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Over the weekend, The New York Post featured an article looking at Billy Corgan's hope of purchasing TNA Wrestling and getting the company under his absolute control. It's an interesting article but what was perhaps the most interesting aspect of it was what wasn't actually written but exists somewhere between the lines, and that's the race to control the company.
We all know the players, but we will review anyway. There's Dixie Carter, who was the sole owner of the company's parent company Impact Ventures after Panda Energy divested themselves of the promotion and Carter began steering TNA alone from a financial standpoint. Then, there's Aroluxe Marketing, which took over production of TNA TV and PPV and through a deal made by Carter, now has a piece of the company ownership that they were able to obtain in lieu of Carter making payments for Aroluxe's services. And of course, there is Billy Corgan, who has dropped an estimated seven figures into the company en route to replacing Carter as President and who was in New York City last week for meetings related to TNA. Corgan has made it clear he's looking to purchase the company and if he does, that likely means that Carter (and possibly even Aroluxe) will be gone. After all, you don't buy a company to keep the old management on. Jim Crockett didn't last long in WCW.
While the TNA TV show has been very entertaining in recent months (hell, even Vanguard-1 is an entertaining character), there is another story that continues to play out - one that all involved don't want discussed publicly for obvious reasons - and that is the story of who wants TNA power and why.
Dixie Carter obviously wants to remain in control of the company and can't have been happy relinquishing the power of President. She has always wanted there to be a positive front about her personally and the company and in her perfect world, none of this would ever even be discussed.
All signs are that Aroluxe wanted the company (although they let their exclusive window expire) and one has to wonder if they even expected Corgan to begin investing, because certainly that changed the landscape of what was going to happen to TNA. Had Corgan not started investing around Slammiversary, TNA would have certainly hit a wall a long time ago and that wall likely would have led to Aroluxe having complete control of whatever was left after the (no pun intended) impact of the end of the road.
Now, we have Corgan, who's been successful for years in his own genre looking to take his creativity and business savy and apply it to TNA. Corgan, who's love of the business is well known, has ended up becoming the X-Factor no one in TNA ever expected, because he not only has the financial means to keep it going, at least until he personally says the hell with it, but even the means to eventually extricate it from all the others who have been holding onto it and hold at least some of the responsibility for TNA's woes.
When you look at Corgan from that perspective, the timing of The New York Post article itself is interesting, especially since they came after meetings Corgan had in New York City where there were no signs of Carter's involvement anywhere. Corgan has been low key as to what those meetings were, except to make it clear that he was not seeking investors to buy the company, because he has his own Smashing Pumpkins money to do that.
So, common sense dictates that Corgan isn't seeking rounds of publicity before the sale, because that could attract others who are interested and perhaps drive up the potential price of TNA. That alone has some TNA talents wondering if the article was something that Carter (or others) attempted to get in front of the public eye as a way to drive up whatever TNA's potential price could be. While Corgan was interviewed, the piece did not come as something he might have tried to plant with the media - and if he was going to do that, he certainly has lots of other media options he could attempt that strategy with from his personal rolodex.
So, was it Carter or Aroluxe? That is an interesting theory for several reasons.
One, the article claimed that Sinclair Broadcasting and WWE made recent bids for the company. The idea of "recent bids" being made are incorrect. While Sinclair and TNA did explore something, that was many months ago and it's believed those discussions ended. In asking around, the belief is the two sides are not in any current conversations at any level.
On the WWE side of things, if WWE was going to buy TNA, they would just do it and shut it down. WWE would be happy to take the tape library, especially as names like AJ Styles and Samoa Joe are becoming huge components of WWE, but the idea that WWE has put a bid in for the company, based on all signs we have heard from the WWE side, is just not correct. WWE isn't going to bid. They are going to purchase. WWE has shown interest in the library in the past, but again, that is in the past.
But, someone had to make those claims to The Post. Who was it?
Another aspect of what makes that theory interesting is that the article estimated TNA's worth as being in the $40 million range. That idea actually got several TNA talents angry and caused them to reach out to PWInsider over the weekend, alleging that if that was the case, why was the company behind in not only paying some in the roster (one talent alleged they had not been paid since June), but so many vendors who are owed money.
Let's break it down. TNA's video library is obviously worth something, as are the international TV deals, but no video library that WWE has ever puchased was worth even half of what the alleged estimated cost of the company was in The New York Post. Plus, TNA's revenue streams are only bringing in so much and the company is being run at a very smaller scale, so it's a far cry from SpikeTV days, both in terms of output and in terms of money that is coming in. There's no real licensing. There's no videogame deal. No action figures. No DVD distribution deal. As one talent said to me this morning, "Name the last TNA house show. You can't. I can't. That isn't knocking the company, but come on, it's been years."
So, the idea of TNA being worth $40 million is silly, except to someone who wants to get the general public to think it's worth that much because they want to get as much money as possible for it. That disqualifies Corgan from the list, because he should want to acquire the company for as cheaply as possible, because he's the one that's going to potentially inherit all the lawsuits, all the accounts payable and all the talent contracts, should a sale go through. He's not looking to waste money just to say he owns it.
Dixie Carter obviously doesn't want to just walk away from TNA and if she does, she's not going to do it empty handed. If she wanted to go just give up and get a job at Panda Energy or try being a reality TV star or whatever, she could have walked that road a long time ago and not have had to worry about what people were saying about her on Twitter. Aroluxe certainly doesn't want to have been a company that dropped Lord knows how much on production and then have nothing to show for it - financially or when it comes to ownership in the company - at the end of the day.
As they say, follow the money. Someone wants to make sure that if TNA changes ownership, it's for a far more ridiculous amount than the company is probably truly worth at this stage of the game. But, whoever that person is will never publicly admit it. That would require them to lose whatever ground they feel they have on the others in the race to get the most out of TNA politically and financially.
After all, should TNA actually finally hit that wall and end it's run after 15 years, the video library is going to be the most important asset and who has control of that stands to make the most money. If the company continues forward as we head into 2017, whoever has control of the power and the library also has control of the company's storylines, TV deals and continuity without having to build something new from scratch.
So, the power struggle continues...and that's the story The New York Post missed.....that beyond the video library and TV rights, there is a struggle for the livelyhoods of a roster who continue to work hard despite signs that things could go either way - and there is still no telling what way this is going to go, or who's going to end up being the final factor in whether TNA lives, evolves, dies or simply becomes another corner in the Vault section of the WWE Network's video on demand area. That is the race to watch. The one being run in the shadows.
Mike Johnson can be reached at MikeJohnsonPWInsider@gmail.com.
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