Ed Nordholm Addresses the Advantages Having Impact on Pursuit Network, Discusses the PPV Plans for 2019
Impact Wrestling Vice President Ed Nordholm recently took part in a VIP discussion, discussing Impact moving to Pursuit Channel and the company’s plans for 2019. Below are some highlights.
Ed Nordholm of the advantages of Impact Wrestling on Pursuit: “One of the advantages of moving to a channel that’s within our own family is that we have a lot of flexibility on what we can do and where we can broadcast. It’s our platform, our distribution, the conventional broadcaster, obviously, would be interested in ensuring that they have exclusivity. From an Anthem world, we obviously want out content on our own platform. but we also are quite liberal in how we approach ensuring that our content gets seen as broadly as possible.”
Nordholm on the Friday timeslot on Pursuit: “Well Pursuit is sorta testing the blind spot that works. Friday night, they’ve got interesting programming as lead-in programming for us, it’s late on Friday night and we’re shooting for guys so it looks like a great place to play even though it might have historically not been an ideal time spot.”
Nordholm on the plans for 2019: “This has been very much a week by week, quarter by quarter exercise for us in reestablishing our platform, our financial stability our credibility as a brand. And that’s what we’re focused on right now. For sure the nirvana would be to go live every week, in the financial reality of things that is a long way away. But at all times, we’re looking for opportunities to bring more live content more frequently. Well have four PPV events for this year. And that, at the moment, seems to be the likely cycle, the natural rhythm 13 weeks of TV and then wrap it up with a PPV.”
Impact went through a well-documented restructuring in early 2017, with Anthem taking 85% ownership of Impact Wrestling, Aroluxe taking 10%, and Dixie Carter, resigning as Impact’s chairwoman after 14 years in charge, maintained only 5% ownership. That’s when Ed Nordholm took the helm and he has since been in charge of steering Impact Wrestling.
Nordholm expound a bit more on the ownership situation, saying that their initial intention was to buy a small stake in Impact Wrestling so that they could guarantee the rights for Impact Wrestling content was secure on their Fight Network. Years later, and with a much different result, Anthem is nevertheless pleased with where he’s at. Nordholm said that Impact is globally their strongest asset on the Fight Network.
“It was originally a strategic idea to have a small but significant stake in the company to ensure that we had some rights to have content available to us on Fight Network, as we went international,” Nordholm said. “That’s where it started, the story is well told about 2016 and how that spiraled out quickly.
“From our perspective, it’s way more than we first imagined that we would do when we first decided we wanted a seat at the table,” Nordholm explained. “We now own the table and everything around it but it is still from that fundamental purpose, even more so, our fundamental reason to be in this business remains and [Impact] is still our strongest, most core asset in content wherever we take the fight network around the globe.”
