McMahon Gives Talents 30 Days to End 3rd Party Deals

Whether they actually can do this or not... awful. I hope there’s enough pressure or pushback for this to be dropped.

That’s what I’m thinking too.

How can he own their real names if they don’t go by that on TV?

These guys are constantly labeled as “independent contractors”, I don’t see how they can legally punish or terminate someone for playing video games on camera or by sending happy birthday videos to people.

Not to mention, it’s just a MASSIVELY shitty thing to do. Especially right now where these guys’ paychecks have undoubtedly taken a huge hit over the past 6 months and these outlets gave them a way to earn a little extra from their homes.

I'm most surprised that Vince actually knows what a Twitch is.

Anyway, Wrestling Royalty is reporting that Vince isn't actually forcing them to shut down their Cameos/Twitch channels, he's only forcing them to stop using WWE intellectual property (ie: ring names) to promote them.

Depending on what the actual thing is it could be, and it could also definitely open a huge can of worms. If it’s just that they can’t use WWE trademarks (names and stuff like that) it’s definitely legal. It’s WWE’s intellectual property.

If they have to stop completely, WWE could technically demand it, but it would likely backfire majorly on WWE in the sense of employment benefits. If talent aren’t allowed to earn revenue through other avenues, I’m pretty sure they would legally be considered employees regardless of what their contract states. It would come down to a judge’s ruling, but it would likely force WWE to treat the talent as employees, which means providing healthcare benefits and paying employment taxes. The talent also wouldn’t be subject to self employment taxes, if that’s something they normally pay in their state.

I’m by no means an expert on this, but at a past company I worked for there was a dispute with a contractor whose contract wasn’t renewed when it expired. He put in a claim for unemployment benefits and stated he was an employee of the company. His contract had to be reviewed to determine whether or not he was an employee. Even though his contract clearly stated that he agreed to work on a project for us as an independent contractor, he used his own materials and home office, and filled out a W9, a judge still determined he was an employee because of some stupidity beyond the contract. He was able to convince the judge that he was made to report to someone and that made him exclusive to our company for that period of time.

All these contracts and laws are very weird, but this could get really messy. Also, it’s pretty crappy if they are making talent stop completely, especially when they aren’t getting paid if they’re not getting booked.

Mike Rome just removed the WWE part from his name. Paige changed her identity on those platforms to Saraya. Sounds like it's just the WWE likeness & name that they can't use, and in cases like Rome where the name is the same, he's just removed the WWE part of the identity. IF *And this is a developing story so this may be a big if, but IF that's all they have to do, then I kinda get it. Chris Hemsworth can sell and do anything as Chris Hemsworth, but he can't go around running a youtube channel as official Thor.

This is really a complete non story and people who are throwing a fit over it simply just dont understand legalities. All Vince is saying is you cant use your stage name that HE owns to make money for yourself. This is common sense.

But once again, its 2020 and Vince is bad man so we must hate everything he do cause we are elite now.

No, no one brought aew into this at all, so why are you throwing stupid shade that way? I agree that this is a non story if that's what the actual story is (and I said as much in my own post like four or five up) but why are you bringing that into this? All it is is trolling and doesn't add anything to the actual topic. You want to actually compare the two, yes aew runs their company far more ethically and it's not close. But that wasn't the topic.

Load of bs. Telling people what they can and can’t do with their legal names is beyond illegal lol

If that's the actual story yes, it is. If it's just removing the wwe tag like going from mikeromewwe to mikerome, or not using a WWE only name like how Paige changed her name on twitch to Saraya, then it's a lot less scummy I think.  No reason Paige still couldn't use Saraya as her twitch name and say in the description "I play Paige on WWE" so it still triggers in the search options. If they try to restrict her from doing that, then crazy scummy.  Funny how the range on this story can be common sense to vince tries to own birth names depending on what the real version is lol.