TNA News: TNA Talent Told Not To Worry About Television Deal
TNA Wrestling has been going through some issues lately. Spike TV was said to have dropped them, which is terrible news for the company as they need a North American TV deal to keep the doors open. Spike offered them enough money to do this, and the company was not willing to work with Spike on what they wanted, so they ended up parting ways. Due to Spike’s generosity, they allowed TNA to keep Impact Wrestling on Spike TV for the rest of the year. However, come January TNA will need a place to end up.
TNA was able to get on with Discovery’s Velocity Network. This network is available for DirecTV customers from the Choice package and up, but for most others it is considered a premium channel that you’ll need higher package to get. However, it could be like the NFL Network once was where it was on higher packages until the demand was so high, companies allowed it on lower packages.
Not all American cable and satellite companies carry it either. Many Americans didn’t even know there was such a channel, so TNA will have difficulty bringing over their audience from Spike. However, Velocity gets a good deal here. They’d pay TNA far less than Spike and manage to have weekly programming. How can you hate that for a growing network? The issue is that TNA needs good money coming in, so there’s the problem. Most believe TNA has not been profitable for Panda Energy or any other partner in years. It’s no wonder Panda Energy has cut spending a lot.
Despite all the uncertainty, TNA has been telling talent that everything is okay. This has led to some re-signing with the promotion. TNA has been telling talent that they shouldn’t worry, and they have downplayed the idea of anything being wrong regarding a home for TNA in 2015. They feel like downplaying the whole issue might lead to talent not asking too many questions and simply working for the company like normal. This is understandable, but clearly TNA is not out of the woods yet.
The reason for concern is that TNA has not scheduled any new live events. This means that after the current events are up, a lot of talent will be in trouble. Many work on a per-event basis, which means if TNA does not do any live event, those wrestlers cannot get paid, which obviously hurts them in the pocket.
Clearly TNA not doing live events is bad for them as they have an opportunity to make money at each event. They might feel that the travel would be tough if they do not have a guaranteed TV deal in place to account for any potential loss they might have on the road. It is unknown why TNA has not scheduled anything. This would be the first time in a while that TNA has not had a clear set of live events ready to go where talent knew they had work. That would be concerning for sure.
Obviously, TNA will tell their wrestlers to not worry, what else are they going to tell them? That they should freak out and look for work or they will starve once the company goes down? No. They want to tell them everything will be fine. For the most part, this could be true. They do have a TV deal regardless. The issue is, live events are where many get paid. TNA needs that in order to keep talent around. So they have to expect questions from talent for a while.
[IMG Credits: Impactwrestling.com, wrestlingnewsreport.com]
