ITV’s World of Sport Future in Serious Doubt

[E#37]

 

ITV is currently considering several possible backup plans to their World of Sport television show while the future of the show is in serious doubt, according to this week’s Wrestling Observer Newsletter.

 

Dave Meltzer reported the main problem at the moment is ITV and Impact Wrestling still have not reached an agreement on a business partnership which was the reason for the initial delay. While ITV is still interested in doing a wrestling show, they are considering the idea of dropping Impact Wrestling if more of their plans are delayed.

 

Another major issue regarding the future of World of Sport is wrestlers involved with the project are currently very unhappy at the direction things have gone and have blamed Impact Wrestling. Several wrestlers are currently no longer interested in signing exclusive deals with ITV which is needed for World of Sport. With WWE’s recent tour of the United Kingdom, several wrestlers were reported to have contacted the WWE for possible UK deals with them instead.

 

Meltzer stated ITV is currently considering the idea of delaying World of Sport till early 2018 although also could likely drop the project by then. Main issues are ITV might lose all interest in the project by next year and them being worried at the rising costs for World of Sport’s production development.

http://www.tpww.net/2017/05/itvs-world-of-sport-future-in-serious-doubt/

 

 

Regarding the cancellation of the World of Sport tapings, the public story is logistical problems and the idea the tapings were too close to the dates for the Impact tapings in India (which are 5/30 and 6/1) and they are having trouble getting new dates, but that’s a clear cover reason. The key problem is what was reported here last week regarding ITV and Impact not coming to a business agreement over their partnership. ITV wants to do it, and the feeling was that they had the structure to handle a taping for one show, but not a promotion, which is where TNA came aboard since they have experience in running a wrestling business. It’s certainly not dead that they would be able to reach an agreement and do tapings later. It also may not happen. Whether ITV would do it on their own or work with a U.K. promotion is still up in the air. The problem with the U.K. promotions is that all the talent in the U.K., besides those signed with WWE & Anthem are free agents and work everywhere, and ITV would want a crew under contract so WWE couldn’t pick them off. The Mirror reported that the shows won’t be taped until 2018 which will kill the project because I don’t see any top talent not getting signed somewhere before that. A lot of the talent doesn’t think it’s going to happen now since no new dates were announced and just the way it quietly was announced as not happening. One person key in the plans said the story they were told was they were looking at starting in the next year, which sounds a lot less promising than if they said they’d be taping in the next two months. There were several minor things done to sabotage the project but ultimately I think ITV wanted to try wrestling which used to be cheap programming in the old days, but now it’s expensive and you have to sign the talent to deals or you’ll lose them if they are good to one of many different companies, most notably WWE. There are major issues that aren’t settled. ITV supposedly has a backup plan, but working with What Culture is not something that is being considered right now based on what we’re told. A lot of the talent signed by ITV was unhappy when the word was that Impact would be taking over and wanted out, and even more disappointed when these shows were canceled. Some were told that it may not be until next year when the first tapings take place, which is where the starting back in 2018 story came from. There was actually talk among some of the guys of a Radicalz 2000 jump to WWE, which obviously would have loved to have taken the top tier talent from the project, but many of the key contracts with ITV from the first set of tapings were for one year, so they have a long way to go. There was talk of some of them being at the WWE tryouts, but I’m not sure WWE would let guys try out publicly who have existing contracts and we didn’t hear anything about the contracted guys here trying out. Others involved with the project outright told us that given how everything went down this past week, with the cancellation and not even a clue of a new tapings date, or the nebulous early 2018, that they are going with their own mentality of like it’s not happening, and it’s a big disappointment because much of the talent had high hopes for the project

Source: Wrestling Observer Newsletter

[Generations]

Lol...Impact.