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Over the past several weeks, Global Force Wrestling has touted the forthcoming addition of the Global Wrestling Network, the latest in a long line of streaming services dedicated to pro wrestling fans since the advent of the WWE Network in February 2014.
As someone who subscribes to a number of these services (and in full disclosure, produces and hosts content for one), I want to give GFW some much needed, unasked for advice:
Whatever you do, don't launch this thing immediately.
Repeat - DO. NOT. LAUNCH. THIS. THING. IMMEDIATELY.
Based on statements that GFW Grand Poobah Ed Nordholm has made, the service will be coming fairly soon, will feature free and paid for tiers and will be priced at $7.99. He believes that perhaps other promotions will be part of it and believes it will be an alternative to the WWE Network. Beyond that, it appears to be Field of Dreams in theory: if we build it, the fans will come.
There are a lot of problems with this strategy, the primary one being that there are already a litany of streaming services that are alternatives to the WWE Network, whether they be New Japan World or Flosports or the Highspots Wrestling Network or any independent promotion's streaming service that has launched in conjunction with Pivotshare after Combat Zone Wrestling bridged that company to professional wrestling at large.
I have used a lot of these services and some I love, while some I have shook my head at over how they have been utilized and rolled out.
Flosports, specifically, had a big push to launch before it was, in my opinion, ready. It came out of the gate announcing a major deal with WWN and their associated groups, who provide live streams of their events, but have struggled to cultivate or maintain any long-lasting relationships. Ring of Honor and Pro Wrestling Guerrilla passed on the service and the highest profile promotion they did begin to work with, House of Hardcore, appears to be done with Flosports. There have been a litany of other promotions who have come and gone.
As I have written before, I feel like Flosports put the plane in the air without knowing where they were flying or how to land the thing. The idea they were going to make a big splash and perhaps change the wrestling industry, as some hoped, seems to be long-forgotten. To their credit, they do provide regular live streaming shows at the price of $150 a year or $20/$30 a month, depending on the plan you signed up for.
Then you have Highspots, which regularly releases tons of content on a regular basis ranging from top independent promotions to vintage shoot interviews to original programming. They have also started experimenting with live streams, most recently the Onita vs. Tremont CZW show, which sources indicate brought the service a great deal of new subscribers. With the exception of the WWE Network, there is not one streaming service out there with the amount of varied content and consistent updates that Highspots has, for the same price at the WWE Network, $9.99.
Beyond all that, the theory that if they release it, fans will come is a short-minded, silly concept. There are lots of barren independent shows that promote heavily on social media, yet the fans don't come, because they haven't been given a reason to care. GFW is, to be blunt, a product that is flat at the moment and has been trying hard, for years, to break that reputation, only to face reboot after reboot.
There's a small, dedicated audience who will pay for the service, to be sure, but the average fan out there has either been turned off by the consistent reboots that have taken place over the last seven years or will need to be greatly convinced they should invest their time and money in GFW. Remember, less than 300,000 households in the United States cared enough to watch it, for free on cable, last week. How many of those can GFW realistically expect to convert into paying $7.99 a month immediately, if they just launch the Global Wrestling Network out of thin air?
GFW will need something more beyond just GFW on that service to curry the favor of public opinion. Of course, Ed Nordholm recently flouted the idea that New Japan could join the GFW streaming service, an idea that on its surface makes absolutely no sense and is as silly as the time Herb Abrams announced Bruiser Brody was going to book his version of the UWF, months after Brody had been murdered.
The New Japan partnership was a silly thing to throw out there, because it raises expectations GFW cannot meet. One, New Japan has their own streaming service. Two, NJPW are already available on Amazon Firestick and have started the process of getting onto other platforms. Three, why would they want to profit-share with anyone else when they already have tens of thousands of subscribers who want the current and vintage NJPW events they are streaming live or on demand? That would make as much sense as WWE wanting to be on the GFW service when they own their network. These are not statements GFW should be throwing out there.
My point in all this is quite simple: GFW should not launch their streaming service until:
*They have a strategy rolled out for it. Based on all we've heard, the entire strategy is they will be two dollars cheaper than WWE's Network. That ignores the fact that WWE, with their pristine production levels, have changed the level of expectations of what people expect for their wrestling dollar and time investment as well as what they believe is a worthy price point. It's hard to justify paying $35 for a PPV when that gives you four months of the WWE Network, which will include Wrestlemania and all the other major events the business is built around.
If GFW's strategy is to just throw all their old content up there, great, but what are you going to do to get people to continue to pay? There is a reason WWE does a "dump" of vintage content every month from their library on top of original programming - the idea is to bait people into continuing to stay because there's something new to watch? Done watching every episode of Raw? Here's ECW. Done with that? Here's WCW Thunder and so on and so on. The key to a successful subscription service is to keep people hooked so you keep reeling in their money. GFW needs a strategy to roll out. Don't put the jet in the air before you know your destination.
*Sign up Partner Promotions before they launch. GFW has relationships with Pro Wrestling NOAH, Crash Lucha Libre and AAA. If they want people to sign up for the GFW Network, it has to feature content beyond current Impact Wrestling episodes and years of older content that fans have seen in one fashion or another.
One mistake Flosports made is that they launched with very little locked in and asked fans to have faith when they signed up. Whether that faith was paid back in full is subjective; I tend to say no, but others may disagree. There is a reason WWE inked deals with PROGRESS and ICW in advance of a planned yet still to be announced tiered system for the WWE Network. You want all your ducks in your pond AND in a row before you start making promises you can't deliver. GFW needs to be more like WWE and less like Flosports in that regard. Don't hint at New Japan or anyone until you sign them to deals. That is just smart business 101.
GFW needs to have deals locked in to provide content from their partners' events. Streaming live or VOD isn't the issue here - but they need original content their subscribers would not see elsewhere. They need to have as many partners locked in, whether those be international ones but local, reputable independent companies GFW can trust in Canada or elsewhere. They cannot just be GFW or else this project will sputter out of the gate. To be blunt, GFW can not afford that.
*Have original content ready for the roll-out. Instead of just tossing out every PPV and TV show ever, why not have Jeremy Borash or someone hosting a "documentary style look" at the run of say, Samoa Joe in TNA? All you need to do is pull some matches, film some host segments and toss in a few reactions from say Sonjay Dutt and two or three others reflecting on Joe's run. Have a Collection of every Ultimate X match ready to roll. Have a sit-down interview with Jeff Jarrett (if he returns) talking the history of Memphis wrestling with say Randy Dundee or even his father, Jerry. Throw Mick Foley a few bucks to curate his favorite "hardcore matches" in GFW history. Pay for Jim Cornette's podcast to air over the network - anything. It's pro wrestling so there is an infinite amount of personality driven content that can be created, repurposing a library that is sitting there. But, they have to have it ready at launch and they have to be ready to follow it up with more. Don't put the plane in the air unless you are ready to pilot it.
*Be prepared to live stream events. I don't know that GFW is prepared to give up the PPV ghost or that they can legally air Impact live (currently there is talk of a 10 day delay from broadcast to streaming service debut) but they should be ready to have live streaming for their customers. If WWN can live stream from some of the horrible sweatbox venues they have run in the past, there is no excuse that GFW is not ready to do that, whether it be from their own house shows (if and when those run again) or live content from the Impact Zone or live content of say Sonjay Dutt defending his X-Division title from a WrestlePro event.
Fans have come to expect live streaming, which is a reason Highspots is now moving into it. Live content moves the dial. GFW had better be ready for that before the launch. This cannot be a collection of existing content alone if you want fans to pay - most of the fans you are appealing to are already aware of the content, own it, or can find it elsewhere if they search it out. GFW needs unique and special content.
Unless GFW has locked all of these points in to their strategy and have devised a user-friendly system that will host all of the said content, making it easy to find, search and peruse (a weakness on many streaming services, to be fair), they should shut up about the Global Wrestling Network immediately, roll up their sleeves, get to work on building a better mousetrap and then roll this sucker out.
You only get one chance to make a first impression and let's be fair, GFW needs a grand slam home run as they haven't had one in years. They cannot run blindly into rolling out their service. Whether they do or not, that is up to them, , but if they just throw the service out there, it's another missed opportunity for a promotion that cannot fail to miss another.
Mike Johnson can be reached at MikeJohnsonPWInsider@gmail.com. He waits for the day someone has every episode of Memphis and Continental streaming at his perusal.
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