GFW “Hemorrhaging Funds,” Anthem Looking to Sell?

Justin Barrasso of Sports Illustrated is reporting that Anthem Entertainment, which bought TNA/Impact Wrestling earlier this year, is looking to withdraw from the wrestling industry and sell GFW, which is “hemorrhaging funds.”

GFW has had trouble bringing in new revenue streams and despite big budget cuts, are reportedly not even close to covering costs. They recently signed a new TV deal to keep them on Pop in the US through 2018, but the deal was not very financially favorable and GFW wasn’t able to get anything better, meaning their financial situation would likely still be bad until at least 2019.

Of course, it was announced yesterday that Jeff Jarrett was taking an “indefinite leave of absence” from GFW, which was a decision made by Anthem head Ed Nordholm. There’s also the news that Jeff Jarrett still apparently owns the “GFW” name, so that would obviously present a problem for the company if he is actually out for good.

Prior to Anthem buying TNA, its attempted buyers included WWE, ROH parent company Sinclair Broadcast Group, and Billy Corgan.

If this report is true and Anthem is looking to sell, Impact has a large tape library that WWE definitely wants, since a lot of their wrestlers are former TNA stars and WWE would like to have that footage available for WWE Network specials and DVDs. If WWE does end up buying Impact, that could also mean that the “Broken Hardys” situation would finally be resolved. However, WWE was previously said to be only interested in the tape library and not in Impact as an active wrestling promotion.

According to PWInsider, there were multiple meetings yesterday in GFW regarding plans going forward, but it’s unknown what the content of those meetings was. However, there were also multiple calls made to members of the roster assuring them that “everything was fine” after the Jarrett announcement.