2011 WWE Draft Lottery

The 2011 WWE Draft will be the ninth annual draft held by WWE, scheduled to take place on April 25. With a core business of professional wrestling, the corporation holds a draft to exchange personnel assigned to one of its two television programs (Raw and SmackDown) that are (in terms of storyline) independent brands that represent WWE. The Draft will air live on the USA Network on Raw for two hours in Raleigh, North Carolina from the RBC Center. As a standard for previous drafts, most on–air personnel will be eligible to be drafted.

Background
The Brand Extension storyline was initiated in March 2002, in which WWE's Raw and SmackDown! television programs were made into brands (similar to conferences within a league) to which employees were assigned to; the ECW brand additionally involved between 2006 and 2009. Since its inception, annual drafts have followed, except for in 2003. As in previous drafts that followed the Brand Extension, the purpose of the 2011 WWE Draft will be to increase television ratings of WWE programming and refresh the rosters with new storylines for each brand. The 2011 incentive was confirmed by the RBC Center in April 2011, with WWE officially announcing it on the April 18th edition of Raw. A USA Network executive had also confirmed the event to occur via a press release on the same day of the WWE announcement.