WWE Executive Vice President of Talent and Live Events Triple H recently spoke with The Miami Herald about the NXT tapings at Full Sail University in Florida. Here are some highlights:
Why they chose FSU for NXT: “We did some events here. We turned them into TV. We got the idea to do the show here. The show took off. We didn’t want to have no value for tickets, so we started charging a little for tickets. Then it was like, ‘You know what. Let’s take that money and give it back to the school. Let’s make a scholarship fund and give it to the students.’”
“We have our developmental as it exists now in Tampa, and the television experience there was very small. It just aired in Central Florida. I wanted to bring it into that facility [Full Sail Live] with the ability for [WWE NXT superstars and divas] to learn how to do WWE television — even if it’s on a smaller level but on the same professional platform. When I saw this facility, my visionary, Spidey senses went off, and I said, ‘This is exactly what I was looking for.’ We started to explore it further and brought some execs in to look at it and started to think about it some more and started to hash out this idea about potentially putting on a show here, and we did. We put on a show.”
“Then I started to think, I can take NXT off the road and turn that into developmental because that show wasn’t doing anything, but it was sold internationally. It can open up some time for us on the road to shoot a different show; same point and time I can shoot a really good quality show out of here and take these kids, instead of then learning out of a two-camera warehouse shoot that went no where, I can teach them on a four or five or six camera shoot with real live TV production on a smaller but same platform WWE does everywhere.”
Working with FSU students: “We have our exec team coming down here and lecturing their students quarterly. Our marketing people come down to talk about marketing. Our digital people come down and discuss digital strategies and social media initiatives. We give them real world corporate vision and experience they can’t get anywhere else. It’s a really great working opportunity, and this place is like a huge think tank for WWE in a way. So it’s a win-win for everybody.”
NXT possibly airing domestically and FSU working with the WWE Network? “Certainly. When I say we’re scratching the surface, there’s a lot of things potentially. Could we do other shows here? ‘Yeah, they have studio facilities all over this campus. They’ve got green screen facilities. Right now we’re working with them at Full Sail Live, producing a show out of here that goes internationally — hopefully soon domestically; that’s a spoiler — but there are so many other things that we can very easily begin to do out of Full Sail that synergistically works for us and works for them.”
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