5 Interesting Things About Buff Bagwell WWE Lawsuit: Current Contracts, Royalties, Bagwell’s WWE Run

On August 9, 2016, Marcus “Buff” Bagwell filed a class action complaint against World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. in Connecticut United States District Court. The chief allegation is that he (and others) are “contractually owed royalty payments from World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) for certain content that has been sold or licensed by the WWE on the World Wrestling Entertainment Network (WWE Network)”.

Five things about this lawsuit over royalties:

1. This is very similar to a lawsuit filed by another wrestler in April 2016.

On April 6, 2016, Rene Goguen (better known as La Resistance’s Rene Dupree) filed a similar suit in Connecticut United States District Court alleging that he had “not received contractually owed royalty payments from World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) for certain content that has been sold or licensed by the WWE on the World Wrestling Entertainment Network (WWE Network) and on Netflix.” Goguen suit was also a Class Action Complaint and was filed by Brendon P. Leydon of Stamford, CT and Clinton A. Krislov & Matthew T. Peterson of Chicago, IL. These are the same attorneys who filed Bagwell’s lawsuit.

The suit didn’t last long at all.

Less than a week after the initial complaint, a notice of voluntary dismissal was filed on April 11, 2016 by Goguen’s lawyers. What happened? Lead attorney Jerry S. McDevitt told TheWrap, that Goguen had “signed a buyout agreement in 2011” which “waived any claim for future royalties for any kind for any reason”. It seems that Goguen was not going to be a good lead plaintiff for this class action.

2. Current WWE contracts are explicit about lack of WWE Network royalties.

Modern WWE booking agreements, such as the one signed by Stephanie McMahon-Levesque in October 2013, have clear language that WWE is not paying royalties related to the WWE Network.

7.5 No Royalties Paid to WRESTLER. Except as specifically set forth in Section 7.1 through 7.3 above, WRESTLER shall not be eligible for any payment or royalties with respect to any other goods, services or otherwise including without limitation to the following: television license fees; television subscription fees; internet subscription fees; subscription video on demand fees; magazine subscription fees and/or advertising; and/or distribution fees of any kind paid to PROMOTER by any entity in connection with the exploitation of the Intellectual Property.

This sort of language began appearing in booking contracts around 2004 when the WWE launched the “WWE 24/7” service (later rechristened “WWE Classics on Demand”). Prior to that, such as in Brock Lesnar’s 2003 contract, there was a much broader definition:

7.5 (a) (i) Royalties/Pay-Per-View Videos Sold By Licensees: PROMOTER shall allocate twenty-five percent (25%) of the Net Receipts paid to PROMOTER by Licensees authorized to reproduce and sell video cassettes, videodisc, CD ROM, or other technology, including technology not yet created (hereinafter referred to as “WWE Video Products”), of WWE …

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