Impact is Officially a Canadian Company; Will Produce Shows Across Canada

[It's Damn Real!]

@RevampedWrestle: Jeremy Borash just announced that IMPACT WRESTLING is now a Canadian based company and they will be producing more shows in Canada 🍁 #IMPACTonPOP

You can also watch the video of this announcement here: https://twitter.com/RevampedWrestle...fficially-announces-it-is-now-based-in-canada

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This should come as a shock to no one, unless you've been utterly ignorant to the company since Anthem purchased them. This has been a widely speculated announcement for months, given Anthem is based in Toronto.

Of course, there are both pros and cons to this. While leaving Orlando is in and of itself a good thing, it's not without it's downside, given the constant ability to fill their audience with park-goers at Universal Studios who had already paid for entrance to the park. With the company now moving to Canada, they'll actually have to work to earn their live audience, which didn't go over so smoothly for the post-BFG tapings in Ottawa. But this is a great first step toward truly healing/reinventing the incredibly damaged brand.

 

[Starkist]

Hopefully they stick with one name too. Too many name changes and now since they left Orlando, it hopefully wont have that amusement park feel to it.

 

[Psykohurricane55]

The big problem with this is that now, they will have to get more Canadian wrestlers because it's going to be harder for American performer or pretty much anybody foreign to come in and work full time for the company since we have stricter boarder laws then in the U.S.

Also while they might get a tax break for doing their tapings in canada, it's not like they have made money off this week's taping. Sure the PPV was sold out but the rest of the tapings we're pretty much free tickets with a really small percentage of fans actually paying to get in. So if this continue to be the trend, they might go bankrupt pretty quickly and this might affect even more their others venture like The Fight Network and game TV.

In the end, i wish them all the best because they still have a couple of great talent on the roster and i don't want them to lose their job over this risk that they are taking right now but in this rate with what they are doing right now, i feel that this might be their last chance to be relevant. It's do or die for IMPACT right now, if they don't succeed their done.

 

[It's Damn Real!]

Indeed, but one would hope that they recognized that the first attempt at establishing a new home away from Orlando wouldn't be a grand slam — that there were bound to be growing pains.

The real key here will be the second and/or third tapings. If by that point they are still struggling to fill their audience with paid attendance, Anthem would likely have all the evidence they need to pull the plug.

 

[johnbragg]

Just want to point out that this might be complete BS.

The video clip doesn't say what the tweet says it says.

Borash says "This may have been our first Impact in Ottawa, but I can tell you it's not going to be our last Impact in Ottawa."

So, on the one hand, let's tap the brakes.

On the other hand, we could speculate wildly. LEt's do that. Anthem HQ is in Toronto. Canada has historically been a big market for pro wrestling--ask the HArts and Jack Tunney. Apparently tax breaks for "Canadian content" are a thing.

Getting out of Universal Studios has a lot to recommend it. On the other hand, this week we saw the challenges of taping marathons anywhere else--paying fans is pretty embarrassing, and I don't know if that's sustainable.

So they gotta go somewhere, might as well be Canada.

 

[klunderbunker]

The crowds are going to be a major, major issue. You're simply not going to get large crowds to show up for long form TV tapings to what is a glorified indy company. WWE can barely do it two nights a week and you're asking TNA to do it five nights a week? That's unrealistic at best.

The other problem is you can only write off the small crowds for so long anymore. When you had 500 or however many people showing up in Orlando, at least they might buy something while they're there, which might have at least given TNA a few dollars. Now though, if they're only drawing in 100-150 or so to these tapings, how much money can they be bringing in? Back in Orlando you could at least point to the amount of people, but now it's "well we had 103 paying fans". That's not something you can really spin in a positive way, especially if you're paying actors to fill in more of the seats.

I get why they left Orlando, but this company really hasn't shown the ability to draw paying fans anywhere (outside of the UK that is) and I'm not sure I see that changing anytime soon.

 

[johnbragg]

Also while they might get a tax break for doing their tapings in canada, it's not like they have made money off this week's taping. Sure the PPV was sold out but the rest of the tapings we're pretty much free tickets with a really small percentage of fans actually paying to get in. So if this continue to be the trend, they might go bankrupt pretty quickly and this might affect even more their others venture like The Fight Network and game TV.

The Indian TV deal with SonySix should be enough to keep the company in existence, if the media reports are accurate.

I have no idea how credible the India Times is or how susceptible they are to being "worked" by shady carnies like pro wrestling promoters. It's possible that the "$60 million" doesn't really turn out to be nearly that much in actual cash money paid to TNA. It could include the dollar (or rupee) value of ads for TNA/Impact on Sony Six and related channels, it definitely includes Sony Six's part of the costs of touring and taping in India once a year. It could also be heavily back-loaded, with a big chunk of the money only payable under unlikely circumstances.

I learned from something looking at the death of WCW that the $80-100M Fusient deal was mostly smoke and mirrors--money only payable to Time Warner if WCW increased in value to be comparable to WWF, dollar values placed on TNT/TBS ad space for other programming. Also Fusient assuming various debts connected to WCW.

 

[Psykohurricane55]

The Indian TV deal with SonySix should be enough to keep the company in existence, if the media reports are accurate.

I have no idea how credible the India Times is or how susceptible they are to being "worked" by shady carnies like pro wrestling promoters. It's possible that the "$60 million" doesn't really turn out to be nearly that much in actual cash money paid to TNA. It could include the dollar (or rupee) value of ads for TNA/Impact on Sony Six and related channels, it definitely includes Sony Six's part of the costs of touring and taping in India once a year. It could also be heavily back-loaded, with a big chunk of the money only payable under unlikely circumstances.

I learned from something looking at the death of WCW that the $80-100M Fusient deal was mostly smoke and mirrors--money only payable to Time Warner if WCW increased in value to be comparable to WWF, dollar values placed on TNT/TBS ad space for other programming. Also Fusient assuming various debts connected to WCW.

But you look at where anthem as a company is right now, they had to do cut back at the fight network just so they could pay for this week's tv tapings. The fact they cancelled Live audio wrestling and fired everybody that was involved in the show is a sign that anthem is in major financial problems right now. I'm not saying that this will be a failure but right now they need some sort of profit to turn up those tours quickly because they are out of money and it's affecting other property of anthem. They might had the some sort of deal with India, but that money is long gone right now and they can't continue doing 100 paying guest per tapings.

 

[johnbragg]

But you look at where anthem as a company is right now, they had to do cut back at the fight network just so they could pay for this week's tv tapings. The fact they cancelled Live audio wrestling and fired everybody that was involved in the show is a sign that anthem is in major financial problems right now. I'm not saying that this will be a failure but right now they need some sort of profit to turn up those tours quickly because they are out of money and it's affecting other property of anthem. They might had the some sort of deal with India, but that money is long gone right now and they can't continue doing 100 paying guest per tapings.

Lost my last post, but the point is it's not that much money. Say they have to pay 100 fans for half their shows. They need 26 shows to tape Impact and Xplosion every week, plus 12 more for the PPVs. That's 38, half of that is 19. 19 * 100 * 75 = $142,500. They should be able to cover that.

You're right about LAW, and the other pre-fight shows that got killed--that's really concerning. We don't know how much money it takes to run TNA/Impact. But they needed $1.8M from Corgan to tape in June and August, basically 4 months of TV. So around $5-6M to run Impact for a year. IF the India deal is $7.5M per year, then that should be enough to run Impact. Since Impact is draining money from Anthem, I suspect the India deal is a lot less than $7.5M. Maybe it's structured to pay a lot of the money at the end of the deal if certain things happen. Maybe a big chunk of the deal is running ads for TNA/Impact on SonySix and related channels.

So it's hard to see how Impact makes any real money.

 

[yur_momma]

this is just sad. just when you think tna is no longer able to ruin your wrestling fun, this happens. 18 years ive listened to them just to see it all end because of a shit wanna-be wrestling company that doesnt know it died 5 years ago (or more). so now fuck anthem and everything they do going forward. cant support a company who dumps everything so they can keep playing a vince mcmahon role playing game to feed their ego. they literally cut off their arms and legs with all the releases they made at fight network so they can keep playing with a deflated ball. makes no sense.

 

[mral82]

In the Short Term it's going thru Growing Pains as PPL Forget that Anthem had to pay off Billy Corgan and whatever else TNA was in Debt for. Yeah PPL lost their Jobs as in you go back during the Wars of WWF and WCW the WWF had to Release a Big Chuck of Talent in Shot Term Game but them like 20 guys went to WCW or ECW as Filler PPL. So Hopefully Impact! will be alright as you also do know that TNA was paying to be at Universal Studios in Florida where all they made was off Merchandise and not Ticket Sales unless they did like Special Meet and Great Packages so In reality they lost alot of money. So yeah Anthem moved the Promotion to it's home base just like Sinclair did w/ ROH by only Airing their Weekly Shows on their Affliates. As also the WWE has also given away Free Tickets or Dropped Some Seats for as low as around $15-20 as in the Cheap Seats. So if Anthem did that like Charged like $15 for the Cheap Seats and ranging up to $50 for like Ringside they'd be fine. As now they can make money off Seats and not lose as the WWE Moves PPL for the Hard Camera Side if not enough show up and move them to the TV Side so it looks like it's fuller on TV but in reality they lost a lil bit of money or whatevs from Tix Sales so all I CAN SAY IT TAKES TO SPEND MONEY TO MAKE MONEY. Heck even NJPW does the Free Tix Thing by the looks of the Crowds.

 

[johnbragg]

In the Short Term it's going thru Growing Pains as PPL Forget that Anthem had to pay off Billy Corgan and whatever else TNA was in Debt for.

Yes. They pretty much bought the company by assuming TNA's and Dixie's TNA-related debts.

So Hopefully Impact! will be alright as you also do know that TNA was paying to be at Universal Studios in Florida where all they made was off Merchandise and not Ticket Sales unless they did like Special Meet and Great Packages so In reality they lost alot of money.

This is a point we forget--TNA had to pay Universal to rent the Impact Zone(s). When they moved from Nashville, they leased the building full-time. They left the original Impact Zone, and when they came back I don't know if they rented it full-time or just booked it for their tapings. But you're right, that's a cost they don't have to pay anymore.

Is renting a bingo hall and paying fans to fill it cheaper than renting the Impact Zone? I dunno.

So yeah Anthem moved the Promotion to it's home base just like Sinclair did w/ ROH by only Airing their Weekly Shows on their Affliates. As also the WWE has also given away Free Tickets or Dropped Some Seats for as low as around $15-20 as in the Cheap Seats.

Cheap seats, or even free tickets, is not the same as paying "fans".

So if Anthem did that like Charged like $15 for the Cheap Seats and ranging up to $50 for like Ringside they'd be fine.

The problem is, TNA/Impact/GFW/Impact have historically had trouble getting any meaningful number of fans to pay $15 for a ticket.

As now they can make money off Seats and not lose as the WWE Moves PPL for the Hard Camera Side if not enough show up and move them to the TV Side so it looks like it's fuller on TV but in reality they lost a lil bit of money or whatevs from Tix Sales so all I CAN SAY IT TAKES TO SPEND MONEY TO MAKE MONEY. Heck even NJPW does the Free Tix Thing by the looks of the Crowds.

"It takes money to make money" is true. It's also the slogan of every outfit that has gone belly-up when they run out of money before they start making money.

 

[yur_momma]

kind of on topic: just watched the new episode of joe rogan experience and billy corgan is the guest. the first ten minutes or so is the billy/tna discussion and his purchasing of nwa....interesting to hear.

[YOUTUBE]sb-mU6wgeF8[/YOUTUBE]

 

[A11oftheLights]

If they are paying people to fill out seats wont that stop others from buying tickets? I'm not buying a ticket when i could have got a free one had I waited. TNA are going to be in a standoff with fans and its gonna be a who blinks first kinda deal

 

[Navi]

Seriously I don't even know where they will be able to hold the shows here. The Air Canada Centre is out of the question, it's the home of the Maple Leafs and Raptors. The Ricoh is the home of the Toronto Marlies and forget the Rogers Centre.

Plus all of these places would be hugely expensive and I'm not sure that they could even afford to pay the fees. The only place I can think of is the Mattamy Athletic Centre, the third floor of the old Maple Leaf Gardens. It can hold about 1,600 people, but I'm not sure that TNA could even get that many people out.

They would have to heavily advertise the shows and make the tickets prices very attractive. Considering the dismal job they did of advertising their last PPV in Ottawa, I'm not sure this venture will work.

 

[ShinChan]

I would love this company to tape shows in Toronto. Or any other Canadian city which has plenty of wrestling fans. Ottawa just didn't work well enough for the regular tapings. The PPV was surely sold out but there are only 2 PPVs in a year. So, they will be sold out or rather should sell out easily.

Doing some less taping would be better as well. I know that it would take some more money but how about keep the tapings only for weekend? People are more bound to come on weekends than week days.

 

[johnbragg]

If they are paying people to fill out seats wont that stop others from buying tickets? I'm not buying a ticket when i could have got a free one had I waited. TNA are going to be in a standoff with fans and its gonna be a who blinks first kinda deal

Well, since their current demand for tickets is close to zero, reducing demand for tickets isn't a problem.

Seriously I don't even know where they will be able to hold the shows here.

I munched the "in Toronto" part, sorry. ROH runs shows every year or so in the Ted Reeve Arena, has claimed sellouts with 1500 tickets.

 

[Navi]

I munched the "in Toronto" part, sorry. ROH runs shows every year or so in the Ted Reeve Arena, has claimed sellouts with 1500 tickets.

Yea but ROH does advertise their shows pretty well. Plus they only come once a year or so and put on a damm good show. Most of my friends who have left the WWE behind have gone to ROH instead of TNA. I just don't think TNA or Impact whatever you want to call them, can do as well as ROH does. ROH has bigger names on their roster and they put on better matches.

Four of my friends and co workers who went to the last ROH show not long ago, did tell me it was sold out or very close too.

 

[johnbragg]

Yea but ROH does advertise their shows pretty well. Plus they only come once a year or so and put on a damm good show. Most of my friends who have left the WWE behind have gone to ROH instead of TNA. I just don't think TNA or Impact whatever you want to call them, can do as well as ROH does.

Probably not. BUt you said, where would they hold the shows, and you were thinking of NBA/NHL level venues, or the former Skydome, or the outdated coliseum where the AHL team plays. I remembered that ROH did shows in Toronto (I was pretty sure anyway), so I looked up where.

Anthem should be looking at 1000, 1500 seat venues to tape in. They still won't fill them easily, but it's a lot easier to get a 1000 seat theater half-filled than a 10,000 seat arena. (Also a lot easier to fill or half-fill it for two or three days of tapings in a row than six days in a row.)

 

[Lowdown]

Here we go again with this saga. Some solid points have been made about this, more so negative than positive. For starters, the crowd issue. It will no doubt be a difficult task if indeed they want to do tapings over a five day period (correct me if I got this wrong). Secondly, the issue with some of the talent having difficulty going back and forth into Canada. Now I'm sure there are plenty of up and coming talent in Canada that could be called upon in a pinch, but the key is a big name. Right now, who the biggest Canadian talent they have aside from Petey Williams? It seems that Anthem is swinging for the fences with Impact, and I don't know what could be done if this effort falls through.

 

[Westy1724]

Hopefully they stick with one name too. Too many name changes and now since they left Orlando, it hopefully wont have that amusement park feel to it.

Don't be surprised if they just moved it to Canada's Wonderland in the North Part of Toronto, in all honesty I could see them doing that.

 

[Psykohurricane55]

Don't be surprised if they just moved it to Canada's Wonderland in the North Part of Toronto, in all honesty I could see them doing that.

The funny thing is, at the rate they are going, i wouldn't be even surprise if they do that for real during the summer. I just finish watching Slammiversary from this past summer and the one thing that hit me as how a company that was able to produce that slammiversary PPV could lose so much momemtum and talent in such a short time. I Look at Slammiversary and i saw stories that were entertaining, Talents that felt like a big deal and a all around well booked show and then i move to the Bound for glory PPV which felt like an glorified indy show with talents that felt all like low mid carders or just plain mid carders. Stories that made no senses, repetition with the ending of the matches and just a plain boring wrestling show.

The IMPACT TV show isn't better, they're so busy making sure that the guys from other promotions and that won't stay pass a certain amount of date get over while the remaining talent that are staying with the company are either release because they can't stay with the company because they are a Canadian company now and will barely put on shows in the u.s. or just get forgotten all together. I can't watch the show anymore because off how boring the show as become. Sadly, they really need to bring in talents that feel like big deals if they want to survive. another thing i would love them to do is either bring in more tag teams or just scrap the entire tag team division all together. I love LAX, they're one of the rare act that i actually love in the company, the Problem is they only have OvE to feud with and these guy are boring to watch and this feud as lasted so long that i feel like it's time to move on and bring more tag teams in the division already.

In the end, i don'T know if Anthem is waiting to hit rock bottom before actually finding a way to make the company feel important, but for now, they make Dixie Carter look like a competent owner compare to how they are doing things now. I hope for their sake that they can turn around the product because that'S what'S hurting the most right now but let'S face it as much as i don'T want to see wrestlers lose their job, for most of the roster, it's won't be as big of a deal if the company closes or not and for the few that actually feel like big stars like Rosemary and Allie, i feel like NXT would pick them up in a heartbeat if IMPACT would close tomorrow.

 

[It's Damn Real!]

Seriously I don't even know where they will be able to hold the shows here. The Air Canada Centre is out of the question, it's the home of the Maple Leafs and Raptors. The Ricoh is the home of the Toronto Marlies and forget the Rogers Centre.

Plus all of these places would be hugely expensive and I'm not sure that they could even afford to pay the fees. The only place I can think of is the Mattamy Athletic Centre, the third floor of the old Maple Leaf Gardens. It can hold about 1,600 people, but I'm not sure that TNA could even get that many people out.

They would have to heavily advertise the shows and make the tickets prices very attractive. Considering the dismal job they did of advertising their last PPV in Ottawa, I'm not sure this venture will work.

ROH ran a PPV out of there in like 2012 or 2013. I forget which.

I wonder what kind of attendance they were able to bring in? Might help to gauge how well (or how poorly) Impact might do trying to do the same.

 

[Psykohurricane55]

Seriously I don't even know where they will be able to hold the shows here. The Air Canada Centre is out of the question, it's the home of the Maple Leafs and Raptors. The Ricoh is the home of the Toronto Marlies and forget the Rogers Centre.

Plus all of these places would be hugely expensive and I'm not sure that they could even afford to pay the fees. The only place I can think of is the Mattamy Athletic Centre, the third floor of the old Maple Leaf Gardens. It can hold about 1,600 people, but I'm not sure that TNA could even get that many people out.

They would have to heavily advertise the shows and make the tickets prices very attractive. Considering the dismal job they did of advertising their last PPV in Ottawa, I'm not sure this venture will work.

Tickets Prices won't really be a factor if i base myself on how cheap the prices for the PPV and Tapings were in Ottawa, the problem is finding a small venue that won't cost them a arm and a legs to host those tapings. It's pretty much the same problem they will have anywhere in canada not just Toronto or Montreal which doesn't have a lot of small venue to rent either.

As far as marketing goes, i feel they could do more then hoping that everybody watch IMPACT on either Fight network or Game TV in canada or follow them on social media because right now, it's the only way they use to advertise those shows which i feel isn't enough to get fans to pay to see their shows. They really need to get themselves out there and send some of their guys to do t.v and radio interviews to plug the shows even if it's a student radio show like the one we got in here in montreal on CJLO. They had a great way to plug the show when the LAW was still on the air but they pretty much cancelled the whole show when they fired everybody that worked on the show.

In the end, They really need to get themselves out there and to plug away outside of their confort zone, that'S what i was talking about when Dixie owns the company and i'm saying that with Anthem as well. If they stick to only promoting they're show on their networks during the tv shows, they will continue with that trend of not attracting people to their tapings.

 

[Starkist]

Don't be surprised if they just moved it to Canada's Wonderland in the North Part of Toronto, in all honesty I could see them doing that.

That would be terrible but i do not know Anthems business model if they even have one that is. I hope not as they should try to fill venues not be in an amusement park setting.