WWE is back to classifying the Black-And-Gold Brand as developmental.
As pointed out by Lavie Margolin on Twitter, according to their quarter report with the SEC, WWE has once again labeled NXT as “developmental”.
In page 33 of the report, under “Operating Metrics”, item #3 states:
“Metrics exclude the events for our domestic and United Kingdom NXT brands. These are our developmental brands that typically conduct their events in smaller venues with lower ticket prices. We did not conduct any ticketed NXT events in the periods presented.”
This recent classification as a “developmental” territory is contradictory to recent statements made by WWE executives and Superstars that concluded NXT was considered a third brand.
Earlier this year, Triple H stated that Finn Balor’s return cemented NXT as WWE’s third brand.
Two years ago, Adam Cole was quoted saying in an interview with Newsweek, “We’ve called it this for a while, but we look at NXT as the third brand,” when asked about whether the show’s move to USA qualified it as so.
With live events back in play due to looser COVID restrictions, it will be interesting to see if WWE still keeps NXT in developmental classification.