2011 WWE draft
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; the ECW brand was additionally involved between 2006 and 2009. Annual drafts have followed since this occurrence, except for in 2003. As with past drafts, the purpose of the 2011 WWE draft was to increase television ratings of WWE programming and refresh the rosters for each brand. The 2011 event was confirmed by the RBC Center in April 2011, with WWE officially announcing it on the April 18 episode 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.
WWE Tag Team Championship
In 2001, the WWF bought rival company WCW, acquiring the WCW World Tag Team Championship, among other titles, which was defended on WWF programming until that year's Survivor Series, where the WCW World Tag Team Championship was unified into the WWF World Tag Team Championship.
After WWF's initial brand extension in the spring of 2002 and the renaming of the company as World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), the tag titles became the WWE Tag Team Championship and champions Billy and Chuck were drafted to the SmackDown brand. That following summer, however, The Un-Americans (Christian and Lance Storm) defeated Billy and Chuck for the titles, moving the championship to the Raw brand where it was renamed World Tag Team Championship, effectively leaving the SmackDown brand without a tag team title. As a result, then-SmackDown General Manager Stephanie McMahon introduced a new WWE Tag Team Championship and commissioned it to be the tag team title for the SmackDown brand.
Both titles were unified in 2009 and were collectively referred to as the "Unified WWE Tag Team Championship" while officially remaining independently active until the World Tag Team Championship was formally decommissioned in 2010, leaving the newer title as WWE's only tag team championship. As a result of the 2016 draft, the championship became exclusive to Raw and was renamed the Raw Tag Team Championship, and SmackDown created the SmackDown Tag Team Championship as a counterpart title. In addition, WWE's developmental brand NXT established its own Tag Team Championship in January 2013. The new NXT UK brand debuted its own Tag Team Championship in January 2019. The Raw, SmackDown, NXT, and NXT UK tag team titles are WWE's four currently active tag team championships for its male performers.