#WastedOpportunity: How WWE Is Squandering Their Stars’ Social Media Presence

Introduction: At least once per television broadcast, and usually multiple times on each show, WWE makes a point of referencing that they are a social media juggernaut, between massive amounts of followers on the various social media sites, frequently earning “top trending” honors on Twitter, and even certain Superstars appearing in Google’s top weekly search terms. So how is it that a company that frequently touts their social media savvy (see what I did there?) can so often fail to translate social media popularity into ticket and merchandise sales and Network purchases?

First off, because a lot of this article is going to focus on how outstanding the New Day’s social media presence is right now, I am going to borrow the gimmick of another writer on this site and say that “I called it” thirteen months ago when I said that the stable of Big E, Kofi Kingston, and Xavier Woods would not work as a “New Nation”. Of course, I was wrong about Xavier Woods in that column, as he has proven to be vastly more charismatic than I gave him credit for, but I wanted to see what it was like to shout my own praises for a minute. In all seriousness, though, with over a year and a terrific New Day run to reflect upon since writing that piece, I think the most salient point that I made was in stating that “[i]t would also be very important to ensure that they aren’t full-blown heels”, and that has proven to be true. Sure, Kofi, Big E, and especially Xavier Woods are brash, cocky, and boastful, but they aren’t overly malicious. They talk a lot of smack to and about their opponents, but they are not eating a bunch of Mexican food and then fouling the interior of an opponent’s vehicle (oh, whoops, that was a WWE babyface) or actively seeking to injure anyone. If I had to describe the New Day with a single adjective right now, it would be “fun-loving”, as even the most programmed WWE fans who boo the New Day because that is what they have been conditioned to do can see that all three members love what they are doing and genuinely seem to be having fun. Oh yeah, and did I mention that they have started an iPetition to save the tables that includes phrases like “[t]hese Boyz have been destroying tables, obliterating good wood, and spitting in the face of Mother Nature for years so it is time that we took a stand” and “sign this petition to ensure that our future generations don’t have to first learn about tables in history textbooks”. [Seriously, the entire thing is less than two hundred words and is completely awesome – click the link and check it out! -W]

But that is not even the most wonderful thing that New Day are doing right now, because they have an ongoing social media rivalry/friendship with Team BAD and specifically Sasha Banks that has led to such amazing moments as: Big E and Sasha riding around on a scooter backstage, Sasha practicing her Wrestlemania entrance on the same type of scooter while Big E and Xavier Woods look on, New Day answering Natalya’s #JustKeepDancing challenge (with spirit fingers!), New Day and Team BAD having a backstage “shoe off” (probably the first of its kind in WWE), or, most recently, the two groups trading gear and poses backstage (New Day’s version is above this paragraph, while the Team BAD’s effort is linked here). Could it be any more clear that the six members of New Day and Team BAD genuinely enjoy each other’s company, love their job, and are having a blast? Yet aside from a mention of the petition to save the tables, how much play are any of these interactions getting on WWE television programming?

While certainly not on the level of (temporarily) retaining a social media-focused employee who made racist comments to a contracted on-air talent that led to a physical confrontation and firing of that on-air employee, the WWE’s continued failure to leverage their performers’ social media popularity speaks to the fact that the company is run by people who seemingly do not understand what an effective tool social networks can be. Considering the chairman/CEO/majority owner of WWE is seventy years old, at times seems to stubbornly wait to embrace trends until they have already become passe (“HE’S TWERKIN’, MAGGLE, THE BULL’S TWERKIN’!”), and is probably best characterized by an disdain for, and an utter unwillingness to listen to, the consumers of his product, I suppose that should not be all that surprising. But with what appears to be steadily increasing influence from his thirty-eight-year-old daughter and forty-six-year-old son-in-law, one would think that WWE would be looking to capitalize on talent who are able to promote themselves effectively and engage with their fans on social media.

By this point, I am sure some people have already scrolled to the comments and said they stopped reading because I have not mentioned Zack Ryder. I will absolutely give Zack Ryder credit for getting himself over through social media (including YouTube) in the absence of any real television time or push, and I will also acknowledge that with the benefit of hindsight, it looks like WWE only gave Ryder the push that they did (even winning the United States Championship from Dolph Ziggler in 2011) in order to see him fail. And while Ryder is almost certainly an example of why WWE will likely fail to capitalize on New Day’s social media presence, and he could even be used as a cautionary tale of why talent should not be trying to get themselves over on social networks, there are enough differences between Ryder’s situation and that of the New Day that I still have some hope that things could potentially turn out for the best for the group.

First off, New Day and Team BAD are being pushed by WWE – as I write this, New Day are the tag team champions and Sasha holds non-title wins over the longest reigning Divas Champion of all time in Nikki Bella, so it stands to reason that WWE actually wants them to succeed on some level. When Ryder started his YouTube channel, he was barely on television and had not received anything resembling a true push since a short-lived tag title reign with Curt Hawkins while still part of the La Familia stable. Plus, while Ryder claims that the “Long Island Iced Z” character is just an exaggeration of his own personality, that claim seems dubious as he adopted it concurrently with the rise in popularity of the “guido” culture found on shows like Jersey Shore. While both New Day and Team BAD are likely playing their characters to an extent on social media, it feels significantly less forced than a lot of Ryder’s shows, which gives it more of an authenticity than what Ryder managed. And plus, the antics of New Day/Team BAD (or BAD Day as they sometimes refer to themselves) are not tied to a ridiculous television fad, which means these photos and videos should feel significantly less dated four years from now than Ryder’s early videos do today. And to be clear, I am not taking anything away from Ryder – full credit to him for tapping into something that was popular at the time and turning it into fleeting moments of success for his own career, but there is one much more significant difference between Ryder and BAD Day.

There’s another wrestling site that I visit pretty regularly, and a writer on that site wrote an excellent piece about how Sasha Banks and the New Day are finally giving African-American wrestling fans characters that more accurately represent their community. Not being African-American myself, I can only comment on that as an outside observer, and state that Banks (and, by extension, Team BAD) and the New Day certainly do not feel like the same tire stereotypes that we have become accustomed to from WWE. Sure, the New Day dance, and Sasha’s Boss persona could be construed as stereotypical, but, as I previously mentioned, these actually feel like extensions of the performers’ personalities and not gimmicks foisted on them by a creative team that does not understand them or the cultures they were raised in. That is huge for a company that is often (justifiably) maligned for racist tendencies in their booking and storytelling, and to WWE’s credit, it did not take them overly long to drop the more stereotypical original version of New Day’s gimmick in favor of letting the performers themselves shine.

And while both teams are comprised solely of people of color (something I admittedly jumped the gun and complained about during the first night of the Divas Revolution), their social media offerings belie that notion, as they show six people who clearly enjoy one another’s company. As we have seen repeatedly over the years, the most successful gimmicks in professional wrestling are the ones that are not only an extension of the performers’ true personalities, but also allow the performers to love what they do. And for that reason, I feel like the New Day and Team BAD are going to be exempt from the same kind of punishment/demotion that Zack Ryder experienced after he used social media to get himself over.

Perhaps more importantly, I think both groups, and especially Sasha Banks, will not only survive the WWE’s inability to capitalize on their social media brilliance, but will also manage to thrive in a company that is slowly, slowly making inroads towards modernity. Sure, there’s a possibility that Big E, Kofi, and Xavier Woods will return to the doldrums where they languished prior to forming the New Day, and Sasha could always spend the prime of her career jobbing to less talented but more conventionally attractive* performers, but I think all parties involved are too talented to remain mired in the muck of WWE Creative forever, and when they do finally shake off the constraints of bad booking, it will be a new day indeed.

Wyatt Beougher is a lifelong fan of professional wrestling who has been writing for 411 for over three years and currently hosts MMA Fact or Fiction and reviews Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

*For the record, I think Sasha is easily one of the most attractive Divas in WWE right now; however, she does not fit into the Trish Stratus/Torrie Wilson/Stacy Keibler mold that Vince seems to love. And of course, neither do the Bellas, but like Trish/Torrie/Stacy, they were hired because they were models and not because of their backgrounds in independent wrestling.