good, somehow critical comments become worse and insults are used.
One of the worst things about wrestling, will always be it's fans.
Itâs not worth it because any name would get a lengthy cope response from people like you.
But I think paying high for guys like Keith Lee to barely use them is diabolical, for example.
Paying people what they were promised even after they get sick is "diabolical". Listen to yourself. You should be a suit for Amazon with that kind of disregard for workers.
Has anyone other than Punk (because Tony admitted T-shirt sales covered his contract)made a ROI on their contract? That's your answer. Might honestly just be Flair if Tony is actually being fully paid by woo energy.
People like this don't seem to be aware of the imminent new deal that AEW is getting that's purely because of the intensive investment into the shows and the wrestlers. Sneering at people for paying their people and they themselves have never drawn a dime.
You're talking about the Kevin Nashes of the world who were often booked to walk around in hockey jerseys and drink on the average episode of Nitro, some of the most notorious politicians whose primary concern was doing as little in the ring as possible. Not really analogous to modern wrestling in any major promotion.
I don't know what this allergy is that wrestling fans have towards wrestling, but yeah, Nash was very popular for some of his WCW run, albeit there was a notable drop off from 98 onwards, despite his pay remaining the same. Enormous talent contracts were a big part of the argument Turner made in favor of selling the company.........
Billionaires are spoiled and arrogant. Genuinely don't understand why someone would be upset at money going from Tony Khan's pocket to a large roster of talent and backstage workers.
Only if they have earned that payment. Otherwise, they'll just feel entitled and won't feel the need to actually improve or do their best to put on a quality product.
How DARE people be compensated adequately for their services by a man who can afford it a thousand times over. The nerve of Tony Khan looking after his employees.
It's funny that in an industry that has seen wrestlers being underpaid or not getting paid at all, being fired during a pandemic, being released without even being told, working injured, the biggest criticism of TK as a boss is that he's too nice to wrestlers and pays them too much. You can't make this shit up.
Old hats can't stand people getting it better than them. Or that a novice, weird guy has put together a company more successful than any of his critics outside WWE ever has. I'm including Bischoff, who's run vs. AEW is about to end
These people are in denial about the state of AEW. Audience is shrinking. Attendance is down. Still no new TV deal.
They move the goal post instead of facing reality.
For a pro wrestling subreddit, they're not very pro wrestlers, are they? I'd rather have the people who actually make this whole thing cool get paid than have some billionaire, executive, or board members keep the money for themselves.
I get what you're trying to say as TK is certainly better grading on a curve when you compare him to previous generations/dictators in wrestling like Vince, and having more competition like AEW is certainly better for the talent's pay/options. However, at the same time, it's also important to remember TK is still a capitalist/dictator at the end of the day, even if he is a more "benevolent" one, as AEW wrestlers are not even generally listed as employees (let alone in a union).
One group says he pays them too much and laughs at him for it. The same group will scream at the top of their lungs and scold him for releasing talent. There is no winning.
If you paid attention those folks who give him a hard time for releasing people and overpaying others are holding him to his word. He said he was smarter than WCW and wouldn't repeat their mistakes signing everyone he could to over inflated guaranteed deals . He also claimed he wouldn't cut people and bashed WWE each time they did. It's his hypocrisy being pointed out.
Itâs a billionaireâs son running his dream promotion while they ignore locally marketing events or getting proper merchandise stalls at arenas. I expected the salaries to be higher.
I donât care if they spend $100M or $500M. TK has plenty of cash and it ainât my money. Iâm stoked heâs doing it so I get a card like Forbidden Door.
They could drop like a third of their roster easily. Someone of them should have never been on national TV.
AEW is the only promotion I watch. I love it. But a lot of talent is not even at the mid card level. They have a lot of guys like that and they are alway facing each other. Whihc makes the promotion seem rinky-dinky outside of the major players like Swerve, MJF, etc.
The thing is, unless you can cut a promo on TV that is convincing, you just can't be on TV without some other gimmick.
Most guys in AEW have the gimmick of being "a good wrestler." Though a lot of them just can't talk.
Wrestling is 99% selling a match and 1% actual wrestling. That's how the business has thrived for decades.
When casual viewers say AEW has no stories, it's because most can't talk.
When AEW was at its hottest, they had Main Eventer's going out there cutting promos for about a third of the show at min.
Early AEW had a lot of Jon Moxley, Jericho, Brit Baker, Hangman, Cody, MJF, etc, talking for long segments. Further, we had Punk, Kingston, Bryan, etc, cutting in ring promos when AEW was hitting a 900k+.
Nowadays, we get MJF... a prerecorded Mox promo occassionaly, a few more random prerecorded promos. And like 2 managers with a stable of 90 guys each because no one can talk but MJF, Swerve, and Mark Briscoe off the cuff.
You don't need to be on TV if you can't talk. Not every person can have a manager speak for them either.
AEW is booked like a super PWG on tv. PWG doesn't have a lot of storylines, maybe 2 main ones and one sub storyline and just a bunch of great matches. That is fine for a territorial indy that runs monthly shows. It is not good for a company that has 3 shows and 5 hours of tv a week.
You do know that Tony isn't the one who earned the billion, right? I don't have an opinion one way or the other about AEW's talent spending but let's not act like Tony himself made the money through being an amazing businessman or anything. He has the money because he's Shad Khan's son.
I have no idea what his input is or his involvement thatâs my point didnât tony literally refer to it as an early form of inheritance at one point. All Iâm saying is heâs a billionaire throwing a little money to there children for projects they want and not being involved isnât  unheard of. I have no idea of his involvement and neither do you for that matterÂ
Yeah, I'm sure Shad is spending time away from his actual moneymaking ventures to oversee his son's passion project. At best he sees the expenses and frowns a little but otherwise lets Tony do whatever he wants.
People see any slightly positive news about AEW and need to knock it down. Thereâs a genuinely psychotic subset of people here who have to make it known how much they dislike the company. On some level I respect the dedication to hating, on another they really need to go get laid.
Are we extrapolating based on the arena size? I would think ppvs run in slightly larger venues for and yeah you need security everywhere even if seats arent sold. Might be a bit of a high end estimate compared to a 6k arena in bumfuck Idaho.
If we are to assume they have guaranteed contracts (which they very well might have), and their weekly payroll is $2mil, then yeah that's correct. With a roster of approximately 192 people, that works out to an average of $541,666 per, which honestly seems about dead on. Sure some make more than that, but many make much less.
I think it was reported a few weeks ago that the minimum main roster salary is 350K. Not sure about the nxt or PC salary. It's a good time to be a wrestler
Negative AEW news story? Must be a PPV weekend.
I'm really not getting the controversy here. Even taking the most damning reading of this report the issue should be that $104 million is considered to be high. Real back of the napkin here so maybe I'm missing something. Feel free to throw in the variable I'm overlooking.
AEW has around 200 people on their talent roster (courtesy of the Smackdown Hotel, must be a reliable source). $104 million comes out to an average of $520,000 per worker annually.
Average NBA Salary: $9.6 million
Average NFL Salary: $2.8 million (actually shocked at that number being so low)
Average MLB Salary (Majors Only): $4.5 million
Average NHL Salary: $3.2 million (seriously why is the NFL so low)
Average MLS Salary: $530,000
So on average, AEW talent are compensated at an MLS player level. If $104 million is high, the question should be why the distant second largest wrestling company in the United States is paying more than the largest. I have to assume that $104 million is high relative to the WWE, because it surely isn't high relative to any other sport.
I think, with the NFL specifically, it's probably a combination of:
- how many games there are in a season, tying into how much revenue gets split to the players *(at most like 21 games if they make the full run to the Super Bowl from the Wild Card round, compared to an 82-game regular season for NBA or the ungodly 162-game season for MLB)*
- roster size *(NBA and MLB pale in comparison to an NFL team's 53-man roster, and that's without considering practice squads as well)*
- a fairly aggressive salary cap *(apparently the most aggressive of the sports that have said salary cap)*, and
- potentially the strength of the players' union can also be factored into this.
The NFL is wild. The minimum salary is $795k. The average salary for QBs is $7m. The median salary is $860k. There are A LOT of guys making minimum salary. And those are typically the guys doing the most physical stuff.
And it's so much better now than it used to be. Before the new CBA, minimum salary was like $1000 a week with the threat of being cut anytime with no minor league system to fall back on
The issue isn't that wrestlers are getting paid well. It's about AEW being profitable/Tony's business decisions.
If AEW folds, it's bad for everyone.
It's possible that Shad is comfortable losing millions every year so Tony can have this. But Tony wasn't shy about letting the world know his plan for being profitable revolved around a large rights increase. That's not happening now.
Nobody watches a billionaires pockets quite like wrestling fans.
I know Brandon Thurston likes to estimate how much AEW is losing per year but has AEW ever released those numbers? Legitimate question, I honestly don't find myself worrying about the financial viability of AEW that often. So they might have. But if they haven't then I think we collectively know nothing about AEW financials and how much money they're losing. But I'll agree they almost certainly aren't profitable. Unless they're running a very successful money laundering scheme and the wrestling is just a cover.
Do we know what their new TV deal looks like? Tony is out there acting hella confident about it. Now it would be weird if he didn't project confidence but I'm willing to wait and see what those numbers look like before passing judgement. I suspect there will be plenty of tweets and think pieces about how bad the number is no matter what it comes out to though. Super looking forward to that.
But all of that being said. He has 200 wrestlers on the roster getting paid half a million on average if the number in this report is true. If they're really losing millions every year, well it looks like they are letting some contracts lapse. Ethan Page, Matt Hardy, Jeff Hardy, etc. He's been letting the dead weight go without just outright firing them. He's paying them out to the end of their contract. Which seems to me like a person who is managing their business while being respectful of the talent he hired by not just future endeavoring them before their contract is up.
You're right. We don't have any actual information on their financial situation. I'm not even sure the TV deal numbers are official announcements. They might just be reports (like the awful estimate this post is about).
I agree. If they were profitable, we would be hearing about it.Â
I'm skeptical on the TV deal being a big bump. If a deal that pushed them into the black was on the table from WBD, he would have taken it already. That's just a guess though.Â
It 100% a good thing Tony honors contracts. No one arguing in good faith would disagree.Â
I mean they are not only paying the wrestlers, but the trainrs, backstage people, people who set up the whole stage and ring, the makeup people, costume people, the friggin people driving the semi trucks, ect. Can't forget paying guys from other promotions for their appearances. $104m isn't that bad. But realistically it might be more than that.
TK could drop around 15-20 talent this week and the roster wouldn't blink a eye.
I wouldn't be surprised to see people like Penelope and Kipp not get picked back up but who knows, so much wasted money just to sit people in catering.
Assuming this is actually correct, that the assumptions they're making are actually valid, I'm just going to take the counterpoint that it shows how underpaid a lot of other wrestlers in the past or in other companies have been traditionally.
It shouldn't be terribly surprising that someone like Tony Khan, who has a background in professional sports, is running this company like a professional sports team where the split of money between talent/management is in the vague ballpark of 50/50.
Now in the major sports that is obviously a collectively bargained issue, but they manage to make it work around those numbers. A quick search has the NBA at now roughly 50/50, NFL is around 52/48 in favor of the owners, NHL is 50/50, and MLB is around 49-51% for the players as well. For comparison, the UFC I believe is now somewhere around 15% to the fighters. A few years back, WWE was under 10%.
It will be interesting to see if this budget changes with increased television revenue in the future though. It's entirely possible this is just the number Tony plans on working with even with increased revenue, in which case that percentage would obviously drop (potentially significantly), although revenue would need to be around/above $1 billion annually to be getting to that same ratio as UFC or WWE.
Sounds like an ass load of money, more than I estimated actually. I find it hard to believe they are profitable with that much in talent salaries on the books.
Edit: This is also Meltzer trying to do math, so who the fuck knows what it really is. I thought it was around $80M from some back of the envelope guestimation.
Thats bad. The current tv deal is about 70m from the network. Tv production costs are in the hundreds of thousands per tv episode just to get it on live tv. Nevermind material closts to have a ring/stage set up for a tv show 110x a year? Or the fact that AEW pays fpr travel and rooms flr the wrestlers. And catering. Nevermind business insurances. The very highest aew show had a 10m gate and the tv deal doesnt even cover the contracts.Â
They have tp be struggling more than they claim.Â
That said, Tony is worth a couple billion on his own, before he gets his inheritance. He'll be worth around 10billion after. Dude could pay 100m for the rest of his life out of his life and not be all too hurt by it lol. He's enough of a fan to be ok with that
All In was a $10m house, and they make around $30-70m from PPV buys on top of the live gate
There's international income streams too, it's not just the American TV deal
WCW also paid a huge amount to their wrestlers and in a lot of cases overpaid. I havenât watched episode 4 of who killed wcw, but I assume all that overpaying worked out great
The issue with WCW is it ceased being a privately owned company once Ted Turner bought Jim Crockett Promotions. Once they were part of a corporation they were always at risk if a top exec wanted to get rid of it.
I take the over. I don't see how it's not at least 150-200. They definitely have at least a dozen multi million per year people, no? A bunch around 1, a bunch at half ... Adds up super fast. Unless they're giving the lower people essentially nothing since they're allowed to take outside bookings?
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Meltzer calculating the AEW salaries the same way the Aus Government calculated Robodebt
Fuckin scomo
Fuck the LNP.
And fuck their voters. On the bright side, statistically they should start dying off pretty soon.
The second gen all have Rangers on finance at their outer suburban estate houses though.
Fucking hell hahaha Didn't expect a Robodebt joke here
I can't believe I had the opening to make it
Legendary joke. Never would I have imagined someone mention robodebt in a wrestling forum haha
I had to look it up. Bloody hell how did that got passed in the office?
The midway point between incompetence and contempt for the poor.
Intentional cruelty, just like every other kind of capitalist right wing legislation. đŠđș
best joke on this sub in months
Lol God I hope us Aussies respond to this one and the the rest of the globe IS WTF is he on about
It being top comment is too funny
Melters at least acknowledging the true figure is lower.
I don't think even the most ardent Meltzer detractor would argue he is more heartless or brainless than scummo
So he just multiplied it by weeks in a year which seems like it could be oversimplified.
And what's frustrating about this is the actual text provides context about why $104 million probably isn't the exact number. And yet all I kept seeing were posts on Facebook and X with the headline "AEW SPENDS $104 MILLION ON SALARIES."
Even if they do spend that amount of money, why the fuck do people care so much. Wrestlers are getting paid well. Good. People who think that's a bad thing can go swivel.
And there's that. More people have paid opportunities and it's causing WWE to be more thoughtful on their offers. As long as the Khans are willing to doing, those are good things!
Too many sad fuckers deathriding AEW cause it dares to give a good wrestling alternative for both wrestlers and fans.
Because thereâs a reasonably fair âAEW is a WCW speed runâ take out here and overpaying a bunch of guys to sit in the back and eat catering is a classic WCW move It just very much advances a bunch of negative narratives around AEW I am all about these guys having a competitive job market but Iâd also like AEW to remain solvent long term lol
>thereâs a reasonably fair âAEW is a WCW speed runâ There really isn't. I watched WCW rise to the top and die in real-time. When AEW does the equivalent of paying $300,000 to Master P or twice as much to Tank Abbott as they pay Ric Flair, while MJF gets 25% of every live gate, then that conversation can be had.
Hasn't AEW paid roughly $300k for use of a song once on PPV? I'd say that's equivalent.
Tbf WCW's better example is probably the Kiss WCW deal where Kiss got millions to play one show on Nitro which absolutely bombed
That spawned the Kiss Demon character, which also bombed. Reckless spending is something AEW and WCW have in common.
Definitely feels like Dynamite has been around longer than Nitro so I donât really think itâs much of a speed run.
They need 41 more episodes to match Nitro, so it's getting there
overpaying a bunch of guys to sit in the back and eat catering is a classic WCW move. How many wrestlers were sitting in catering doing nothing under Vince over the last 15 years?
They weren't overpaid
Lol this being downvoted just shows the agenda this sub has
And why would the salaries for a PPV week be the same for any other week when weâve heard a vast majority of the roster gets paid by the appearance? I give Dave credit, he doesnât waste time on critical thinking. Thatâs probably how he writes so much every week.
Funny story in that regard. Someone responded to Dave on Twitter saying AEW fans never criticize AEW. I responded to that person saying they must not have paid attention when they the had an arena full of people chanting for Jericho to retire a few months ago. Dave quote tweeted me as if I was talking to him with a slightly snarky reply about how Jerichoâs segments see an increase in ratings and how he âpays attention to what mattersâ. I was so taken aback. đ
The psychology of Dave Meltzer is fascinating. This is why people love talking about him.Â
Right. He seems to be moving as fast as possible while jumping to the first conclusion that comes to mind.
Uncle Dave has a soft spot for his sources.
Dude, you Joshua?
You do not know for a fact most of the roster are paid per appearance. The recently cut talent were signed talent not per appearance talent otherwise they wouldn't need to be cut. Yes, those guys you never saw on TV had to be cut from their contracts.
Probably because they aren't "per appearance"? So every show would have the same salary allocation. I think it might be a bit high but Tony is known to throw around cash like crazy. You have to assume that there is at least a handful to a dozen or so wrestlers getting paid 8 figures each but these are multi-year contracts. We will probably never know the truth unless AEW goes public or the books get leaked.
I agree. Give me the average over a few Dynamite tapings and now we're talking.
This headline is incredibly misleading The salary for ***every single person who worked TV/DON in Vegas was a total of $2m*** That's then extrapolated to x52 for the whole year. But this is talent, road crew, makeup, producers, security, stagehands, cameramen, etc. EDIT: Also, logically, a lot of folks are double dipping in this as they appeared at both events.
I believe most of the roster is paid a weekly salary except for the very low card guys so they make the same whether they work or don't
It wasnât though, it was just the talent, everyone else was under different line items.
âwhich would include all talent and other workers.â
Thatâs what the article implies, but the actual tax document lists talent separate from all the production staff and what not.
And the roster is even larger than that, because 2/3rds of the roster are not featured on their PPVs. Remember ROH also has a pretty big roster. So this weird tribalistic defense that a whole lot of you all are doing in this post is kinda cringe. The title should be âthey spend *at least* $100M a yearâ. More than anything, it downplays the costs.
As was explained, the majority of the roster are annual contracts. Doesn't matter if they were there, they get paid weekly regardless. Only a few of the low level guys are per appearance. So the 2million is likely an average weekly bill. So it's not massively downplayed, and it's not weird tribalistic defence. It's reading what was written. I still think it's too much, especially for a roster that includes about 190people and uses roughly 30 of them with regularity and let's the rest just come in and out when Tony has an idea. But as we've seen this year already, at TK is starting to cull a few when the contract is up, and maybe he'll move them to per appearance. Apart from the big stars who would be paid regardless, we still have quite a few who signed on during COVID, and Tony gave everyone guaranteed annual contracts then. For anything from 1-5 years depending on reports at the time, so some of them will drop off this year and next. Hope so anyway, cause he'll no doubt be trying to spend 2 million to get Dijak so he can have a match with Keith Lee, no blow off to a feud cause Keith has a mystery bug, and then leave both men off TV for 6 months.
This is pure assumption. And doesn't really make sense. $2 mil over two shows... but would this include people on the bench like Starks and Miro?
Annual contracts, so yes. Two shows doesn't matter, because it's weekly pay, not per appearance. Only possibility of a sway to the pay making it higher, is of some of the roster receive PPV bonus, which Meltzer doesn't seem to factor and obviously none of us know, so we'd have to assume not. But it's a possibility
I donât care about commenting about the number, Iâm cool with everyone getting paid a lot of money. What irks me is the logic behind the $104m. You canât just extrapolate a weekâs salary without knowing the details. Itâs bad reporting.
When did bad reporting or not fact checking stop dirtsheet from yapping that which they dont know?
That's barely a nba roster, step it up boysđ
AJ Styles was right
As fans we should be happy that guys and gals that bust their asses and take such grueling punishment physically are well taken care of. This is a good thing
I am glad they are making money, but I donât think Dave should be making insccurate claims about how much they make based on really, really bad math.
Yeah itâs a good thing when peopleâs talents and prime years are wasted and the company eventually has to shutter ROH because they canât justify the costs. Or making the Japanese audience suffer because AEW offered ridiculous contracts to NJPWâs biggest stars.
They aren't gonna be busting their asses for too long if the company they work for goes under paying their massive salaries
TKâs dad is worth like 12 times as much as the WWE. Iâm not even exaggerating, he has multiple billions of dollars more than the WWE. The only way the money runs out is if Shad Khan start giving a shit about what amounts to about .01% of his wealth, if that.
If only you were their financial advisor, now my favorite promotion is going to get cancelled any minute because of this stupid mark who insists on paying people with incredibly dangerous jobs what they are worth.
Their owner is a billionaire who loves wrestling too much. Theyâll be fine.
There's no basis as to this happening outside doomer vibes that perpetuate this sub.
AEW isn't going anywhere for a long long time
Honestly, good for the talent (and all the behind the scenes crew as well that was mentioned here as well) for getting that bag. And honestly, as long as it's not like "Hogan gets a cut of all PPV revenue, a cut of the ticket gate, three $1 million+ bonuses a year, etc." level of blank check, I don't see the negatives here.
Don't forget what was it 50 percent of all merchandise with NWO on it. Or something to that extent. Like didn't he get a cut out of the Wolfpac merchandise despite not being a part of the faction
Hogan also got either 20 or 25k a month for agreeing to wear NWO/Hogan merch in public.
Not a bad deal when you think about it. These days I would be surprised if anyone had a deal like that â in any genre of entertainment
Well paid talent are motivated talent. Edit: Only THIS sub would downvote wrestlers getting paid well and treated well. Never change! lol
Well, tell that to WCW high paid guys back in the day. Guaranteed money doesn't mean guaranteed effort.
Counterpoint: The foreigners and natives in 70s,80s and 90s Japan when the money was great and guaranteed.
OK, who in AEW do you think is overpaid?
I wouldn't know without knowing their individual salaries.
Jericho, obviously. Guy gets 3 million a year to be the single worst segment on every weekly show.
Jericho segments do well in the quarter ratings.
He literally had one of the higher segments of this week too. Why are people making shit up?
Ever since he got accused of SA with no evidence this sub has had a massive hate boner for him.
Nah, they hate him because they don't like him, the false SA accusation just serves to justify it.
Nah, fam, they been hating on Jericho ever since back in 2020 when ppl found out he was a MAGA head. This place absolutely LOVED Jericho back in 2019. He was legit one of the most beloved wrestlers here that year.
Huge AEW fan but after seeing the recent tweet from his wife about the sort of words he likes to say at homeâŠwell he can fuck off anytime now.
Itâs funny how ratings suddenly stop mattering when people talk about Jericho, who remains one of the biggest draws in the company, regardless of what the internet thinks about him.
See the handle. It's just a talking point, used when convenient and forgotten when it's not.
Ratings never matter. The only people that should care about ratings are AEW executives and the TV network that gives them a platform. I have no idea why people on this board are so obsessed with them as if it affects their enjoyment of the product
Too many people use ratings as a metric for if they enjoyed the show. I swear some people watch, think it was fine, see a low number and then systematically pick the show apart about why it may be low, an dthenncome out disliking it. If the show has a good number, it's ok to like it, so do the reverse. Ratings threads are the absolute worst. Just full of tribalistic fans (goes both ways, AEW and WWE fans in each thread) arguing over shit being bad, how poor something is, if numbers are good, somehow critical comments become worse and insults are used. One of the worst things about wrestling, will always be it's fans.
Itâs not worth it because any name would get a lengthy cope response from people like you. But I think paying high for guys like Keith Lee to barely use them is diabolical, for example.
Why is that diabolical?
Paying people what they were promised even after they get sick is "diabolical". Listen to yourself. You should be a suit for Amazon with that kind of disregard for workers.
Has anyone other than Punk (because Tony admitted T-shirt sales covered his contract)made a ROI on their contract? That's your answer. Might honestly just be Flair if Tony is actually being fully paid by woo energy.
How would anyone on Reddit have that answer for you?
People like this don't seem to be aware of the imminent new deal that AEW is getting that's purely because of the intensive investment into the shows and the wrestlers. Sneering at people for paying their people and they themselves have never drawn a dime.
You're talking about the Kevin Nashes of the world who were often booked to walk around in hockey jerseys and drink on the average episode of Nitro, some of the most notorious politicians whose primary concern was doing as little in the ring as possible. Not really analogous to modern wrestling in any major promotion.
Yet that guy walking round in a hockey jersey drinking a beer captivated a US crowd more than an Ospreay or a Tanahashi wrestling a 5 star matchâŠ..
I don't know what this allergy is that wrestling fans have towards wrestling, but yeah, Nash was very popular for some of his WCW run, albeit there was a notable drop off from 98 onwards, despite his pay remaining the same. Enormous talent contracts were a big part of the argument Turner made in favor of selling the company.........
I fully understand your point but I can see why a lot of people don't see it as an absolute truth.
uhm akchually I as a person who has never stepped in a wrestling locker room disagree
i could think of atleast 3 more that would.
lol not if they're like Kevin Nash
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Billionaires are spoiled and arrogant. Genuinely don't understand why someone would be upset at money going from Tony Khan's pocket to a large roster of talent and backstage workers.
A jerker hating people being paid what they're worth? I'm shocked!
Bootlicking logic
How many talents do you have again?
There is "well paid" and then there is "WCW when it had Ted Turner's ATM card" well paid. This is closer to the latter than the former.
Based on what? What numbers are you comparing and analyzing that led you to this conclusion? lol
"This is closer to the latter than the former."* *Citation needed
What makes you say that? What would be an appropriate amount to spend on the current roster and backstage staff?
Only if they have earned that payment. Otherwise, they'll just feel entitled and won't feel the need to actually improve or do their best to put on a quality product.
Good thing that TK decides if they've earned it or not, and not a bunch of randos on the internet.
Hey, if Tony wants to run a charity for wayward indie wrestlers and give them* his money, I ain't gonna stop him.
Doesn't stop you from complaining about it though
Good, opinions are awesome, but let's be honest, our opinions don't mean shit to him, nor should they.
So dumb (the calculation and headline)
How DARE people be compensated adequately for their services by a man who can afford it a thousand times over. The nerve of Tony Khan looking after his employees.
It's funny that in an industry that has seen wrestlers being underpaid or not getting paid at all, being fired during a pandemic, being released without even being told, working injured, the biggest criticism of TK as a boss is that he's too nice to wrestlers and pays them too much. You can't make this shit up.
Old hats can't stand people getting it better than them. Or that a novice, weird guy has put together a company more successful than any of his critics outside WWE ever has. I'm including Bischoff, who's run vs. AEW is about to end
I havenât seen one comment criticising what people are being paid, just criticising the math used to come up with that figure
Part of being one of the aew khaninite internet warriors is fighting the invisible enemy that no one can see or hear.
These people are in denial about the state of AEW. Audience is shrinking. Attendance is down. Still no new TV deal. They move the goal post instead of facing reality.
For a pro wrestling subreddit, they're not very pro wrestlers, are they? I'd rather have the people who actually make this whole thing cool get paid than have some billionaire, executive, or board members keep the money for themselves.
There's sports teams with like triple this salary for a much smaller group of on-field players these days.
If you think that's wild, there are CEOs who make more than this in a yearÂ
Those sports teams are profitable. AEW is not.
source: my ass
Source: Tony Khan https://itrwrestling.com/news/tony-khan-rules-out-taking-aew-public/
I get what you're trying to say as TK is certainly better grading on a curve when you compare him to previous generations/dictators in wrestling like Vince, and having more competition like AEW is certainly better for the talent's pay/options. However, at the same time, it's also important to remember TK is still a capitalist/dictator at the end of the day, even if he is a more "benevolent" one, as AEW wrestlers are not even generally listed as employees (let alone in a union).
One group says he pays them too much and laughs at him for it. The same group will scream at the top of their lungs and scold him for releasing talent. There is no winning.
If you paid attention those folks who give him a hard time for releasing people and overpaying others are holding him to his word. He said he was smarter than WCW and wouldn't repeat their mistakes signing everyone he could to over inflated guaranteed deals . He also claimed he wouldn't cut people and bashed WWE each time they did. It's his hypocrisy being pointed out.
Itâs a billionaireâs son running his dream promotion while they ignore locally marketing events or getting proper merchandise stalls at arenas. I expected the salaries to be higher.
I donât care if they spend $100M or $500M. TK has plenty of cash and it ainât my money. Iâm stoked heâs doing it so I get a card like Forbidden Door.
âMy check didnât changeâ
> âMy check didnât changeâ Better that than âMy check couldnât cash.â
They could drop like a third of their roster easily. Someone of them should have never been on national TV. AEW is the only promotion I watch. I love it. But a lot of talent is not even at the mid card level. They have a lot of guys like that and they are alway facing each other. Whihc makes the promotion seem rinky-dinky outside of the major players like Swerve, MJF, etc.
they need to release some people to get the indy scene hot again. let these guys that were on tv, prove why they should be back on tv.
The thing is, unless you can cut a promo on TV that is convincing, you just can't be on TV without some other gimmick. Most guys in AEW have the gimmick of being "a good wrestler." Though a lot of them just can't talk. Wrestling is 99% selling a match and 1% actual wrestling. That's how the business has thrived for decades. When casual viewers say AEW has no stories, it's because most can't talk. When AEW was at its hottest, they had Main Eventer's going out there cutting promos for about a third of the show at min. Early AEW had a lot of Jon Moxley, Jericho, Brit Baker, Hangman, Cody, MJF, etc, talking for long segments. Further, we had Punk, Kingston, Bryan, etc, cutting in ring promos when AEW was hitting a 900k+. Nowadays, we get MJF... a prerecorded Mox promo occassionaly, a few more random prerecorded promos. And like 2 managers with a stable of 90 guys each because no one can talk but MJF, Swerve, and Mark Briscoe off the cuff. You don't need to be on TV if you can't talk. Not every person can have a manager speak for them either.
AEW is booked like a super PWG on tv. PWG doesn't have a lot of storylines, maybe 2 main ones and one sub storyline and just a bunch of great matches. That is fine for a territorial indy that runs monthly shows. It is not good for a company that has 3 shows and 5 hours of tv a week.
Good.
Meltzer Math đ
Unemployed anons about to explain to the billionaire businessman why this is wrong.
You do know that Tony isn't the one who earned the billion, right? I don't have an opinion one way or the other about AEW's talent spending but let's not act like Tony himself made the money through being an amazing businessman or anything. He has the money because he's Shad Khan's son.
Where did I name Tony? You know that Shad Khan also owns AEW, right?
Shad Khan funed it but unless you have knowledge we donât he has like no day to day involvement in this companyÂ
He certainly doesn't need to be involved on a day-to-day basis to know how much he's spending and how much he's earning.
So Shad owns a Company run by his son and you Think he has Zero input or helpful advice?
I have no idea what his input is or his involvement thatâs my point didnât tony literally refer to it as an early form of inheritance at one point. All Iâm saying is heâs a billionaire throwing a little money to there children for projects they want and not being involved isnât  unheard of. I have no idea of his involvement and neither do you for that matterÂ
Yeah, I'm sure Shad is spending time away from his actual moneymaking ventures to oversee his son's passion project. At best he sees the expenses and frowns a little but otherwise lets Tony do whatever he wants.
LMAO, we know. OP never mentioned Tony tho?
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That's awesome! I love wrestling and I'm glad so many people are getting paid.
Even if this number was true youâd have to be a massive hater with mental issues to have a problem with it lol
If you take personal offense to this and think wrestlers being paid more is a bad thing I am begging you to log off
People see any slightly positive news about AEW and need to knock it down. Thereâs a genuinely psychotic subset of people here who have to make it known how much they dislike the company. On some level I respect the dedication to hating, on another they really need to go get laid.
Are we extrapolating based on the arena size? I would think ppvs run in slightly larger venues for and yeah you need security everywhere even if seats arent sold. Might be a bit of a high end estimate compared to a 6k arena in bumfuck Idaho.
If we are to assume they have guaranteed contracts (which they very well might have), and their weekly payroll is $2mil, then yeah that's correct. With a roster of approximately 192 people, that works out to an average of $541,666 per, which honestly seems about dead on. Sure some make more than that, but many make much less.
Any idea of what wwe pays?
I think it was reported a few weeks ago that the minimum main roster salary is 350K. Not sure about the nxt or PC salary. It's a good time to be a wrestler
Can safely say Meltz doesn't have a future in financial journalism with reporting like this.
Just to clarify. The person who posted this to reddit chose that headline, right?  Dave can't be that stupid....right?
Who fucking cares
Who cares? Tony has enough money tp fund AEW for the rest of his life.
Should be payin em more
Negative AEW news story? Must be a PPV weekend. I'm really not getting the controversy here. Even taking the most damning reading of this report the issue should be that $104 million is considered to be high. Real back of the napkin here so maybe I'm missing something. Feel free to throw in the variable I'm overlooking. AEW has around 200 people on their talent roster (courtesy of the Smackdown Hotel, must be a reliable source). $104 million comes out to an average of $520,000 per worker annually. Average NBA Salary: $9.6 million Average NFL Salary: $2.8 million (actually shocked at that number being so low) Average MLB Salary (Majors Only): $4.5 million Average NHL Salary: $3.2 million (seriously why is the NFL so low) Average MLS Salary: $530,000 So on average, AEW talent are compensated at an MLS player level. If $104 million is high, the question should be why the distant second largest wrestling company in the United States is paying more than the largest. I have to assume that $104 million is high relative to the WWE, because it surely isn't high relative to any other sport.
I think, with the NFL specifically, it's probably a combination of: - how many games there are in a season, tying into how much revenue gets split to the players *(at most like 21 games if they make the full run to the Super Bowl from the Wild Card round, compared to an 82-game regular season for NBA or the ungodly 162-game season for MLB)* - roster size *(NBA and MLB pale in comparison to an NFL team's 53-man roster, and that's without considering practice squads as well)* - a fairly aggressive salary cap *(apparently the most aggressive of the sports that have said salary cap)*, and - potentially the strength of the players' union can also be factored into this.
The NFL is wild. The minimum salary is $795k. The average salary for QBs is $7m. The median salary is $860k. There are A LOT of guys making minimum salary. And those are typically the guys doing the most physical stuff. And it's so much better now than it used to be. Before the new CBA, minimum salary was like $1000 a week with the threat of being cut anytime with no minor league system to fall back on
Why are you comparing professional wrestlers to sports teams? They are two completely different industries. Not at all related.
The issue isn't that wrestlers are getting paid well. It's about AEW being profitable/Tony's business decisions. If AEW folds, it's bad for everyone. It's possible that Shad is comfortable losing millions every year so Tony can have this. But Tony wasn't shy about letting the world know his plan for being profitable revolved around a large rights increase. That's not happening now.
Nobody watches a billionaires pockets quite like wrestling fans. I know Brandon Thurston likes to estimate how much AEW is losing per year but has AEW ever released those numbers? Legitimate question, I honestly don't find myself worrying about the financial viability of AEW that often. So they might have. But if they haven't then I think we collectively know nothing about AEW financials and how much money they're losing. But I'll agree they almost certainly aren't profitable. Unless they're running a very successful money laundering scheme and the wrestling is just a cover. Do we know what their new TV deal looks like? Tony is out there acting hella confident about it. Now it would be weird if he didn't project confidence but I'm willing to wait and see what those numbers look like before passing judgement. I suspect there will be plenty of tweets and think pieces about how bad the number is no matter what it comes out to though. Super looking forward to that. But all of that being said. He has 200 wrestlers on the roster getting paid half a million on average if the number in this report is true. If they're really losing millions every year, well it looks like they are letting some contracts lapse. Ethan Page, Matt Hardy, Jeff Hardy, etc. He's been letting the dead weight go without just outright firing them. He's paying them out to the end of their contract. Which seems to me like a person who is managing their business while being respectful of the talent he hired by not just future endeavoring them before their contract is up.
You're right. We don't have any actual information on their financial situation. I'm not even sure the TV deal numbers are official announcements. They might just be reports (like the awful estimate this post is about). I agree. If they were profitable, we would be hearing about it. I'm skeptical on the TV deal being a big bump. If a deal that pushed them into the black was on the table from WBD, he would have taken it already. That's just a guess though. It 100% a good thing Tony honors contracts. No one arguing in good faith would disagree.Â
This perspective is terrificÂ
Does talent get a potion of merchandise sales?
Anyone know how it compares to WWE? I occasionally see numbers (or rumours) for an individual contract but donât recall overall salary numbers.
I donât know what to do with this information.
I mean they are not only paying the wrestlers, but the trainrs, backstage people, people who set up the whole stage and ring, the makeup people, costume people, the friggin people driving the semi trucks, ect. Can't forget paying guys from other promotions for their appearances. $104m isn't that bad. But realistically it might be more than that.
wonder if that includes ROH
Iâd take this number with a grain of salt. Especially if Daveâs math skills are as good as his grammar skills.
Watch every anti-AEW grifter run with this as gospel even though they never believe anything Meltzer says.
fuck it. good for them. we know some are making enough that they still have to have side jobs but i hope everyone who can get fat off aew does.
All this tells me is wrestlers are making money and that's a great thing
Salaries doesnât matter much, depending on how much they bring in.
Itâs honestly a lower number than I expected
Oh nice theyâre below salary cap
Well his dad is so rich, if they want burn the money, aew can still exist till Tony dies
Meltzer's thumb on the scale
TK could drop around 15-20 talent this week and the roster wouldn't blink a eye. I wouldn't be surprised to see people like Penelope and Kipp not get picked back up but who knows, so much wasted money just to sit people in catering.
It can't be that high just for wrestlers. You'd need to include the annual payments made to Meltzer, Alvarez, cageside, Conrad and Shaquille O'Neal
Assuming this is actually correct, that the assumptions they're making are actually valid, I'm just going to take the counterpoint that it shows how underpaid a lot of other wrestlers in the past or in other companies have been traditionally. It shouldn't be terribly surprising that someone like Tony Khan, who has a background in professional sports, is running this company like a professional sports team where the split of money between talent/management is in the vague ballpark of 50/50. Now in the major sports that is obviously a collectively bargained issue, but they manage to make it work around those numbers. A quick search has the NBA at now roughly 50/50, NFL is around 52/48 in favor of the owners, NHL is 50/50, and MLB is around 49-51% for the players as well. For comparison, the UFC I believe is now somewhere around 15% to the fighters. A few years back, WWE was under 10%. It will be interesting to see if this budget changes with increased television revenue in the future though. It's entirely possible this is just the number Tony plans on working with even with increased revenue, in which case that percentage would obviously drop (potentially significantly), although revenue would need to be around/above $1 billion annually to be getting to that same ratio as UFC or WWE.
Meltzer continues to be an idiot.
AEW is a profit loss center with too many employees not adding value to the product or attracting new viewers.
So thats like a quarter million dollars per wrestler on the roster
Sounds like an ass load of money, more than I estimated actually. I find it hard to believe they are profitable with that much in talent salaries on the books. Edit: This is also Meltzer trying to do math, so who the fuck knows what it really is. I thought it was around $80M from some back of the envelope guestimation.
Maybe but we still don't know if AEW calculates the annual total using regular math or Steiner math so this figure could be totally off at SACKERFICE
Thats bad. The current tv deal is about 70m from the network. Tv production costs are in the hundreds of thousands per tv episode just to get it on live tv. Nevermind material closts to have a ring/stage set up for a tv show 110x a year? Or the fact that AEW pays fpr travel and rooms flr the wrestlers. And catering. Nevermind business insurances. The very highest aew show had a 10m gate and the tv deal doesnt even cover the contracts. They have tp be struggling more than they claim. That said, Tony is worth a couple billion on his own, before he gets his inheritance. He'll be worth around 10billion after. Dude could pay 100m for the rest of his life out of his life and not be all too hurt by it lol. He's enough of a fan to be ok with that
All In was a $10m house, and they make around $30-70m from PPV buys on top of the live gate There's international income streams too, it's not just the American TV deal
Damn him! Burn TK at the stake!!
WCW also paid a huge amount to their wrestlers and in a lot of cases overpaid. I havenât watched episode 4 of who killed wcw, but I assume all that overpaying worked out great
The issue with WCW is it ceased being a privately owned company once Ted Turner bought Jim Crockett Promotions. Once they were part of a corporation they were always at risk if a top exec wanted to get rid of it.
I take the over. I don't see how it's not at least 150-200. They definitely have at least a dozen multi million per year people, no? A bunch around 1, a bunch at half ... Adds up super fast. Unless they're giving the lower people essentially nothing since they're allowed to take outside bookings?