World Wrestling Entertainment (doing business as WWE), formerly the World Wrestling Federation (WWF; 1979–2002), promoted its core business of professional wrestling through two "brands" (that were intended to operate on television as scripted independent branches of the company) named after their two major television shows Raw and SmackDown. Upon the completion of the Monday Night Wars in 2001, a rivalry between promotions: World Championship Wrestling (WCW) and the WWF, the latter company emerged victorious. This eventually led to the WWF acquiring all assets of WCW and Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW; the third largest promotion in the United States during this point in time) through separate buyouts that included the employees (on and off-air talent) from both companies (until the emergence of Total Nonstop Action Wrestling and Ring of Honor in 2002). With the acquisition of new talent, the WWF's already large roster was doubled in size. In order to allow equal opportunity to all roster members, the company endorsed a brand extension to have the WWF represented and promoted with two "brands" named after the promotion's two primary television programs: Raw and SmackDown.
The extension officially started on March 25, 2002 with a draft on Raw. On June 13, 2006, after several reunions and video releases, WWE announced an addition to its prime time programming with ECW on Sci-Fi. The new ECW served as a third brand, and a revival of the original ECW promotion. Both instances of the brand extensions required that representatives of each brand draft "superstars" (terminology used by the company to refer to its contracted personnel) onto each brand in a draft lottery.
On the August 29, 2011 episode of Raw, the day before a planned SmackDown "supershow" featuring both brands, WWE chief operating officer Triple H announced that Raw would also feature SmackDown stars on a full-time basis. A similar announcement regarding Raw wrestlers on SmackDown was made later that week. Since the establishment of the "supershow" format, all televised events and (eventually) all house show cards have featured the entire WWE roster, thus effectively dissolving the brand extension. As a result, the yearly draft (which has taken place since 2004) was also unofficially discontinued. WWE later justified their decision to end the brand split because they wanted their content to flow across TV and online platforms,
Famous quotes containing the words brand and/or extension:
““Why does your brand so drop with blood,
Edward, Edward?”
—Unknown. Edward (l. 1–2)
“We know then the existence and nature of the finite, because we also are finite and have extension. We know the existence of the infinite and are ignorant of its nature, because it has extension like us, but not limits like us. But we know neither the existence nor the nature of God, because he has neither extension nor limits.”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)