This week the Impact Twitter account boasted several accomplishments; the highest TV ratings in a row boosted Youtube views and GWN-app interest. This is all well and good and it really seems as if Impact is riding high, but can they truly breakthrough without being on a different network?
When TNA was ousted from Spike it was the beginning of a downward spiral, a tailspin they could not get out of and in many ways are still reeling from. After some time in limbo, they moved to Destination America of the Discovery family and touted big things. This did not last though because as we all know Dixie Carter forgot how to email and revealed her true feelings and that was the end of that saga.
Pop TV has been good to Impact. They have not provided the extra shows Destination America did, and TNA did not deliver on. They have room in their listing to extend episodes to seem more like pay-per-views, but they don’t and Impact is tied up when it comes to certain aspects of wrestling that they are not allowed to do. In the end, it doesn’t matter how good Pop is to Impact, the fact of the matter is that most people in the US don’t have access to the channel.
The question is if there is a change of TV deal in the future of the company. Even if wrestling might be hot at the moment, it does not have much of a presence on TV. The WWE dominates the airwaves, not so closely followed by ROH and NJPW and of course Impact. There seems to be little interest from networks to pick up wrestling, for various undisclosed reasons. TV is the way for a promotion to pick up some real revenue, without a good TV deal they lose out on ad money and such. With WWE may be moving to another station there may well be an opening for a company to sneak in. The question is if a company wants to replace WWE programming with another wrestling show? It does not seem likely.
The WWE formula with its network has spawned similar ones from other promotions; New Japan World, Chikaratopia, Global Wrestling Network, DDT Live and soon Dragongate is launching their streaming service. Even though they are by far the most successful WWE has not been able to push the subscriptions numbers to any great heights, well at least not surpassing the viewership from television. This indicates that TV is more important to most and no matter what content the fed puts out and no matter how cheap it is they can not entice people to subscribe. Impact is a different situation. Since most people in the US don’t have Pop and a lot of the reason for the loss of viewers is caused by this the company has a great opportunity to increase the number of those who see the product.
While this will not increase the number of those who watch it live on a Thursday night, because they do not have the ability, they still miss out on revenue. The increase in Twitch viewers, those who download GWN or buy pay-per-views on Fite may get more butts in seats at shows it will marginally affect the ratings.
So the truth of the matter is that one can not run a wrestling company and take it to the next level if television is not in the picture.
-C. Marry Hultman
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