The WWE’s annual stockholders meeting will be on 4/20, and with the retirement of Joe Perkins, who has been on the Board of Directors since 1999 and been affiliated with the WWWF since the 70s, the board members will be Vince McMahon, 71, the CEO and Chairman of the Board; Stephanie McMahon Levesque, 40, the Chief Brand Officer; Paul Levesque, 47, the Executive Vice President of Talent, Live Events and Creative; Stuart Goldfarb, 62, Patricia Gottesman, 58, Laureen Ong, 64, Robyn Peterson, 41, Frank Riddick, 60 and Jeffrey Speed, 54.
Besides Vince, Stephanie and Paul Levesque, the rest of the senior executive team is composed of Michelle Wilson, 51, the Chief Revenue & Marketing Officer; George Barrios, 51, the Chief Strategy and Financial Officer; Kevin Dunn, 56, the Executive Producer & Chief of Global Television Production, Blake Bilstad, 47, the Senior Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary; Casey Collins, 44, the Executive Vice President of Consumer Products, Basil DeVito, 62, the Senior Advisor of Business Strategy and Michael Luisi, 51, the President of WWE Studios.
For 2017, the base salaries for Vince is $1.4 million, Wilson is $791,044, Barrios is $783,510; Levesque is $650,000 (as an executive, not including his salary as talent) and Dunn is $909,560.
It’s interesting that in management goals for 2017, the stated goal is not based on adding new subscribers to the network, but based on adding the average hours consumed per subscriber, which was a number that declined in 2016 from 2015.
As far as total pay for last year, not including dividends, Vince McMahon earned $3,071,600 ($1,313,462 in salary, $1,739,063 in incentive compensation and $19,075 in matching 401K plans and life insurance payments). That was down from $3,308,998 from 2015 but up from $2,413,865 in 2014.
Wilson earned $4,317,617; Barrios earned $4,311,056; Levesque earned $3,993,417 (which was $601,933 for executive salary, $499,992 in stock, $419,531 in incentives for company performance and $2,471,961 as talent for his matches and television appearances and he also missed football season as talent this past year); and Dunn earned $4,637,652.
Like Vince McMahon, all the executives earned less in 2016 based on lower revenue coming from meeting incentives, with the exception of Paul Levesque, and that’s because his money for being a wrestler increased from $1,713,360 in 2015.
Stephanie McMahon earned about $2 million between executive pay and talent, not including stock. Shane McMahon earned about $2,150,000, all as a performer, for his role on television as commissioner as well as for his main event money from WrestleMania and Survivor Series.
Listed as the company’s key goals in 2017 are to grow the WWE Network, although as noted, the main goal listed is to grow the average amount of hours consumed per subscriber, and not grow subscriber numbers; increase international revenue; increase “certain television ratings, social media metric; sponsorships and net promoter score,” increase revenue from new product initiatives and come up with actionable business initiatives to generate new revenue and social media followers in certain new markets.
Vince McMahon received an additional $17,056,020 in stock dividends. Linda McMahon received $272,050 in stock dividends. Stephanie McMahon received $919,079.52 in stock dividends in 2016. Paul Levesque received $30,803.52 in stock dividends in 2016.
Like most of the biggest stars, even though he far out-earned that figure even working nine matches for the year and missing several months of television due to storyline reasons of wanting to keep him off, Levesque’s downside for 2016 was $1 million. I believe with the exception of Brock Lesnar and maybe John Cena, nobody has a downside greater than $1 million, even though the headliners earn multiple times that.
The members of the Board of Directors who aren’t executives last year earned between $57,541 and $98,041, and all also received an additional $57,500 in stock.
