Never say never in the professional wrestling business.
It’s a cliche, but it’s true.
Just over a decade ago, Total Nonstop Action was on the brink of collapse, as there was a tax lien on the organization from the state of Tennessee, where the promotion was originally based, and Billy Corgan, who was funding the TV tapings to keep the organization afloat in exchange for what he thought was a stake in the company, filed a lawsuit against Dixie Carter after it appeared that she attempted to swindle him to pick up the tab for production. This was after her dad, the owner of Panda Energy, Bob Carter pulled the plug on funding her venture to make herself a TV star. The reckoning was a long time coming, as Dixie’s markish mistakes finally caught up to her, and when Panda Energy stopped footing the bill, TNA simply wasn’t a viable business entity. She got worked for major money by Hulk Hogan before he walked out the door a few year earlier to eventually go back to WWE and then the TV show, Impact was cancelled by Spike TV in 2014 after Vince Russo accidentally revealed that he was still working for the company after the network specifically didn’t want him involved with the organization.
When TNA was canned from Spike TV, an era of the company was over, and truth be told, it’s a small miracle that the group survived through some very lean years that followed. Impact had a year on Pop TV and Destination America respectively until the previously mentioned tax lien forced Carter to sell to Anthem Entertainment, a Canadian corporation that only bought the floundering promotion to keep Impact, it’s highest-rated show, on The Fight Network. The Impact show spent a year on the pursuit channel in 2017, literally with ice fishing as lead-in programming.
Some of the blunders that followed were laughable, the ill-fated Global Force crossover, Alberto Del Rio as champion, and their American distribution that primarily consisted on a Twitch stream online. In an effort to bolster TNA’s distribution, Anthem, purchased HD Net, a channel that became AXS, to give TNA some type of American exposure. Still, the TV clearance of AXS was rather limited, and TNA was essentially a Canadian product, which is fine, as it gave wrestlers a place to make a living in the industry. The exit of Scott D’Amore, one of the driving forces behind the attempts to grow the promotion, a few years created questions about if the revived TNA brand had hit a ceiling or not.
Amazingly, it was just announced this week that Total Nonstop Action will return to mainstream cable in the United States in 2026 when it debuts on AMC January 15th at 9 PM for live weekly shows. To truly put this in perspective as far as how important such a deal is if the organization truly wants to expand, you can trace the initial downfall to when Impact was cancelled from Spike TV in 2014 and the domino effect that it had that led to the brink of collapse before it was rescued by Anthem.
If anyone wants to try to downplay the level of impact this deal could have on the business because of the shrinking number of cable subscribers with the supposed death of traditional television, the bottom line is, TV is still the biggest form of content distribution. If it wasn’t TNA would’ve been able to grow without it, and AEW would’ve launched without it. This deal with AMC not only brings a major revenue stream into the fold for TNA, which would theoretically give them more money to invest in contracts for talent, but also gives them the biggest platform, by a significant margin, that they’ve had in more than a decade. AMC has an estimated TV clearance of 57 million homes. For a comparison, TBS, the network that airs Dynamite, has an estimated TV clearance of 68 million homes. AXS, the channel that currently airs Impact in the United States, has an estimated clearance of just under 30 million homes, nearly half of the TV clearance of the new TV deal.
As mentioned, the logistics of the TV deal were critical in the downfall of the organization, and it’s more than possible that it could be the key to an upswing as well.
On the surface, this gives TNA the ability to market and promote its product to a mainstream audience again, and in some ways, particularly because the promotion is more or less completely different than it was during the Spike TV era, has a chance to make a first impression of sorts on AMC. There’s no doubt that producing live weekly programming is exponentially more expensive than marathon tapings over the course of a few days, but that’s also why TNA is getting a reported $10 million for the contract. Part of what AMC is paying for is live content, which generally secures a better ad rates than reruns. Along with that, it brings up questions as to what TNA is going to do for that television schedule, as it puts quite the demand on the company to have a product that will sell tickets each week. The key will be if TNA will pick a small venue as a home base the way that the WWE does for NXT or if they will attempt to run a full touring schedule, which might be too ambitious, at least for right now.
A live touring schedule is expensive and it’s not easy to move tickets in every market, the past few years of Dynamite attendance is proof of that. So, it might be better for TNA to tape in a stand alone location until they get established as an entity on AMC, particularly because regional television numbers will provide them some indication as to where they could sell tickets to live events for TV tapings.
After the initial announcement, there were some rumors that this would signal the end of the TNA/NXT working agreement, which TNA president, Carlos Silva debunked immediately. It goes without saying that the NXT crossover is what brought TNA a degree of hype that allowed them to secure a much bigger television deal than they have right now, and the WWE knows that so dissolving the partnership now would neutralize the progress made on both sides. The bigger TNA gets, the bigger the stars become, which allows for a more productive feeder system for the WWE, and at the same time, the more viewers Impact can garner, the NXT talent look like bigger stars in the process, which could help their presentation directly or indirectly on the WWE main roster in the future. The biggest takeaway from a wrestling perspective this evolving partnership is even the massive TKO corporation realizes that they can’t develop talent in the entire business so allowing performers the ability to evolve within TNA is a way to keep them on the radar without taking resources away from the Performance Center or the NXT system. From strictly a business point of view, this TNA agreement keeps the WWE shielded from anti-trust accusations, which resulted in a $20 million settlement in the lawsuit from Major League Wrestling last year.
In that respect, it’s a win-win for everyone. TNA gets a chance to grow and they offer anti-trust protection for WWE ,as well as a league for developmental talent to evolve. The WWE is an empire, and TNA knows that they are much better served as a second-tier league on the same side as the massive corporation than trying to compete against it for a slice of the market share.
The key going forward is, TNA can’t offer a minimal approach to its new time slot. Sure, WWE is going to cherry-pick who they think will make the best transition to the company, but hopefully, they won’t raid too many performers, as there must be enough meat on the bone for viewers to truly dedicate a portion of their time to following TNA Impact in the crowded pro wrestling landscape, as far as the amount of hours are available every week. Essentially, this will have to be more than just the TNA show on a bigger channel, but rather the quality of the product must be solid enough to garnered a portion of the weekly wrestling audience. Just because the brand will be on AMC, it doesn’t automatically translate to success so it will be interesting to see what the overall direction of the company will be on the new network. Given the connection with WWE, it might be wise to allow a few TNA legends that are under WWE contract, such as AJ Styles or Abyss, to appear on the show to boost the organization.
The domino effect of this is that it can either take a piece of the pie away from All Elite Wrestling, or at the very least, make it more difficult for the Khan-owned organization to maintain its market share. Make no mistake about it, the more TNA expands, the more competition for the pro wrestling dollar there will be for AEW. Another two hours of pro wrestling a week with TNA on AMC could have an effect on Dynamite viewership. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a demographic of completely diehard wrestling fans that will watch anything with a wrestling ring, but that’s a niche of a niche. The reality is, the average viewer, even a diehard fan, is only going to watch a certain amount of wrestling content each week. The scenario could have an exponentially bigger effect on AEW business if TNA runs a full touring schedule. If TNA brings its show to a city where AEW ran shows before, it’s possible that fans could choose tickets to Impact as something new instead of Dynamite if both groups have shows in the same location around the same time frame. The economic uncertainty doesn’t lend itself to the average consumer buying live event tickets multiple times a year so there would have to be a decision made if two companies run in the same city. Along those same lines, if TNA runs a handful of pay-per-views a year, it’s possible that it could take away some of the AEW buys. Similar to the live event budget, many fans have a PPV budget as well.
Obviously, it remains to be seen if TNA can produce a show that will garner an audience on AMC, and it will take a lot of the right puzzle pieces falling into the right place for the brand to establish itself on a bigger level, but it undoubtedly creates some interesting scenarios ahead of 2026, mostly how the success or lack thereof will have an impact on the rest of the industry. This would’ve seemed completely impossible five years ago, but it’s not completely out of the question that TNA could eventually work its way back up to the second spot in the sports entertainment business in the United States if the AMC deal is successful.
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Until next week
-Jim LaMotta
Email [email protected] | You can follow me on Instagram, Facebook, & Threads @jimlamotta89
