WWE Hall of Famer Jeff Jarrett, who is also All Elite Wrestling’s Director of Business Development, took to an episode of his “My World with Jeff Jarrett” podcast, where he talked about a number of topics including what IMPACT Wrestling was planning to do with the taped GFW (Global Force Wrestling) shows when the two promotions merged back in 2017.
Jarrett said, “So that kind of goes back to. Okay, so in December of 2016, Global Force Entertainment was under a holding deal with Fox Sports. As a part of that holding deal. We had 16 one-hour episodes. That was the global force content as we moved along and against. Karen and Hermie Sadler and a bunch of other people’s wishes as we merge. I said, ‘All right, if we’re merging, the content is a part of this, and there is value to that. Okay. How can we determine the value of this?’ I’m not saying it’s broadcast; it was made on broadcast, but I’m trying to give you kind of an analogy on how a broadcast network would value it at X amount of dollars because they pay X amount of dollars for their content. A cable value at this number, digital at this number. Okay. In our world, I say well, that’s nice and country in the anthem wrestling wrestling anthem wrestler anthem wrestling exhibitions. There was a two-hour Impact, and a three-hour premium pay-per-view. So those are the kind of valuations that when I say a three-hour premium pay-per-view, that’s an international because they didn’t have transactional pay-per-view. There was also a transactional value domestically in the United States. So, there is a number we could have landed on. And as a part of the agreement we agreed upon, okay, we’re going to value it somewhere between television and pay-per-view. Okay. We can’t value it at 16 one-hour episodes. Conrad: Well, why is that? Well, we don’t do one-hour shows. So is it going to be a two-hour show? No. Probably not. And then from the very beginning, my suggestion was, as we’re kind of rebooting this whole thing to create our One Night Only monthly specials, those three hours, that’s a lot of content we got to create in Orlando. Why don’t we take the 16 one-hour episodes and turn them into four three-hour episodes? So we’ll have 12 hours of content. So I’m saying we’re going to reduce it from 16 to 12 hours. So again, there’s some math in there. And that when you get accountants and valuations and look, I’m so glad that everybody walked away happy. You know, as a footnote this is kind of the crux of the issue of the litigation. But it’s all water under the bridge now. But that was part of the plan. Okay. We don’t have to go to Orlando to shoot one night only. We’re just going to shoot the Impact show to get things rebooted. And we’re going to use the GSW content to not only save a boatload of money, but it kind of gives a story of how the global force, because the entire 16 one hours is all about crowning a heavyweight, tags, the women’s champions as we move on. It was about crowning champions. So that was kind of the creative thread of that. Makes sense, Conrad.”
You can check out the complete podcast in the video below.
