Ed Nordholm, Vice President of Anthem Sports and Entertainment, appeared on Friday’s Wrestling Observer Radio and took questions from Dave Meltzer and Bryan Alvarez.
Nordholm pushed back against the rumors claiming that Anthem is ready to sell the company and said that they have long-term goals to make the company profitable. He said, “We’re invested in this company. We’re growing it. We know it’s not going to turn around tomorrow.”
Nordolm gave deatils on the Global Wrestling Network streaming service. In some ways it is similar to the WWE Network with archived content but there are plans to work out deals to get other promotions on the service. “It’s not branded an Impact app. We want it to be a generic place for AAA, NOAH, if we can persuade New Japan or anybody. We’ll have a plan, an efficient place for an aggregation of wrestling content that isn’t related to WWE,” Nordholm said. I am skeptical that they can get a company like New Japan Pro Wrestling to agree since they already have their own NJPW World streaming service. Also, there has been talk since last year about WWE adding other promotions to their service so it could be an uphill climb for GFW if WWE is offering more money and more exposure.
Nordholm said that approximately 850-900 hours of their 3,000 hours of archived content will be on a paid $7.99/month tier and the free version of their service will air Impact Wrestling 10 days after it airs on Pop TV. Most of their content will be on the paid tier because the feeling is that it’s tougher to monetize free ad-based content. They are branding the service as the alternative streaming service instead of a GFW app.
In regards to reports of a potential sale to WWE, Nordholm said that it makes no sense to him to do that because they would rather monetize their library themselves within their own app. The app will be available sometime next week on iOS and Android devices and they will work on getting it up on other platforms such as Chromecast, Roku, Apple TV and smart TV’s in the future.
Here are some more trending WWE news stories from the past week:
- Former WWE Star Pregnant With Quadruplets
- Identity of Dolph Ziggler’s mystery valet on SmackDown Live
- WWE’s intention with John Cena vs Roman Reigns at No Mercy
- WWE has signed another former ROH star
- Young Bucks issued a “cease and desist” from WWE
