It's Thursday. You know what that means.
Tonight, TNA Impact, amidst much fanfare, moves from AXS TV to AMC as its American linear TV outlet, with a simulcast streaming on the AMC+ subscription service. It's a massive move for TNA, marking its strongest TV deal in terms of available homes since leaving Pop TV at the start of 2019 and the best one in terms of stature as far as being on a major cable network since being canceled by Spike TV (now Paramount Network) in 2014.
At first glance, the future seems pretty bright: A formal working agreement with WWE, arguably augmented by the return of the underrated house show draws that are Matt and Jeff Hardy, has driven a surge in live event business, so throwing in a new TV deal on a legitimate top cable network feels like exactly what TNA needs to get to the next level.
In practice, though? Barring sustained high levels of viewership beyond anyone's wildest predictions, all signs point to the nuts and bolts of the AMC deal being such that it might not be nearly as good a deal as it seems from afar. For starters, despite being surprisingly open with Sports Illustrated's Jon Alba last July about what TNA was hoping to get in terms of a rights fee from a new TV partner ($7 million to $10 million annually), no dollar figure has been announced or even reported for the AMC deal. The fact that nobody, not even reporters that TNA is prone to use as their pet media, has reported a dollar figure seems pretty grim just on its own, as the hoped-for $10 million wouldn't exactly have been game-changing in a world where AEW is getting a reported $185 million.
And then various talent's contracts started expiring. TNA often signs wrestlers to contracts that are due at the end of the calendar year, similar to how Japanese countries structure talent contracts, so a lot of deals were up at the same time.
Then, in the week leading up to the AMC debut, TNA lost nearly a half dozen wrestlers in the form of Jake Something and all four of the Rascalz signing with AEW. All five men had been in AMC promotional materials, and more conspicuously, Myron Reed of the Rascalz had been advertised for the premiere in an X Division Championship shot at Leon Slater. TNA stopped promoting the match several days before the premiere without formally canceling it publicly, This despite Fightful reporting that Reed was willing to formally finish up his scheduled TNA bookings, although the primary reason is more likely WWE wanting Slater on this week's UK house show tour dates.
This raises a bunch of questions. Why was anyone not under contract in AMC promotional materials? Why was someone not under contract booked in one of the few matches advertised for the AMC premiere? What does all of this say about TNA's finances and ability to retain talent? Why, especially when we know TNA signed some wrestlers to short term extensions, were Jake Something (now going by his real name, Jake Doyle, in AEW) and the Rascalz not signed to such extensions, at least to formally write them out? Why go out of your way to look bush league and reignite the "lol TNA" dialogue days before what's arguably the biggest milestone in the decade that Anthem Sports has owned the company?
There are other questions that this raises more broadly. Does the lack of messaging about the finances of the AMC deal and the difficulty retaining talent indicate that the finances of the deal are on the more bleak side, like a straight-up ad revenue split with no other consideration included?
What about the fact that, despite landing a major cable deal, Impact will still be simulcast for subscribers to TNA's own TNA+ streaming service? Would AMC really allow that if they were actually laying out cash to carry Impact? (If you're reading this and immediately thought of AEW's similar AEW+ streaming service, its primary function is bringing live access to AEW weekly programming to countries where the shows do NOT air live.) And AMC is certainly an upgrade over AXS TV, roughly doubling the number of available homes even before factoring in AMC+, but is that literally the only value being offered here?
TNA, WWE, and their surrogates have tried to push that the inconsistent attendance surge and AMC deal make TNA the new number two wrestling company ahead of AEW. That obviously isn't the case, even if the live attendance gap has shrunken dramatically.
Even setting the massive gap in TV revenue aside, we're unlikely to see the caliber of ads that AEW carries on TBS, TNT, and HBO Max, like those for car manufacturers and major insurance companies, on Impact. Hell, there are even some decent arguments to be made that we shouldn't be taking the attendance surge at face value.
These days, it's rare that we get breakdowns of paid attendance vs. comped tickets for any promotion of note, so any speculation about the authenticity of one promotion's ticket sales can be thrown right back at a rival promotion. However, TNA is the only promotion that's taken steps quite as brazen as, for example, announcing an advance sellout while the venue's website still had plenty of tickets available.
At a time when we haven't gotten any kind of viewership data for Impact in over a year and the show had consistently dropped below 100,000 viewers before that point, questioning how organically popular TNA has become is not exactly the most conspiratorial thing in the world.
What IS the best case scenario for TNA here? Even if Impact on AMC is a hit, much of the company's roster has been purged and they've become heavily reliant on WWE wrestlers, usually developmental talent from NXT. Talent that TNA doesn't have to pay because they're being booked into TNA as de facto WWE bookings paid for by WWE salaries.
Barring some major surprise debuts at the level of a Chris Jericho, the ceiling for Impact is just as an adjunct to NXT, not as any kind of self-sustaining pro wrestling promotion. (And even if a Jericho-level star shows up, he's still stuck working with a roster that's basically NXT Lite.)
Can that be a sustainable, genuinely successful wrestling promotion? We're about to find out.