WWE's roster had doubled in size, and the company no longer had a major competitor in the professional wrestling industry.
The brand extension was enacted to alleviate the issues of an overcrowded roster and to imitate competition the company no longer had from the former promotions.
The WWF would acquire the majority of assets of WCW, and later Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW) (the third largest promotion in the United States at the time), through separate buyouts that included the employees (on and off-air talent) from both companies.
In order to allow equal opportunity to all wrestlers, the company endorsed a brand extension to have the WWF represented and promoted with two brands, Raw and SmackDown!, named after the promotion's two primary television programs, Raw and SmackDown!, respectively.
(The WWF was unable to find a television time slot for WCW due to its exclusivity deal with Viacom.)
This experiment was first made on July 2, 2001, when the final twenty minutes of Raw was given to WCW programming, in which the Raw crew was largely replaced (with Scott Hudson and Arn Anderson doing commentary, as well as a major stage overhaul) to present a match between Buff Bagwell and Booker T for the WCW World Heavyweight Championship, which Booker T had won on the final Nitro.
On June 13, 2006, after an Extreme Championship Wrestling reunion pay-per-view and video releases, WWE announced an addition to its prime time programming with ECW on Sci-Fi.
[3] The new brand debuted on Sci Fi on June 13, 2006,[3] with its final episode on February 16, 2010, on the rebranded Syfy.
The ECW brand was dissolved and its show was replaced the following week with the reality series, WWE NXT.
[4] On May 25, 2016, it was announced that beginning July 19, SmackDown would broadcast live on Tuesday nights, as opposed to being taped on Tuesdays and airing on Thursdays as it was previously, receiving a unique roster and set of writers compared to Raw, thus restoring the brand extension.
The cruiserweight wrestlers were originally exclusive to Raw but had a supplementary show called 205 Live that premiered that November on the WWE Network.
Additionally, in December 2016, WWE announced that they would be establishing a United Kingdom-based brand that would be produced exclusively in the country.
[11] In September 2022 the brand dropped the 2.0 moniker, reverting to the NXT name, with a revised version of the logo featuring white lettering in the 2.0 font outlined in black and gold.
[17] Starting in late 2006, in an attempt to add more star power to the shows, interbrand matches became more common.
[18] Bobby Lashley was also notable for his interbrand action, as he was involved in a storyline with Donald Trump against WWE Chairman Vince McMahon, which carried over from Raw through WrestleMania 23 to ECW.
[21] Interbrand competition returned with the reestablishment of the brand extension in 2016; the first interbrand match that occurred after the brand extension went into full effect was at SummerSlam on August 21, 2016, where Raw's Brock Lesnar defeated SmackDown's Randy Orton.
[25] The separation of the WWE roster between two brands also intended to split the pay-per-view (also known as premium live event from 2022) offerings, which began with Bad Blood in June 2003.
[26] The original idea had the "major" pay-per-view events at the time (Royal Rumble, SummerSlam, Survivor Series, and WrestleMania) would contain the only instances where wrestlers from different brands would interact with each other, and even among the four shows only the Royal Rumble and WrestleMania would have wrestlers from different brands competing against each other.
With single-brand PPVs in place, WWE was able to add more pay-per-view events to their offerings, such as Taboo Tuesday/Cyber Sunday, New Year's Revolution, December to Dismember, and The Great American Bash.
[27] This also happened in 2018, however, for 2018, WWE announced that following WrestleMania 34, brand-exclusive PPVs would be discontinued, abandoning the single-brand practice for a second time.
general manager Stephanie McMahon announced that Undisputed Champion Brock Lesnar signed a deal to exclusively appear on SmackDown!, Raw general manager Eric Bischoff introduced the World Heavyweight Championship for Raw.
[41] After John Morrison and The Miz of ECW became World Tag Team Champions, they appeared more frequently on the Raw brand, moving to a feud with reigning WWE Tag Team Champions of SmackDown, brothers Carlito and Primo Colon.
Carlito and Primo would go on to win the contest, forming the Unified WWE Tag Team Championship.
[49] This distribution of championships remained unchanged at the Battleground pay-per-view, which took place the Sunday immediately following the draft.
[54] Beginning November 29, 2016, in addition to Raw, the Cruiserweight Championship was defended on the cruiserweight-exclusive show, 205 Live.
[55][56] The WWE United Kingdom Championship was unveiled in December 2016 with its inaugural holder determined in January 2017.
In early 2019, the WWE Women's Tag Team Championship was established to be shared between Raw, SmackDown, and NXT.
[62] In June 2023, Reigns received a new belt design that represent the Undisputed WWE Universal Championship, he would then finally drop the title to Cody Rhodes at Night 2 of WrestleMania XL on April 7, 2024.
In the 1990s, then-President of World Championship Wrestling (WCW) Eric Bischoff proposed a brand extension between WCW and the popular New World Order (nWo) stable, which would have seen the group expand in scope and the production of nWo-branded programming; this concept was scrapped due to budgetary concerns.
[70][71][72] In 2023, AEW launched a soft brand extension between its Dynamite and Collision programs, which saw select wrestlers featured exclusively on one of the two shows for a select period of time; this was mostly abolished after CM Punk (who was almost exclusively featured on Collision) was fired for his legitimate backstage incident with Jack Perry at that year's All In event.