During a recent edition of his “Grilling JR” podcast, WWE Hall of Famer Jim Ross shared his approach and calculations for determining talent payouts for a show.
You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On best practices for payroll: “I think common sense. You know, if you had a team that was put together, you pay on pretty much equally. If they’re not equal to some degree, I can think of examples where one member of a team got a little bit more than the other member of the team. But that’s just the nature of that beast. So it’s a lot of just logic, just — logic is very important. Common sense, being fair is a key. And so yeah, I just — I’m a big believer in equality. And you know, you can’t have a team without, let’s say two guys, you want to pay those two guys as close to each other as you can. Even though there are times when one talent is a bigger star considerably than his tag team partner, you want to make sure that you don’t let it get to be too disproportionate. So it’s a unique little situation. A lot of it is just logic and common sense.”
On the Bill Watts formula for show payouts: “Yeah generally you paid — the main events got 3% of the net gross. And so if the house is $100,000, that means that somebody probably made three grand. But it’s just a matter of like I said, logic. If I had Kevin Nash teaming with a lesser-known person, Kevin Nash made more money than the lesser-known person. It’s just a star system. And your charge, if you’re the lesser-known, is to get over and make yourself more valuable. And that’s kind of where I looked at it. All men are not created equal in that regard.”
On having to recognize who the attraction is versus the opponent: “Of course. It’s not a democracy, it’s just not. So it’s whoever sells the most tickets in your view. It’s very opinionated. And like I said, you’re never going to make everybody happy with discretionary funds, you’re just not. Now, there’s more of a formula, as far as who gets the bigger piece of that pie we talk about, and go from there. Sometimes you have discussions with talent about their pay, which is not unusual. But you hope at the end of the day, it all works out for both parties, and they are happy or somewhat happy. Because they’re never going to be totally happy, but you hope that at some point down the line that it’s all going to work out to some fair distribution of discretionary money. It’s hard. It’s not an easy job.”
