7 Big Questions Raised By GFW's Latest Financial Meltdown
More hearsay, or is the end finally nigh for wrestling's most beleaguered promotion?
It hasn't been a good week for Global Force Wrestling.
News that the company had placed Chief Creative Office Jeff Jarrett on an indefinite leave of absence first broke on Tuesday afternoon. This was followed by reports suggesting parent company Anthem still hadn't finalised the merger that rebranded Impact Wrestling as GFW back in June, and that if Jarrett left, he'd take his Global Force trademarks with him.
Things got worse on Wednesday, when Sports Illustrated claimed GFW was "haemorrhaging funds," and Anthem were looking to leave the wrestling business. Anthem balanced this by releasing some positive news on their future plans later in the day, but they couldn't quell the overwhelmingly negative reaction to the reports.
Such situations are nothing new for the promotion. Whether operating as TNA, Impact, or GFW, they've been plagued by mismanagement throughout their 15-year existence, leaving Anthem with the mess they're currently in today. There's no doubt that some of these new reports were exaggerated, but such bad PR is the last thing the company will have wanted after eight relatively stable months at the helm.
Let's take a look at the issues raised by this tumultuous week.
7. Didn't Anthem Know What They Were Getting Into?
Anthem saved TNA from bankruptcy last year. The promotion were set to go bust if they weren't able to secure emergency funding for October's Bound For Glory pay-per-view, but the owl-branded benefactors swept in to save the day, investing enough money to keep TNA going until the year's end.
Their full takeover was completed in January, and it looked like things were going swimmingly. Their public wranglings with the Hardy Boyz aside, it seemed as though Impact finally had the stability they'd been seeking for years, and it coincided with a noticeable increase in their weekly show's all-round quality.
This was a false dawn. If reports of the company "haemorrhaging funds" are true, then the situation is as dire as ever before, begging the question of how much due diligence was done prior to Anthem's takeover.
GFW's long-term financial problems aren't anything new. Even if Anthem didn't know about them prior to the takeover, a quick their pre-purchase appraisal of the business should've flashed a few warning signs. They purchased the most poorly run promotion in the sport's history, and it's unlikely that they'd be looking to leave the business so soon after entering it if they knew the full extent of the task on their hands.