Former WWE Superstar CM Punk recently took to Twitter to take a shot at WWE and their policy over royalties for on demand content. The former WWE Champion held a Q&A and a fan asked about the situation regarding payment to talent with content on demand.
“Money. Nobody gets any royalties for anything shown on peacock. Nobody. Yay wrestling biz!” was CM Punk’s response to the idea of going back to WWE to do a Broken Skull Sessions with Stone Cold Steve Austin.
The issue of on demand content and WWE paying royalties is not new, as WWE Superstars have had payments fall way down since the OTT WWE Network was brought into the fold in the last decade.
CM Punk on WWE royalty structure
With the old PPV model, talent could and would be paid based on gate and PPV numbers. With the advent of the WWE Network and now Peacock, that model was destroyed, leaving talent to ask where their usual PPV cut was going to come from.
Although contract structure for current has likely changed, Punk does still have a point regarding the older on demand content. Talent would also receive royalties for DVD or Blu-Ray content sold, and the on demand services have completely butchered this model.
Huge events, such as CM Punk winning the WWE Championship at Money In The Bank 2011 against John Cena, were big DVD sellers, but now all of that content is available on demand, and someone like Punk won’t see a cent from that.
