WWE Brand Extension

The **WWE Brand Extension** or **brand split** is a process used by professional wrestling company WWE with the purpose of dividing their personnel (wrestlers, commentators, referees, etc.) into two brands, *Raw* and *SmackDown*. The first brand extension started in 2002 and ended in 2011. From 2006 to 2010 *ECW* was the third brand. The second and current brand extension started in 2016, with their developmental territory NXT being added as a brand. Former brands also include the United Kingdom-based NXT UK and the cruiserweight brand 205 Live.

## History 
### Beginning of first brand extension (2002) 
#### Background 
After buying World Championship Wrestling (WCW), its business opponent through the 1990s, in March 2001, the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) wanted to find a way to split itself into two separate brands, because of the numbers of Superstars that it had gotten as part of WCW's purchase. Mr. McMahon did not like having to share his creation with Flair and looked for a way to stop their partnership. After entering a feud with The Undertaker, Flair sought a match with him at WrestleMania X8. Flair agreed, however, the Board also reserved the right to review the ownership status of the WWF following WrestleMania. A draft was started the following week on *RAW*. Each owner would get a total of thirty picks. The brand extension officially began on April 1, 2002. The first half of the draft was televised live on TNN for two hours, on WWE's flagship program, Raw. There were thirty draft picks, with sixty superstars drafted overall by co-owners of the WWF, Ric Flair and Mr. McMahon, onto their respective brands, RAW and SmackDown!. For the televised half of the draft, ten brand selections were manually made by Flair and McMahon.

On the March 18, 2002 episode of *RAW*, Mr. McMahon won a coin toss to determine who would receive the first draft selection.

Notes:

* Picks No. 1–20 were made live on *Raw*
* Picks No. 21–57 were conducted via lottery on the WWF's website

##### Undrafted 
Several wrestlers remained undrafted for various reasons.

#### Aftermath 
On the June 10, 2002 edition of *Raw*, McMahon became the only owner of World Wrestling Entertainment when he defeated Flair in a No Holds Barred match.

### Addition of ECW (2006) 
#### Background 
After World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) bought all of Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW) in 2003, the company began releasing DVDs showing the original ECW. Soon afterwards, the company promoted two ECW reunion shows featuring WWE and former ECW wrestlers, One Night Stand in 2005 and in 2006.

### Aftermath and end of first brand extension (2007–2011) 
In late 2007, SmackDown! and ECW superstars began to appear on both shows as part of a (kayfabe) deal between ECW General Manager Armando Estrada and SmackDown General Manager Vickie Guerrero.

On February 2, 2010, *ECW* was announced to be replaced by a new show, *NXT*. The ECW brand no longer existed, with every ECW wrestler becoming a free agent after the show ended.

On August 29, 2011, it was announced that wrestlers and championships were no longer exclusive to Raw and SmackDown, and that everyone could now compete for both shows, therefore the first brand extension came to an end.

### Second brand extension (2016–present) 
On May 25, 2016, it was announced that beginning July 19, *SmackDown* would broadcast live on Tuesday nights. Previously the show was usually filmed on Tuesdays and aired on Thursdays or Fridays. It was also said that from that date on both Raw and SmackDown would get a unique roster and set of writers. This started the second brand extension.

## Impact 
### Interbrand competition 
Interbrand competition was kept at a minimum, with superstars from all brands competing together only at pay-per-view events. However, in 2003, all pay-per-view events became brand exclusive, except for the "big four" pay-per-views (WrestleMania, SummerSlam, Survivor Series, and the Royal Rumble), which remained interbrand shows.

Starting in late 2006, in an attempt to add more star power to the shows, interbrand matches became more common. Most notably, MNM and The Hardys reformed, despite the fact that the teammates were on separate brands. Bobby Lashley is also notable for his interbrand action, who was involved in a storyline with the WWE Chairman, Mr. McMahon. The return of ''Saturday Night's Main Event'' to NBC has also lead to more interaction between the brands. In 2009 and 2010, WWE held the Bragging Rights pay-per-view event, where Raw's wrestlers competed against SmackDown's wrestlers. A similar concept was used at Survivor Series between 2016 and 2021.

### Pay-per-views 
The separation of the WWE roster between two brands also intended to split the pay-per-view offerings, which began with Bad Blood in June 2003. The original idea had the "major" pay-per-view events at the time (Royal Rumble, SummerSlam, Survivor Series, and WrestleMania) would be the only shows where wrestlers from different brands would interact with each other, and even among the four shows only the Royal Rumble and WrestleMania would have wrestlers from different brands competing against each other. Wrestlers, as a result, appeared only in two thirds of the shows. Eventually, WWE stopped making single-brand pay-per-view events following WrestleMania 23. December to Dismember and New Year's Revolution were cancelled following the announcement.

After the brand extension was reintroduced in 2016, WWE started making their pay-per-view and livestreaming events single-branded again, except for the "big four" events. This stopped again following WrestleMania 34 in 2018.

### Championships 
In the early months of the brand extension. the WWE Undisputed Championship and WWE Women's Championship were available to both brands.

SmackDown! then created the WWE Tag Team Championship, brought back the United States Championship, and became the exclusive home of the Cruiserweight Championship. Meanwhile, Raw became the exclusive home of the World Tag Team Championship, the Intercontinental Championship, and the Women's Championship.

## Related pages
* WWE Draft
* List of WWE personnel

## References