Justin Barrasso of Sports Illustrated published a report today saying that Anthem is looking to offload GFW/Impact Wrestling as it has been “hemorrhaging” funds ever since they took over.
The report, backed by sources who are close to Anthem, says that with Jeff Jarrett out of his position, the company’s future is pretty much in the balance especially since Jarrett still technically owns the Global Force Wrestling name and intellectual property and the deal to sell to Anthem was never fully finalized.
Anthem Sports & Entertainment officially took over TNA from Dixie Carter on January 5 of this year with Ed Nordholm assuming the top role in the company. Carter retained just 5% of the company, 14 years after her family took over from the Jarretts.
In March, the TNA name was completely “deleted” and rebranded to just Impact Wrestling. A week after the announcement of the name change, Anthem started laying off employees and cutting back on original programming on the Fight Network to continue fund the wrestling operation.
At the end of June of this year, Anthem unveiled the news that Impact Wrestling would be rebranded again as Global Force Wrestling, with the flagship television show keeping its Impact name.
Perhaps Anthem’s biggest asset of the company is the tape library, so technically they could sell the whole tape library which dates back to 2002 and recoup some of their expenses.
