Last year, WWE recorded record profits and made big revenue every quarter despite the COVID-19 pandemic. They cut a lot of costs in the process of the pandemic to keep profits rolling in, and apparently they’ve cut costs one more way that’s enraged the company.
Ringside News has reported WWE sent out a company-wide email that revealed they will not be giving out anymore raises, promotions, or bonuses. There were also meetings involving some groups about the subject. A person directly involved with the situation at WWE HQ told the website the mandate is “On the office side, the actual employees are getting a salary freeze.”
The site has learned nobody knows how long the freeze is supposed to last, but considering the last quarterly report showed record profits despite being down from the previous year, it’s not a good look. These raises and bonuses were expected soon, after the next set of performance reviews. It’s left a lot of people in the company irate, and it was said morale was very low last night at the SmackDown taping due to the news.
No time frame has been given for how long the bonuses and raises are nixed, the only indication is they won’t be happening for “the foreseeable future.”
However, it wasn’t just the fact that the salary freeze is happening that upset people, the way the situation was handled added to the frustration. Bruce Prichard put it in the hands of their new Senior Vice President of Creative Writing Christine Lubrano to tell the writing team, while the producers were told Friday during a meeting with mark Carrano. Michael Cole had the unfortunate task of telling the announce team and “it didn’t go great.”
A tenured member of the creative team told Ringside News “Bruce totally sh*t on the entire team. He was part of the decision and then wouldn’t even tell us, and he assigned [the task of telling the team] to someone one month on the job, who barely knows us.”
Meanwhile, Producers were said to be “at odds with each other over it.” They did give Carrano credit because he “faced everyone.” Meanwhile, Prichard was approached by the writing team but “he played dumb and treated us like we were all stupid.”
None of these bonuses were extravagant, they were cost of living raises that are standard in most companies. It’s a bad look that a company is making record profits in their earning reports and not paying out these bonuses.
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